A new method to assess the quality of organs for donation is set to revolutionise the transplant system – and it could help save lives and tens of millions of pounds. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is contributing more than £1 million in funding to develop the new technology, which is known as Organ Quality Assessment (OrQA). It works in the same way as Artificial Intelligence-based facial recognition to evaluate the quality of an organ. It is estimated the technology could result in up to 200 more patients receiving kidney transplants and 100 more receiving liver transplants a year in the UK. Colin Wilson, transplant surgeon at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and co-lead of the project, said: "Transplantation is the best treatment for patients with organ failure, but unfortunately some organs can't be used due to concerns they won't function properly once transplanted. "The software we have developed'scores' the quality of the organ and aims to support surgeons to assess if the organ is healthy enough to be transplanted.

If you're a fan of Ubisoft's popular Watch Dogs video game series – a 5-year-old action-adventure franchise played out in real-world cities like Chicago and San Francisco – you'll no doubt want to get your hands on the next installment, slated for March 5, 2020, for PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Google Stadia. "Watch Dogs: Legion," which earned several "Best of Show" awards at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game confab known as E3, looks to be the most ambitious title in the series to date. Is Facebook listening to me?: Why those ads appear after you talk about things One of the most ambitious games of 2020, Ubisoft's'Watch Dogs: Legion' takes place in a post-Brexit London, which has become an all-seeing surveillance state. The following is what you need to know about the game – based on what I saw (and played) at E3, along with some details provided by Joel Burgess, world director at Ubisoft Toronto, which is taking the reins on this title with portions of the game being developed simultaneously at Ubisoft studios in Montreal, Paris, Newcastle, England; Bucharest, Romania; and Kiev, Ukraine. One of the most ambitious games of 2020, Ubisoft's'Watch Dogs: Legion' takes place in a post-Brexit London, which has become an all-seeing surveillance state.

It is a pleasure to announce ICAD 2019, the 25th International Conference on Auditory Display. The conference is hosted by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Northumbria University and will take place in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK on 23-27 June, 2019. The graduate student Think Tank (doctoral consortium) will be on Sunday, June 23, before the main conference. Digital technology and artificial intelligence are becoming embedded in the objects all around us, from consumer products to the built environment. Everyday life happens where People, Technology, and Place intersect.

Britons with regional accents are having to change the way they talk so they can use voice recognition devices such as Alexa. A study found those fed up with repeating requests to devices – including Google Home, Amazon's Alexa, and Siri on the iPhone – have to use a more'standard' form of English instead. Some 79 per cent of those with regional accents regularly alter the way they speak just to be understood by their devices, according to the poll by the Life Science Centre museum in Newcastle upon Tyne. A study found those fed up with repeating requests to devices – including Google Home, Amazon's Alexa (pictured), and Siri on the iPhone – have to use a more'standard' form of English instead. Of the 444 visitors who completed the survey, 33 per cent said they changed the way they spoke'a lot', while 48 per cent expressed concern that use of voice recognition could'stamp out' regional accents.

Hospitals are still reliant on "archaic" fax machines with thousands still in use, a survey shows. Senior doctors said the continued use of the outdated technology was "ludicrous", and modern forms of communication were urgently needed. The poll, by the Royal College of Surgeons using freedom of information laws, revealed nearly 9,000 fax machines were in use across England. Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Trust topped the list, relying on 603 machines. "Alongside innovation like artificial intelligence and robot-assisted surgery, NHS hospital trusts remain stubbornly attached to using archaic fax machines for a significant proportion of their communications.

A new generation of prosthetic limbs which allow the wearer to reach for objects automatically, without thinking – just like a real hand – are to be trialed for the first time. The cutting-edge research was lead by a team at Newcastle University who claim to have developed a prosthetic hand that is able to "see" objects in front of it using a simple Logitech webcam, and respond via software to assess and grasp them. The prosthetic hand is able to see and grasp objects automatically without the need to "think"; just like a real hand, says the University The next-gen prosthetic hand works via a fitted camera which instantaneously takes a picture of the object in front of it, assesses its shape and size and triggers a series of movements in the hand. Bypassing the usual processes which require the user to see the object, physically stimulate the muscles in the arm and trigger a movement in the prosthetic limb, the hand'sees' and reacts in one fluid movement. The Newcastle University research team said it is working with experts at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to offer the'hands with eyes' to patients at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital.

In this special guest feature, Cecilia Pizzurro, Senior Director, Strategic Data Projects at LOGICnow, discusses the convergence of data/machine learning and cybersecurity, and the idea that these two are playing off of each other in a more meaningful way than ever before. Cecilia leads a team of data scientists and software engineers in Cambridge (US) and Newcastle (UK). These teams use machine learning and big data analytics to find business value in the vast amount of customer data gathered from LOGICnow's products. She was also the co-founder and CTO of the The Dolomite Group, a South American mining consortium, pioneering machine learning and big data analyses to improve mining efficiency and reduce environmental impact in Peru. This company is currently finalizing its acquisition by a Chilean mining company.

These are the written discussions of the paper "Bayesian measures of model complexity and fit" by D. Spiegelhalter et al. (2002), following the discussions given at the Annual Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on September 3rd, 2013.