NOT since the era of imperial Rome has the "thumbs-up" sign been such a potent and public symbol of power. A mere 12 years after it was founded, Facebook is a great empire with a vast population, immense wealth, a charismatic leader, and mind-boggling reach and influence. The world's largest social network has 1.6 billion users, a billion of whom use it every day for an average of over 20 minutes each. In the Western world, Facebook accounts for the largest share of the most popular activity (social networking) on the most widely used computing devices (smartphones); its various apps account for 30% of mobile internet use by Americans. And it is the sixth-most-valuable public company on Earth, worth some 325 billion.

We study the problem of learning sparse structure changes between two Markov networks $P$ and $Q$. Rather than fitting two Markov networks separately to two sets of data and figuring out their differences, a recent work proposed to learn changes \emph{directly} via estimating the ratio between two Markov network models. In this paper, we give sufficient conditions for \emph{successful change detection} with respect to the sample size $n_p, n_q$, the dimension of data $m$, and the number of changed edges $d$. When using an unbounded density ratio model we prove that the true sparse changes can be consistently identified for $n_p = \Omega(d^2 \log \frac{m^2+m}{2})$ and $n_q = \Omega({n_p^2})$, with an exponentially decaying upper-bound on learning error. Such sample complexity can be improved to $\min(n_p, n_q) = \Omega(d^2 \log \frac{m^2+m}{2})$ when the boundedness of the density ratio model is assumed. Our theoretical guarantee can be applied to a wide range of discrete/continuous Markov networks.

Toyota's hybridized take on self-driving comes in the wake of research that suggests drivers can take about eight seconds or more to readjust and gain control of a formerly fully autonomous vehicle. The "guardian angel" system could alleviate that disconnect by activating only to avoid a collision, much like automatic braking does. Testing for this new system will soon be underway at a TRI location near Mt. Fuji in Japan, although the company also intends to run simulations at its US-based research facilities. To clear the system for eventual use in commercial vehicles, Toyota will first need to amass a trillion miles worth of road testing.

Drone deployment has become associated with rice growth research in the Philippines, as well as for spotting illegal fishpond-building, and for the early detection of approaching typhoons. The importance of drones has been accepted by Filipinos cognizant of neighboring countries investing millions of dollars on unmanned aerial vehicles (U.A.V.) for …

Imagine strapping an enormous VR headset to a car. Now, place that car inside a facility the size of a football field that simulates a full range of motion. Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt provided a peek inside that incredible facility during a keynote speech to a crowd of more than 3,000 at our GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley Thursday. Pratt also announced that Toyota will be opening a new autonomous driving research facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that will be staffed by about 50 researchers to complement Toyota's ongoing efforts in Japan, Silicon Valley, and Cambridge, Mass., near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pratt is a legendary figure in the robotics community.

PORTLAND, OREGON – The U.S. military on Thursday christened an experimental self-driving warship designed to hunt for enemy submarines, a major advance in robotic warfare at the core of America's strategy to counter Chinese and Russian naval investments. The 132-foot-long (40-meter-long) unarmed prototype, dubbed Sea Hunter, is the naval equivalent of Google's self-driving car, designed to cruise on the ocean's surface for two or three months at a time -- without a crew or anyone controlling it remotely. That kind of endurance and autonomy could make it a highly efficient submarine stalker at a fraction of the cost of the Navy's manned vessels. "This is an inflection point," Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Work said in an interview, adding he hoped such ships might find a place in the Western Pacific in as few as five years. "This is the first time we've ever had a totally robotic, trans-oceanic-capable ship."

The honeycombs in which they store their amber nectar are marvels of precision engineering, an array of prism-shaped cells with a perfectly hexagonal cross-section. The wax walls are made with a very precise thickness, the cells are gently tilted from the horizontal to prevent the viscous honey from running out, and the entire comb is aligned with the Earth's magnetic field. Yet this structure is made without any blueprint or foresight, by many bees working simultaneously and somehow coordinating their efforts to avoid mismatched cells. The ancient Greek philosopher Pappus of Alexandria thought that the bees must be endowed with "a certain geometrical forethought." And who could have given them this wisdom, but God?

State and local police began using facial recognition in the early 2000s. The early systems were notoriously unreliable, but today law-enforcement agencies in Chicago, Dallas, West Virginia, and elsewhere have acquired or are actively considering more sophisticated surveillance camera systems. Some of these systems can capture the faces of passersby and identify them in real-time. Sheriff's departments across Florida and Southern California have been outfitted with smartphone or tablet facial recognition systems that can be used to run drivers and pedestrians against mug shot databases. In fact, Florida and several other states enroll every driver's license photo in their facial recognition databases. Now, with the click of a button, many police departments can identify a suspect caught committing a crime on camera, verify the identity of a driver who does not produce a license, or search a state driver's license database for suspected fugitives.

In a first for mechanical man, scientists have revealed that humans get aroused by touching robots. Researchers at Stanford University studying the physiological impact of human-on-bot contact found that "touching areas perceived as private made the skin more moist." The team of scientists programmed a two-foot-tall robot -- part Michelin Man, part Wall-E -- to command four female and six male subjects to touch various parts of its body. Study participants wore finger sensors to measure arousal and reaction time. When asked to touch a neutral, easily accessible part of the body such as the hand, there was no marked response.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the Messenger Platform at the F8 summit in San Francisco last year. This year he's expected to announce a "chat bot" store on Messenger. That is the question on many lips ahead of Facebook's annual software developer conference next week in San Francisco. Analysts expect Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to open up Messenger's platform to "chatbots" and launch an online store for them. TechCrunch reported Thursday that Facebook will help software developers build "chatbots."