The Year Without a Summer is why Robert Walton is important to Frankenstein: Like the newspapers, he's concerned about surviving climate chaos. He says that in the Arctic "the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. Frankenstein begins with the search for new, more habitable lands because of environmental anxieties. People did not know that the cooling trend was a temporary result of volcanic activity. Rather, they thought the summer of 1816, with its famine, social unrest, and winter eternal, was the new normal.

The'World of Warcraft' video game was a generation game that was like a symbol in China. Every single Post-80's person played this game, and have been waiting for this movie for almost 10 years! In only 5 days it made 1 billion RMB, a new record in China. It was funny because on social media you could see the emotional reactions from the Post-80's people and a battle between the other generations. As you know everything happens so fast in China that you can see huge differences in the behavior of the different generations (Post-80's, Post-90's millennials etc.).

SoftBank Group Corp. CEO and Chairman Masayoshi Son said Wednesday he will continue to lead the telecom giant for five to 10 more years, saying there are things he still wants to do. The remarks come a day after SoftBank abruptly announced the company's group president, Nikesh Arora, whom Son had chosen as his successor two years earlier, would be stepping down from the post after Wednesday's annual shareholders meeting. "I was planning to invite SoftBank executives and my friends to my 60th birthday party and just when we would make a toast, I wanted to announce that I would pass the torch on to Nikesh from the next day," Son, 58, said during the meeting in Tokyo. Arora wanted to take the helm in a few years but, "I've made a commitment to lead the company at least five more years or maybe 10 more years," said Son, adding he feels "deeply sorry" about changing his plans and causing trouble for Arora. For his part, Arora told shareholders, "This is a decision I respect and even support because he is too young in his heart and his mind to not continue to lead this great company."

SoftBank Corp. is selling its stake in Finnish game developer Supercell to Chinese technology firm Tencent in a deal announced Tuesday that values the company at about 10.2 billion. Under the deal announced by the three companies, Tokyo-based SoftBank will relinquish its stake in Supercell for 7.3 billion, and Tencent will gain up to 84 percent of Supercell. The rest of Supercell will be owned by its employees. It will continue to run its own operations in Helsinki. Supercell, founded in 2010, developed games for Apple and Google's Android smartphones and tablets, including hits such as "Hay Day," "Clash of Clans" and "Boom Beach."

Hisashi Taniguchi took a sabbatical from developing software for driverless taxis and drones to pilgrimage to a Buddhist temple in western Japan. He shaved his head, donned black robes and studied to become the shrine's leader. He passed the test, yet within a week was back at the Tokyo offices of ZMP Inc., overseeing his robotics company in a more-typical wardrobe of jeans and red Converse sneakers. As ZMP's founder and chief executive officer, he tries to sync millennia-old teachings with efforts to make artificial intelligence part of everyday life. "The temple teaches you that if you shine, you'll shed light on those around you," Taniguchi, 52, said.

MUNICH – Europe's growing army of robot workers could be classed as "electronic persons" and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution. Robots are being deployed in ever-greater numbers in factories and also taking on tasks such as personal care or surgery, raising fears over unemployment, wealth inequality and alienation. Their growing intelligence, pervasiveness and autonomy requires rethinking everything from taxation to legal liability, a draft European Parliament motion, dated May 31, suggests. Some robots are even taking on a human form. Visitors to the world's biggest travel show in March were greeted by a lifelike robot developed by Japan's Toshiba and were helped by another made by France's Aldebaran Robotics.

We are all familiar with the doomsday scenario depicted by many modern films, when artificial intelligence goes bad and takes over the world. But this is not going to happen, according to Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, who claims that super-intelligent robots will someday help use solve problems such as population growth and climate change. During a talk in Cannes, he said AI will be developed for the benefit of humanity and there will be systems in place in case anything goes awry. Artificial intelligence will let scientists solve some of the world's'hard problems.' During a talk in Cannes, Eric Schmidt said AI will be developed for the benefit of humanity and there will be systems in place in case anything goes awry.

A university professor is heading the Japanese version of a U.S.-led movement to exonerate people who have been wrongfully charged and imprisoned using DNA testing. Mitsuyuki Inaba, 51, who is neither a lawyer nor an expert in criminal law, is a professor at Ritsumeikan University's College of Policy Science. He believes Japan's criminal justice system is rife with fundamental failures that lead to wrongful imprisonment due to the "unscientific" way in which investigations are carried out. Inaba, who specializes in cognitive science, took up the post of director at the Innocence Project Japan, which was launched in April in cooperation with lawyers and other legal experts. Similar movements have sprouted in Britain, South Africa and Taiwan.

Baidu Inc. is using its own trove of data to measure China's economy, devising new gauges that may paint a better picture than the government's. The country's leading search engine has begun using location and search information collected from its more than 600 million users to create indicators and indexes it says could shed light on what's happening with the world's second largest economy. Investors and analysts have long questioned the veracity and methodology of China's government-issued statistics. An example is jobless data, with an unemployment rate staying between 4 percent and 4.3 percent in every quarter since the end of 2002, through a domestic boom, the global financial crisis and now an economy growing at its slowest pace in 25 years. "The economy is slowing down but the unemployment rate published by the government remains steady about 4 percent," senior data scientist Wu Haishan said.

An industrial robotic arm pours a glass of beer at the Automatica trade fair in Munich on Tuesday. Munich: Europe's growing army of robot workers could be classed as "electronic persons" and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution.Robots are being deployed in ever-greater numbers in factories and also taking on tasks such as personal care or surgery, raising fears over unemployment, wealth inequality and alienation. Their growing intelligence, pervasiveness and autonomy requires rethinking everything from taxation to legal liability, a draft European Parliament motion, dated May 31, suggests. Some robots are even taking on a human form. Visitors to the world's biggest travel show in March were greeted by a lifelike robot developed by Japan's Toshiba and were helped by another made by France's Aldebaran Robotics.