The learning of domain-invariant representations in the context of domain adaptation with neural networks is considered. We propose a new regularization method that minimizes the discrepancy between domain-specific latent feature representations directly in the hidden activation space. Although some standard distribution matching approaches exist that can be interpreted as the matching of weighted sums of moments, e.g. Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD), an explicit order-wise matching of higher order moments has not been considered before. We propose to match the higher order central moments of probability distributions by means of order-wise moment differences. Our model does not require computationally expensive distance and kernel matrix computations. We utilize the equivalent representation of probability distributions by moment sequences to define a new distance function, called Central Moment Discrepancy (CMD). We prove that CMD is a metric on the set of probability distributions on a compact interval. We further prove that convergence of probability distributions on compact intervals w.r.t. the new metric implies convergence in distribution of the respective random variables. We test our approach on two different benchmark data sets for object recognition (Office) and sentiment analysis of product reviews (Amazon reviews). CMD achieves a new state-of-the-art performance on most domain adaptation tasks of Office and outperforms networks trained with MMD, Variational Fair Autoencoders and Domain Adversarial Neural Networks on Amazon reviews. In addition, a post-hoc parameter sensitivity analysis shows that the new approach is stable w.r.t. parameter changes in a certain interval. The source code of the experiments is publicly available.

Will defending Wimbledon men's champion Andy Murray be able to repeat? IBM will be tracking all of his action. Too busy to spend hours watching Wimbledon champ Andy Murray try to win back-to-back titles against the likes of past winners Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic? IBM thinks it can help within a matter of minutes. Using its ubiquitous Watson artificial intelligence platform, the tech giant's research and iX teams are now curating the biggest sights and sounds from matches to create "Cognitive Highlights," which will be seen on Wimbledon's digital channels.

Robots could take over the human job of milking a scorpion for its venom, potentially making the task a lot safer for everyone involved. The Society for Experimental Biology described the robot as clamping onto a scorpion's tail and using electrical stimulation to get it to release venom that can be safely collected. The robot is also portable and lightweight, and can be operated by a single person. According to SEB, which recently held its annual main meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, the technology can have different settings for different species of scorpion and can be programmed to remember them. "The extraction of scorpion venom is a very difficult task and usually takes at least two experimenters," robot designer Mouad Mkamel said in the society's statement.

A drone flying over a Florida beach Saturday caught on camera a struggle between a fisherman and a massive hammerhead shark. The man was standing in shallow water on Panama City Beach during the encounter. Curtis Williams, a drone operator, captured the shark fighting against the man. A friend identified the fisherman as Per Eghoj, who was with the group Modern Day Outdoors. The organization films their adventures in a nature show aimed at attracting a new generation of outdoorsmen.

On Monday, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first to re-fly a cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station and back, according to Space.com. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a Dragon spacecraft onboard, left Earth on June 3, carrying over 4,100 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station. It successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the California coast on Monday morning at 8:14 a.m. SpaceX planned to take the spacecraft back to Long Beach, California after it landed, remove important cargo and send it to Houston, Texas for NASA analysis, according to a NASA blog post. Afterward, Dragon would return to a SpaceX test facility in McGregor, Texas.

A'scorpion-milking' robot has been developed to extract venom from the arachnids faster and more safely for use in cancer research. Scorpion venom is normally milked by toxicologists manually, a dangerous procedure where one wrong move can prove deadly. The new machine allows researchers to strap scorpions into an extractor, reducing their contact time with the beasts and making venom extraction safer. A'scorpion-milking' robot (pictured) has been developed to extract venom from the arachnids faster and more safely for use in cancer research. Current scorpion-milking methods can be dangerous both for the animals, due to punctures made to the venom gland or damage to the abdomen, and to the researchers, due to electric shocks from the equipment.

A British hospital trust misused patient data when it shared information with Google for work on a smartphone app, a British data protection watchdog said on Monday. The Royal Free NHS Trust did not comply with the Data Protection Act when it passed on personal information of around 1.6 million patients to Google's DeepMind. DeepMind, which is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is the company's artificial intelligence and machine learning branch. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said it found'a number of shortcomings' in the way the data was handled, including that patients were not adequately informed their data would be used as part of the test. A British hospital trust misused patient data when it shared information with Google's DeepMind for work on a smartphone app, a British data protection watchdog has found.

Facebook is making it easier for you to find a Wi-Fi connection when you're out and about. The social network has announced an expansion to its Find Wi-Fi feature which, until now, has only been available in a select number of countries. It's now being rolled out worldwide, for both Android and iOS users. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

A man who earned hundreds of thousands selling'Kodi boxes' from his home in Wales has been sentenced in court. He sold them through his Maiz Box Limited business, and made £371,000 between June 2014 and March 2016. He was reported to police by BSkyB. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

An NHS Trust broke the law by sharing sensitive patient records with Google's DeepMind division, the UK's data watchdog has ruled. The long-awaited decision falls in line with the conclusion drawn by Dame Fiona Caldicott, the UK's National Data Guardian in May. The pair's agreement "failed to comply" with the Data Protection Act 1998, according to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), because patients weren't informed that their information was being used. The ICO also took issue with the size of the dataset -- 1.6 million partial patient records -- leveraged by DeepMind to test Streams, an app for detecting acute kidney injury. In April 2016, New Scientist revealed that DeepMind and Royal Free London NHS Trust were working together on a medical project. As the ICO notes in its letter to the Trust, their agreement was actually formalised in September 2015, with Royal Free serving as the data controller (owner) and DeepMind as the data processor (partner).