Two-thirds of the earth is underwater. We glide over the surface of the oceans, but we still have very little idea what is going on even a few metres down. We spend billions sending craft and people into space, but we do not really know what happens under the waves. One man who finds that more than curious is Graham Hawkes, a beneath-the-sea maverick who has been working on underwater craft for most of his life. It is a lonely, driven quest, relying rather dangerously on the engagement and backing of a few wealthy enthusiasts. Born in London, Mr Hawkes learnt his engineering expertise in the defence industry, working initially on torpedoes in Norfolk, England.

Many web search engines use the concept of a'spider' - automated software which goes out onto the web and trawls through the contents of each server it encounters, indexing documents as it finds them. This approach results in the kinds of databases maintained by services such as Alta Vista and Excite - huge indexes to a vast chunk of what's currently available on the web. However, the problems which users can face when using such databases are beginning to be well documented. A recent JISC-funded investigation [1] into the use of web search engines indicates that users can typically encounter a number of difficulties. These include the issue of finding information relevant to their needs, and the problem of information overload - when far too much information is returned from a search.

Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science. The term cognitive science, which gained currency in the last half of the 20th century, is used to refer to the study of cognition--cognitive structures and processes in the mind or brain, mostly in people rather than, say, rats or insects. Cognitive science in this sense has reflected a growing rejection of behaviorism in favor of the study of mind and "human information processing." The field includes the study of thinking, perception, emotion, creativity, language, consciousness and learning. Sometimes it has involved writing (or at least thinking about) computer programs that attempt to model mental processes or that provide tools such as spreadsheets, theorem provers, mathematical-equation solvers and engines for searching the Web.

The United States and 70 other nations are investing in voice recognition databases that will allow governments to identify criminals or suspects based on brief recordings. A leader in the development of "voice-prints" storage is Russia's Speech Technology Center, known as SpeechPro in the U.S. The company has developed the capability to tuck away millions of recorded voices that governments can later use to identify persons of interests. The system, called "VoiceGrid Nation," can match a recording to a database entry in only five seconds (based on a scan of 10,000 voices), with an accuracy of 90%. Dozens of countries have invested in the company's biometric technology, with the biggest markets in the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Asia. These include dictatorships, such as those of Belarus and Uzbekistan.

Steve Worswick, botmaster of Mitsuku, was awarded the bronze medal and $4000 cash prize for creating the world's "most human computer" in the Loebner Prize Contest 2013, an annual Turing Test. The contest this year was held at the Ulster University, Magee Campus, Londonderry/Derry, Northern Ireland. Steve Worswick is a native of Yorkshire, UK, and has worked on Mitsuku for 9 years. This year the Loebner Prize Contest attracted 15 entries from around the world. Pandorabots submitted 6 of those entries, based on the results of an internal Divabot contest to select the best, most unique AIML bots hosted by Pandorabots.

The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) is the largest Artificial Intelligence Society in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1964, the society has an international membership drawn from both academia and industry. It is a member of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (see ECCAI benefits). AISB is a thriving learned society which invites membership from people with a serious interest in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and related areas. There are six types of membership: student, ordinary, benefactor, patron, corporate and institutional. Members of the Society receive a quarterly newsletter AISBQ which includes short reports on current AI and Cognitive Science research.

At the request of one of the UK's most successful fraud detection system software providers, AIAI undertook an investigation into methods of applying new AI technologies to increase the accuracy of the already highly advanced systems presently in use. While the firm's software presently reduces the number of necessary fraud investigations by several orders of magnitude, our investigation showed that utilising adaptive algorithms and fuzzy logic results in significant diagnostic improvement on the most difficult sub-section of cases. The goal of the work was to reduce the number of applications referred for costly manual investigation after the existing detection systems had been utilised. The developed CBR system was able to prioritise the referred applications from the most to the least suspicious, aiding the decision process of the fraud investigator.

Donald Michie was born on 11 November 1923, and was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. He obtained the MA, DPhil, and DSc degrees from Oxford University for studies in biological sciences. For contributions to artificial intelligence he was elected a founding Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. He has received honorary degrees from the UK's National Council of Academic Awards, from Salford University, Aberdeen University, the University of York and the University of Stirling.

Subcontracted by British Aerospace, AIAI were involved in part of a larger project for EUMETSAT, the European agency responsible for meteorological satellites. Our role was helping in the specification and prototyping of the scheduling component. After an initial feasibility study it was decided to prototype the system using PECOS, an object-oriented constraint programming tool. This approach allowed rapid development while retaining the flexibility to make changes as the problem specification evolved. A typical problem that the EUMETSAT scheduler has to deal with consists of some 1300 activities over a 14 day period. Activities to be scheduled include regular fixed activities (e.g.

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