Emerald Medical Applications Corp. (OTCQB: MRLA), an Israeli-based company engaged in the development and sale of its proprietary DermaCompare cloud-based, artificial intelligence technology for the early diagnosis of Melanoma/skin cancer, today announced entry into a cooperation agreement with Terem, one of Israel's largest community-based, emergency healthcare providers with 17 medical facilities, serving over 700,000 patients throughout Israel. Starting in April 2016, Emerald will begin to offer its DermaCompare technology at each of Terem's clinics throughout Israel, offering advanced dermatological examinations, diagnosisand treatment led by a leading professional Dermatologists. DermaCompare is Emerald's cloud-based, artificial, intelligence technology using Total Body Photography imaging which is capable of being automatically compared to a patient's previous images to diagnose and detect the presence of Melanoma in its earliest stages. Lior Wayn, Emerald's CEO, stated that "DermaCompare, Emerald's FDA approved, HIPPA compliant software technology, which can be downloaded from any Mac or Android based App store, enables physicians andtheir patients, using virtually any digital camera, including cell phones, iPads, tablets and other similar devices, to take Total Body Photography images and, in real-time, transmit these images for dermatological evaluation and identification of suspicious moles, lesions and other skin conditions. These images are then compared using Emerald's cloud database, as well as the patients previous Total Body Photography images, which will dramatically enhance a physician's ability to detect Melanoma earlier, more accurately and more efficient than other means of diagnosis."

The week before David Marcus will take the stage at Facebook's annual F8 developers' conference to announce new tools to help businesses interact with you and me on Messenger, he tries to explain his ambitious idea for the future. Sure, he'll tell the throngs of developers gathering today at San Francisco's scenic former US Army post, Fort Mason, about bots. He'll announce a new bot platform, new ways to find apps, and an artificial intelligence-powered bot engine. At the end of the day, there'll even be free Messenger messenger bags! But all these announcements are just data points that herald something much grander, according to Marcus, who is vice president of messaging at Facebook.

More than 2 million viewers tuned into a Go match series broadcast live from South Korea on YouTube in March. For the first time, global attention was focused on the ancient Chinese board game as Lee Se-dol, one of the world's top players, took on an artificial intelligence program named AlphaGo -- created by Deep Mind, Google's appropriately named AI research team. AlphaGo won 4-1, despite excited cheering from Lee's fans. Interest in AI has spiked in South Korea in recent months. The administration of President Park Geun-hye has announced that it will invest 1 trillion South Korean won ( 866 million) over the next five years to develop AI technologies through joint private-public projects.

A master player of the game Go has won his first match against a Google computer program, after losing three in a row in a best-of-five competition. Lee Se-dol, one of the world's top players, said his win against AlphaGo was "invaluable". The Chinese board game is considered to be a much more complex challenge for a computer than chess, and AlphaGo's wins were seen as a landmark moment for artificial intelligence. Go is a game of two players who take turns putting black or white stones on a 19-by-19 grid. Players win by taking control of the most territory on the board.

According to Chinese newspaper Workers' Daily, two restaurants in Guangzhou, China, that gained some amount of notoriety for their use of robotic waiters have now been forced to close down. One employee said, "the robots weren't able to carry soup or other food steady and they would frequently break down. The boss has decided never to use them again." Yeah, we can't say we're surprised. As far as I can tell, all of these waiter robots can do essentially one thing: travel along a set path while holding food.

SAN FRANCISCO -- You already chat with friends on Facebook Messenger. Now Messenger wants you to chat with businesses and get updates from them, too. That's the future Facebook pitched Tuesday at f8, its annual conference for software developers in San Francisco. "We think you should message a business just the way you would message a friend," Mark Zuckerberg said on stage at f8. He laughed: "To order flowers on 1-800-Flowers,you never have to call 1-800-Flowers again."

The universal scope of Internet advertising makes it an ideal way to attract customers and lure young participants into human trafficking activities including sex and prostitution. But behind those ads are layers of online data that can help investigators track down the criminals who organize and profit from such exploitation. A fledgling Pittsburgh startup, Marinus Analytics, has a software product, Traffic Jam, that mines the so-called "deep Web" for information and clues about trafficking operations. It is being used by law enforcement officials, including the FBI, to identify offenders and rescue victims. Emily Kennedy, the founder of Marinus founder and its chief executive, began developing the product while she was a student at Carnegie Mellon University.

Once considered the subject of our imagination, best left in the realm of science fiction, robots are now a growing technology that is rapidly changing our world. We have become accustomed to seeing them on our TV screens in cartoons such as The Jetsons (1962-1988) or in films such as Big Hero 6 (2014), Elysium (2013) or Robot and Frank (2012). Whether they are helping surgeons with keyhole surgery, manufacturing medicine or assisting the elderly, it is clear that robots have left the realm of science fiction and are a reality that may soon be coming to a home or health facility near us. There are clear benefits to using robots as seen by countries such as Japan where robots now help care for its ageing population. In the UK, which is also facing similar issues, NHS Western Isles and NHS Shetland for example have been trialling the use of a robot called'Giraff' in patients' homes.

Tiny rockets are going to be sent into space to study the far universe in the most ambitious space exploration project in history. Scientists including Stephen Hawking and backers such as internet investor Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg will send "nano craft" deep into space to explore the most remote regions that humans have ever seen, by far. The hugely ambitious project could reveal deep secrets of the universe and will allow people to photograph one of the most likely places to hold life on other worlds. The Starshot Project hopes to get the tiny robots out to the Alpha Centauri star system, 25 trillion years away. Getting there through normal means would take 30,000 years – but the new project hopes that using the tiny rockets will allow them to get there in just 20.

The robots are coming -- to help run your life or sell you stuff -- at an online texting service near you. In coming months, users of Facebook's Messenger app, Microsoft's Skype and Canada's Kik can expect to find new automated assistants offering information and services at a variety of businesses. These messaging "chatbots" are basically software that can conduct human-like conversation and do simple jobs once reserved for people. Google and other companies are reportedly working on similar ideas. In Asia, software butlers are already part of the landscape.