People will answer your questions more quickly if you move your hands or head as you talk, researchers have found. The transition between turns taken during a conversation is astonishingly fast, with a mere 200 milliseconds typically elapsing between the contribution of one speaker to the next. Scientists found that gestures that end early may give us an early visual cue that the speaker is about to end, thus helping us to respond faster. Researchers found there was a strong visual component to most questions being asked and answered during the conversations. These took the form of bodily signals such as communicative head or hand movements.

Amazon has announced plans for a new machine learning-focused research and development (R&D) hub in Barcelona and expects to hire more than 100 engineers and scientists when it opens in early 2018. Located in the urban renewal startup area known as 22@, the R&D center will be housed in the very same building as the company's recently announced Amazon Seller Support Hub, which is scheduled to open around the same time and which will help small online companies from Southern Europe sell on Amazon Marketplace. "We want to work closely with Spain's scientific community and universities to advance state of the art research in machine learning," noted Ralf Herbrich, Amazon's director of machine learning. Amazon has been on something of a hiring spree of late, having recently revealed plans to increase its headcount by 55 percent to 280,000 in the U.S. alone over 18 months. Just yesterday, the company announced that its first fulfillment center in New York state will be landing in Staten Island, while a few months ago Amazon posted 50,000 warehouse jobs in the U.S. Over in Europe, the company has been hiring across multiple disciplines, including machine learning.

Stockholm - Nasdaq has deployed machine learning technology across its entire Nasdaq Nordic markets-Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Iceland to bolster its market surveillance efforts. Nasdaq's SMARTS, in collaboration with the Nasdaq Nordic Market Surveillance team, has implemented machine learning within its surveillance technology to analyze abnormal market events and their subsequent categorization by surveillance analysts across the Nordic markets. The aim of these algorithms is to predict which actions analysts are likely to take based upon their handling of historical activity as well as discover new relationships within the data-thereby strengthening Nasdaq Nordic's surveillance mechanism to detect market abuse. The next stage will be to integrate machine learning technology into the SMARTS offering for exchange and regulator clients worldwide. The machine learning capabilities will initially be used to prioritize the surveillance workflow.

Researchers in Shropshire, England have managed to sow and harvest a field of barley using nothing but robots. Many aspects of farming have now been automated, but rarely is the entire process -- planting, tending, monitoring and harvesting -- completed without someone stepping foot inside the field. The'Hands-Free Hectare' project was set up last October by a team from Harper Adams University. With £200,000 in government funding, they modified a tractor and combine harvester with cameras, lasers and GPS systems. Drones and a robot "scout," which could scoop up and carry soil samples, helped the group monitor the field from afar. Kit Franklin, the project's leader and an agricultural engineer, freely admits that it was "the most expensive hectare of barley ever."

Work with other developers and data scientists to code proof-of-concept projects on large scale data sets. Develop data processing and system integration applications. Construct web based user interfaces and visualizations. Quickly ingest new technologies to consider applicability to current or future needs. Utilize statistics and predictive analytics to create innovative solutions to business problems.

Cyberspace is now a territory where politics, economics, and foreign affairs are all contested – and Internet bots driven by artificial intelligence have emerged as key new actors, Andrej Zwitter writes. Artificial intelligence (AI) is pervading all aspects of our lives. As one of the primary methods of analysing unstructured and messy data sets, it has become synonymous with big data. And with much of the globally produced data being transmitted via the Internet, a new cyber landscape has emerged, a parallel digital world that still requires the carving out of territories and rules. These territories are currently dominated by large corporate actors, such as search engines and social media networks, which themselves compete over access to the new raw material – data.

Automation seems to be the future, with top tech firms racing to dominate drone delivery by land, sea and air. The world's first unmanned ghost ships could take to the seas by the end of the decade, but they also pose unique problems that will need to be overcome. In an article for The Conversation, Christian Matthews, head of maritime technology at Liverpool John Moores University, explains the challenges ahead. Norway-based Yara has revealed its plans to develop the world's first all-electric and autonomous container ship that is predicted to remove 747 tons (678 tonnes) of carbon dioxide from the air by reducing diesel-powered truck haulage by 40,000 journeys a year Researchers have developed the world's first autonomous, zero-emissions cargo ship, The Yara Birkeland. Developed by agriculture company Yara International ASA and high-technology systems firm Kongsberg Gruppen, will be capable of autonomous mooring and route planning.

The widely-held hope is that blockchain technology could deliver a shared and transparent record of industry-wide contract and claims-related information. While smart contracts and claims automation are technically feasible using alternative technology, the addition of blockchain adds a level of transparency and trustworthiness. Crucially, blockchain can remove the need for a central authority to control operations, and places the customer in control of the relationship with the service supplier. For example, automated claims-handling processes based on blockchain technology, smart contracts and publicly available data can be developed. When a certain set of conditions is met, such as a flight being cancelled, the contract can be resolved automatically, without requiring additional assessment.

The first time Alex Acero saw Her, he watched it like a normal person. The second time, he didn't watch the movie at all. Acero, the Apple executive in charge of the tech behind Siri, sat there with his eyes closed, listening to how Scarlett Johansson voiced her artificially intelligent character Samantha. He paid attention to how she talked to Theodore Twombly, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and how Twombly talked back. Acero was trying to discern what about Samantha could make someone fall in love without ever seeing her.

If you are among the millions of Americans concerned about cybersecurity at the Democratic National Committee--and how could you not be?--then the home of the party's tech braintrust might not give you much hope. The tiny, charmless office, with "DNC Tech" scribbled in dry-erase marker on the door, contains one desk and two computer monitors. Nearby, an overturned couch pokes out from an elevator shaft, a leftover from the widespread departures that followed Hillary Clinton's defeat. And that, of course, came after intruders, believed to be tied to Russia, hacked into the DNC's computers. If the office itself seems lacking, the resume of its newish occupant is anything but.