Researchers from the University of Cambridge have created an artificial intelligence system that uses five different facial expressions to diagnose if a sheep is in pain. It can also estimate the severity of the pain. The research, which is being presented at a conference in Washington D.C. on Thursday, could improve sheep well-being -- and help in the early diagnosis and treatment of painful conditions in other animals like horses and rats. The new system, which uses machine learning, can detect different parts of a sheep's face and compares them with the standardized measurement tool developed by veterinarians for diagnosing pain. The researchers trained their model using about 500 photographs of sheep.

There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit," then-Senator Barack Obama said in a 2006 commencement address at Northwestern University. "But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit." What we need, he said, was the ability to "see the world through those who are different from us." Since Obama's speech, the phrase "empathy deficit" has gained a foothold, appearing everywhere from academic journals to mainstream media outlets. Among the varied responses to the 2016 United States presidential election were calls for a greater general empathy. Many liberals tried to peer across party lines to understand the motivations of Donald Trump voters, for instance interviewing Republican constituents and reading books about rural poverty (think J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy or Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land). But these efforts didn't alleviate tension between parties, which might be because empathy-building efforts don't always work.

Race does not stand up scientifically, period. To begin with, if race categories were meant primarily to capture differences in genetics, they are doing an abysmal job. The genetic distance between some groups within Africa is as great as the genetic distance between many "racially divergent" groups in the rest of the world. The genetic distance between East Asians and Europeans is shorter than the divergence between Hazda in north-central Tanzania to the Fulani shepherds of West Africa (who live in present-day Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Guinea). Armed with this knowledge, many investigators in the biological sciences have replaced the term "race" with the term "continental ancestry." This in part reflects a rejection of "race" as a biological classification. Every so-called race has the same protein-coding genes, and there is no clear genetic dividing line that subdivides the human species.

Amazon could drop off your package using a drone and parachute, a patent found by GeekWire shows. The patent, titled "Aerial Package Delivery System," was filed on Aug. 26, 2015, and was granted this week. The documents show Amazon is trying to safely deliver your purchased items using a drone without damaging them. "The system can comprise a label that includes a parachute to enable the packages to be dropped from the aerial vehicle, yet land at the package's destination without damage," the patent says. Here's a photo of the drone and parachute delivery included in the documents: Amazon patent shows delivery system using a drone and parachute.

Skype has come under fire for'copying' Snapchat as it launched its radically revamped messaging service today. Microsoft announced a range of new features for Skype, including a'Highlights' feature which lets users post temporary photos and videos The new feature has drawn comparisons to Snapchat's Stories feature, which has previously inspired updates to Facebook and Instagram. Skype has been given a radical makeover with a host of features borrowed from Snapchat, including an add-on called'Highlights' that lets users share temporary pictures and videos Highlights is a key feature included in the revamp of Skype, which has not had a radical facelift like this since it introduced video calls in 2006. It is also the most extensive update since Microsoft purchased Skype for $8.5 billion (£6.6 billion) in 2011. Skype does not disclose exact user figures but claims to have hundreds of millions of monthly users, of which 50 per cent access the service on mobile.

PyData Amsterdam 2017 Deep learning has been widely influential in academic research and also recently finding its way into the industry. This talk explains how we utilize deep learning techniques at the Booking.com Use cases go beyond image analysis towards solving a variety of regression and classification problems. Deep learning has been widely influential in academic research and also recently finding its way into the industry. This talk explains how we utilize deep learning techniques at the Booking.com

Experts believe artificial intelligence will be better than humans at all tasks within 45 years, according to a new report. However, some think that could happen much sooner. Researchers from the University of Oxford and Yale University have revealed the results of a study surveying "a larger and more representative sample of AI experts than any study to date", and they will concern people working in a wide range of industries. 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.

Author Cory Doctorow tells us about a great book he has read this year and why he thinks dystopias are more popular in fiction than utopias. Author Cory Doctorow tells us about a great book he has read this year and why he thinks dystopias are more popular in fiction than utopias. What's it like after our system collapses? After the climate spins out of control, the middle class diminishes to an infinitesimal speck, the very rich grab all the wealth and resources, traditional employment disappears, factories sit empty and hundreds of thousands opt out of society altogether? To Cory Doctorow, it's not that far from where we are now, and not so bad after all.

If you take a common brown rat and drop it into a lab maze or a subway tunnel, it will immediately begin to explore its surroundings, sniffing around the edges, brushing its whiskers against surfaces, peering around corners and obstacles. After a while, it will return to where it started, and from then on, it will treat the explored terrain as familiar. Roboticists have long dreamed of giving their creations similar navigation skills. To be useful in our environments, robots must be able to find their way around on their own. Some are already learning to do that in homes, offices, warehouses, hospitals, hotels, and, in the case of self-driving cars, entire cities. Despite the progress, though, these robotic platforms still struggle to operate reliably under even mildly challenging conditions. Self-driving vehicles, for example, may come equipped with sophisticated sensors and detailed maps of the road ahead, and yet human drivers still have to take control in heavy rain or snow, or at night.

At tech festival Brain Bar in Budapest, Péter Árvai, CEO and co-founder of Prezi, gave a talk titled "Embrace automation?" where he argued that being replaced by machines doesn't have to be a bad thing -- if we choose the right sci-fi movie future. Arvai argues that we need to rethink our definition of work first and move society towards finding ways to make automation of jobs work in our favor. To illustrate how we've done this in the past, Árvai talked about when his grandmother got her first washing machine. Instead of having to hand wash soiled baby clothing for hours on end (babies poop a lot), she could simply put it in her washer and could instead use her time to do paid work. This could continue in the future, but we'll need to create new purposes for humans in a technologically driven future.