It stole the show in the most recent Star Wars film and left audiences wondering how it worked. Now the engineers behind the iconic BB8 robot from The Force Awakens have revealed for the first time how they were able to create a working version of the spherical droid. Josh Lee, BB8 design engineer and Matt Denton, electronics software engineer on movie have given the public the first glimpse at the inner workings of the tiny robot. The inner mechanics of Star Wars BB8 have been revealed for the first time, revealing a pendulum structure at sits inside the ball that forms the droid's body. The engineers behind BB8 said when they were first presented with the challenge of creating a spherical robot by the Force Awakens director JJ Abrahms, they found several ways of creating the robot.

On 21 June, the Law Society hosted a conference on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in law. Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology have made significant progress in recent years. Arguably, legal and ethical thinking about the societal implications could now be lagging behind this technical progress. We explored how machine learning is currently being used, how it may be used in the future and what the legal implications could be. The discussion will also examine the potential liability and regulatory considerations in relation to machine learning, and the role of the law and lawyers in this rapidly evolving area.

San Francisco: Google announced a deal to buy Moodstocks, a French startup behind technology that helps smartphones recognise whatever they are aimed at. Moodstocks caught the US technology giant's eye for its work in computer vision and machine learning, as well for accomplishments in enabling smartphones or other mobile devices to recognise images and objects. Google is among Silicon Valley titans investing in ways to get computers to see and understand the world around them the way people do. Machine learning has been woven into an array of Google offerings, such as its free language translation and photo services. "There's a lot more to be done to improve machine vision," Google France tech site lead Vincent Simonet said in a blog post.

The discovery of major software flaws could render thousands of fMRI brain studies inaccurate. The use of fMRI is a common method for scanning the brain in neuroscience and psychology experiments. To make sense of the data produced, researchers sometimes use a technique called spatial autocorrelation to identify areas of the brain that appear to "light up" during particular tasks or experiences. But some software flaws in the popular fMRI data analysis packages SPM, FSL and AFNI meant this technique routinely produced false positives, resulting in errors 50 per cent of the time or more. Anders Eklund and Hans Knutsson at Linköping University in Sweden and Thomas Nichols at the University of Warwick, UK, calculated this by analysing brain data from a collaborative open fMRI project called 1000 Functional Connectomes.

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp. is buying British ARM Holdings for 31 billion in a deal the British government hailed Monday as a vote of confidence in the country following last month's vote to leave the European Union. The recommended cash deal underlines SoftBank's desire to expand in the so-called Internet of Things, which refers to how a multitude of home devices from smart-thermostats to security cameras and domestic appliances can connect online and work in sync. ARM, which is the biggest-listed technology company in Britain, has a world-renowned reputation as an innovator in the Internet of Things -- its technology is used in most smartphones, for example. "ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the Internet of Things," said Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank. ARM centers its business on intellectual property, especially in mobile computing, rather than chip manufacturing, for which it relies on partners.

Self-driving cars in Germany might end up having "black boxes" that can record details of accidents, similar to planes, Reuters reports. Sources say that the proposal from Germany's Transport Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, will also require that riders stay seated in front of the steering wheel, though they won't have to pay attention to traffic or actually steer. As you've probably guessed right now, the legislation follows the recent Tesla Autopilot-related driver death. Regulators and car companies alike will have to work even harder to prove the safety of self-driving cars.

For many who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, the sound of a parent yelling from upstairs to stop playing video games and go outside and enjoy the beautiful summer day was probably a fairly common occurrence. It was often times met with a "One more level!" Others tried a bolder strategy of not moving or making a sound when the call inevitably came downstairs, hoping their parent had movement based T-rex vision and would soon realize their mistake and move on. It usually didn't work (meaning it never worked) and soon enough it was time to shut off the game console and head out into the real world. But today, thanks to the ubiquity of smart phones and some fancy augmented reality technology, not only are playing video games and spending time outside no longer mutually exclusive, one actually encourages the other.

Brain function is made possible by an interconnected structure of neurons, glia and microvessels relying on exchange of information with one another as well as with the extracellular compartment. This communication engenders the phenomenon of the mind, frequently referred to as the mental trilogy: cognition (thinking), emotion (assigning value to stimuli), and motivation (setting and achieving goals) (1). In order to accomplish these tasks the brain utilizes over 100 billion cells and 600 km of microvessels (2) embedded in an extracellular matrix (ECM) of proteins, polysaccharides and interstitial fluid (ISF) (3). As we are getting well into the 21st century, it has become clearer that the mind is the product of the brain, just as the body movement is the product of the musculoskeletal system. With the same token, it is clearer and clearer that psychiatric disorders are disruptions of cellular or molecular communication in brain networks.

Now, the video game has a scientific connection. Microsoft has made Project Malmo available for programmers on GitHub via an open-source license. This platform uses the world of Minecraft to test advancements in artificial intelligence research. Before this move, the system was only used in private viewing by computer scientists. "We're trying to put out the tools that will allow people to make progress on those really, really hard research questions," Katja Hofmann said, the leader of Project Malmo and a researcher in Microsoft's research lab in Cambridge, UK.

The media interest surrounding deep learning has grown exponentially in the last few years. But what does it actually mean, and how will it change business and society? Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that refers to mapping artificial neural networks to recreate some of the same processes that the human brain performs, and using algorithms with speech, images and text, to recognise, identify and understand patterns in the data. Although this sounds simple, it involves complex processes and functions - but once trained, the application of deep learning algorithms could be world changing. For instance, a machine that learns like a human, but can rapidly process thousands of images and recognise patterns, is already showing promise for applying deep learning to medical imaging.