The use of facial recognition software is growing in China--s universities, ostensibly to improve security, but concerns are growing that it is used for monitoring students -- including foreing students -- and teachers, creating massive data bases on student attendance and movements around campus. Peking University in Beijing now screens students entering the university--s south-western gate by using a camera to scan their faces in a trial that began at the end of June to see if the technology can replace the use of university identity cards. The system scans through a database of thousands of photographs taken for student and staff identity cards, using a powerful system to match the photograph against a database of thousands of others. Facial recognition devices have already been installed outside the university--s libraries, classrooms, student accommodation, sports facilities and computer centres, but these match a face to an existing photograph of that person on the database rather than sifting through the entire database. Photographs can be retaken in the guard room at the gates if the photos do not quite match, according to the university--s social media account on Sina Weibo, though it does not say what the failure rate is -- in particular for foreign students.

The science fiction multiverse is well populated by all manner of robots. Pick your favorite: Dr. Who fans may favor K9, the Time Lord's mechanical mutt. Maybe the Transformers represent the coolest robots in the galaxy. The more literary-minded might prefer a character like R. Daneel Olivaw out of the Asimov universe. Those of us from a certain generation, however, will always have an affection for the Laurel and Hardy of robots--C-3PO and RD-D2.

The UK government could ban kids from owning drones weighing over 250g (0.55 lbs), under rules drawn up by the Department for Transport. The proposals suggest children could fly a heavier drone under adult supervision if someone older owns and has registered it. The age limit could be pegged at 18, partly because that's the minimum age for most insurance policies. Officials are consulting on a number of drone-related proposals, with a view to publishing a Drones Bill later this year. Proposals that are being considered include online safety tests and required registration for drones weighing over 250g -- that falls in line with FAA registration rules in the US.

Arati Prabhakar of Stanford delivers lecture at AAAS Science & Technology Policy Forum. The U.S. scientific research and development enterprise stands at a critical juncture that requires the convergence of basic research and commercial applications to more quickly deliver benefits of nextgeneration technological innovation, said Arati Prabhakar in a lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Forum on Science & Technology Policy. Prabhakar, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and former director of both the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, also called on the R&D community to leverage advances in the social sciences to meet challenges of the coming decades. Change was a theme that ran through the 43rd annual S&T Policy Forum on 21–22 June at AAAS headquarters in Washington, D.C., focused on U.S. science, innovation, and competitiveness. The forum featured speakers whose careers span public service, academia, and the private sector, including Susan Hockfield, president emerita of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chair of the AAAS board, and Peter Lee, corporate vice president of artificial intelligence and research at Microsoft.

In the movies, transformers destroy cities. A rolling robot doctor called Amplus can help heal them, its creator says. Amplus is an advanced remote-operated vehicle, or ROV, that inspects water, wastewater and industrial pipes. The device can access points as narrow as 4 inches (about 100 millimeters) and crawl through lines regardless of flow or pressure. The 16-inch-long Amplus debuted at the American Waterworks Association (AWWA) conference in June, and was on display this month at Singapore International Water Week. Amplus is for real-time pipeline assessment.

'Sophia the Robot' is seen on stage before a discussion by Hanson Robotics about Sophia's multiple intelligences and artificial intelligence (AI) at the RISE Technology Conference in Hong Kong on July 10, 2018. Cancer is a complex and uncontrollable beast that mutates and changes the goalposts before you get into the politics and economics surrounding the issue. There isn't just one cancer either – the homogenous term is misleading into thinking the problem is even solvable. Scientists and technologists alike are seeing hope though - not through increased funding but technological advancement in the form of Artificial Intelligence. Recently attending CogX - one of the more robust and significant AI conferences in the UK - healthcare was very much on the menu.

An entrepreneur who follows his father into an established industry is likely to enjoy greater success than peers whose parents didn't work in that field, recent research suggests. At the same time, innovative, high-IQ entrepreneurs are more likely to strike out on their own in search of greater rewards, researchers found after analyzing statistics on young and middle-aged Norwegian men and businesses started in Norway from 1999 to 2007. Their findings indicate that different advantages – inherited industry knowledge for some, great intellectual talent for others – take entrepreneurs on different paths to different kinds of success. "A majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers' industry of employment," the researchers wrote in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper issued early this year. "This tendency is correlated with intelligence: higher-IQ entrepreneurs are less likely to follow their fathers," they said. In fact, the authors found that entrepreneurs with higher cognitive test scores are far more likely to go into the tech industry.

Enjoy these six tech articles as we come down the homestretch into the weekend. Greg Otto at fedscoop wrote this interesting piece about IBM's Watson-as-a-Service. IBM announced last week it has moved its cognitive computing system into the cloud to form the Watson Discovery Advisor, allowing researchers, academics and anyone else trying to leverage big data the ability to test programs and hypotheses at speeds never before seen. Since Watson is built to understand the nuance of natural language, this new service allows researchers to process millions of data points normally impossible for humans to handle. This can reduce project timelines from years to weeks or days.

In March 2018, members of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) executive board gave their blessing to a dramatic overhaul of the way the organisation gathers, governs and uses data. The Overarching strategy on data and statistics, the first of its kind, lays out how the fund plans to improve the quality of data, boost the ease with which it can be shared, and start making greater use of innovations in big data and artificial intelligence (AI). Key to the strategy is the "global data commons" – an ambitious, cloud‑based platform for gathering large quantities of data from IMF members. The aim is to bring all of the data together in one place in an readily comparable format, making use of common data standards and methodologies. Researchers, journalists and members of the public should no longer be required to trawl through an array of often-labyrinthine websites belonging to national statistics offices and instead be able to access all of the data through a single portal.

Early AI adopters are starting to shift industry profit pools. Companies need strong digital capabilities to compete. The diffusion of a new technology, whether ATMs in banking or radio-frequency identification tags in retailing, typically traces an S-curve. Early on, a few power users bet heavily on the innovation. Then, over time, as more companies rush to embrace the technology and capture the potential gains, the market opportunities for nonadopters dwindle.