A free AI-based scholarly search engine that aims to outdo Google Scholar is expanding its corpus of papers to cover some 10 million research articles in computer science and neuroscience, its creators announced on 11 November. Since its launch last year, it has been joined by several other AI-based academic search engines, most notably a relaunched effort from computing giant Microsoft. Semantic Scholar, from the non-profit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) in Seattle, Washington, unveiled its new format at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego. Some scientists who were given an early view of the site are impressed. "This is a game changer," says Andrew Huberman, a neurobiologist at Stanford University, California.

Roughly 20 km away from Hong Kong's slick, densely packed urban center lies the New Territories -- a suburban mishmash of rugged hills and scruffy villages, soaring new housing developments and vacant lots. This is where over half of the territory's 7.2 million people live. It could also be the resting place for your old PC or printer. Up to 20% of all U.S. electronic waste may be ending up in Hong Kong. Not in some scrapyard in the developing world, picked over by haggard children and wheezing laborers, but in the backyard of one of the world's most sophisticated financial capitals.

Earlier this year, when Amy Adams was in Montreal working on the sci-fi movie, Arrival, out today, she hung out with linguist Jessica Coon. In the film, Adams plays a linguist tasked by the United States government with deciphering a visiting aliens' language. The film's producers tapped Coon, an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University, as a scientific advisor because she specializes in studying languages spoken by relatively few people, notably Mayan tongues in Central America. Coon says chatting about her work--analyzing the structure of rare languages, working in the field--with Adams is probably the "most glamorous thing" she will ever do in her academic life. For Coon there's a sense of urgency in her work, since many obscure languages are fast going extinct. She thinks that if linguists don't analyze the rarer languages of the world's 6,000 while they still can, they won't be able to understand the nature of human language; what linguists do understand, she says, is derived from the accessible languages of Western Europe.

Push it, pull it, break it, maybe even give it a lick. Children experiment this way to learn about the physical world from an early age. Now, artificial intelligence trained by researchers at Google's DeepMind and the University of California, Berkeley, is taking its own baby steps in this area. "Many aspects of the world, like'Can I sit on this?' or'Is it squishy?' are best understood through experimentation," says DeepMind's Misha Denil. In a paper currently under review, Denil and his colleagues have trained an AI to learn about the physical properties of objects by interacting with them in two different virtual environments.

A paralysed woman has learned to use a brain implant to communicate by thought alone. It is the first time a brain–computer interface has been used at home in a person's day-to-day life, without the need for doctors and engineers to recalibrate the device. "It's special to be the first," says HB, who is 58 years old and wishes to remain anonymous. She was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2008. The disease ravages nerve cells, leaving people unable to control their bodies.

Move over James Bond: World's first commercially available jetpack is now on sale to'well qualified buyers' JetPack Aviation's JB-10 is now selling to an exclusive group of customers The Bond-style gadget is the world's first commercially available jetpack Last month the company behind it set up a crowdfunding campaign So far it has raised just over a tenth of its £300,000 ($379,000) target JetPack Aviation's JB-10 is now selling to an exclusive group of customers The Bond-style gadget is the world's first commercially available jetpack It is the ultimate boy's toy and will allow people to relive their James Bond fantasies in real life. The world's first commercially available jetpack is now on sale, to'well qualified buyers' The 760mph train that'll take you from London to Manchester... Could a folding phone save Samsung? Firm patents radical... Artificial intelligence will'inevitably' destroy millions... Do YOU count on your fingers? Experts say it could actually... The 760mph train that'll take you from London to Manchester... Could a folding phone save Samsung?

Just two weeks after the launch of the Galaxy Note 7 phone, Samsung was forced to recall 2.5 million devices worldwide, after reports that many were overheating, or even exploding Do YOU count on your fingers? Experts say it could actually... The 760mph train that'll take you from London to Manchester... Could a folding phone save Samsung? Firm patents radical... Artificial intelligence will'inevitably' destroy millions... Do YOU count on your fingers? Experts say it could actually...

The AI that learns by PLAYING: Google DeepMind is making machines'feel' their way around virtual objects Researchers created virtual environment for training artificial intelligence AI learned through a series of experiments where it'played' with objects By manipulating virtual building blocks in a simulation it could work out hidden properties, learning like a child AI learned through a series of experiments where it'played' with objects Google's DeepMind is teaching machines to learn through play, by exploring objects through simulations to work out their properties The ultimate guide to the biggest supermoon in living... Hundreds more species than we thought may be endangered... Alien hunters say they have... Move over James Bond: World's first commercially available... The ultimate guide to the biggest supermoon in living... Hundreds more species than we thought may be endangered... Alien hunters say they have... Move over James Bond: World's first commercially available... If a child were presented with two blocks painted black, one made of wood and one made of lead, they could work out their basic properties through playing with them. So why can't machines learn the same way? Earlier this week, researchers in Italy launched a new project to develop robots which learn by themselves, using a form of open open-ended machine learning.

Could TRITIUM hold the key to unlimited energy? Researchers have revealed they are introducing tritium to the Z Machine's fuel, the most neutron-laden isotope of hydrogen. Top secret X-37B military spaceplane could be turned into a... Meet Bear-yoncé! Dancing bear twerks it out in hilarious... Russia unveils killer robots that can seek and shoot humans... How slimeballs slither: Watch the bizarre'slimelapse' that... Top secret X-37B military spaceplane could be turned into a... Meet Bear-yoncé! Dancing bear twerks it out in hilarious... Russia unveils killer robots that can seek and shoot humans... How slimeballs slither: Watch the bizarre'slimelapse' that... With the addition of tritium, the Z Machine's already neutron high upper limit will be pushed much farther, emitting 80 times the amount of neutrons. The Z Machine has long been used to provide crucial information for computer simulations that test the readiness of America's nuclear stockpile, and to recreate the conditions at stars and the cores of planets.

The very first thing you'll want to do with your new Amazon Echo is learn a few basic voice commands. Saying "Alexa: stop!" will immediately cancel whatever activity is going on; to make music louder or quieter, say "Alexa: volume up" or "Alexa: volume down". You can jump to a specific volume level by saying a number from one to 10: "Alexa: volume one" will turn the audio down to a whisper, while "Alexa: mute" will silence the Echo altogether. Once you've got the hang of these, you can start experimenting with more adventurous commands, safe in the knowledge that you can always cancel or silence any unwanted activity. Perhaps you don't like the name Alexa – or perhaps you have a family member of that name and don't want to cause confusion.