Artificially-intelligent medical devices capable of continuously monitoring critically-ill patients and administering treatments when needed, are being investigated in a UK-wide research project. The research network, involving the Universities of Nottingham, Oxford and Warwick, will identify technologies that can provide more personalised and responsive care for cancer and intensive care patients, and those with chronic wounds. The three-year, EPSRC-funded project, which is being led by Prof Stephen Morgan at Nottingham University, will investigate technologies to monitor patients and administer medicines or adjust treatments as necessary, using information from built-in sensors. A particular focus of the research will be on devices that use the type of closed loop control system of feedback and intelligence found in power electronics used to control motors, said Morgan. "These continuously measure and feed their output back into the system, so they can constantly adjust," he said.

Twitter just paid 150m for 14-person Magic Pony, a UK-based AI visual search company barely anyone had heard of before the deal. At 10m per employee it marks a high water mark in AI for what is essentially a team acquisition. Magister has tracked 26 AI driven deals since 2014 in the US, Europe and Israel, 11 of which involved companies with less than 50 employees which were acquired largely, or entirely, for the team and capability. Across all 11 deals, the median price paid per employee has reached 2.4m, meaning a high quality AI company with 40 employees would be valued at near 100m. Even if it had little or no revenue.

Or at least a coin-sized cyborg stingray made from rat heart cells that can be controlled underwater using light. Designed by Kevin Kit Parker from Harvard University's Wyss Institute and his team, the 16-millimetre-long soft robot has a gold skeleton overlaid with a flexible polymer. Its muscles are made up of about 200,000 rat heart cells laid down in layers. "My building material is alive," says Parker. To get the tiny robot to move, the team tweaked the rat-cell genes to make them light-sensitive.

A new legal technology company called Deftr is today launching a tool powered by artificial intelligence that helps professionals diagram intricate corporate structures. The tool reads text in real time, as it is being typed, then turns that text into a shareable, interactive graphic illustrating a corporate structure or transaction. In a press release being issued today, Deftr's co-founder and CEO Matthew Osman explained: Building charts to represent corporate structures or transactions essentially by hand is a laborious process all too familiar to anyone in corporate life. It's the reason a lot of associates don't have weekends. Our tool automates this outdated, manual process, allowing a user to build a chart in a fraction of the time and focus their efforts on high-level, analytical work. The tool should be of value to law firms, in-house legal departments, accounting firms, financial services and management consultants, Deftr says.

The world's first beer brewed with the help of artificial intelligence is now on sale. Four beers have been created, with each recipe altered based on customer feedback received by an algorithm. The system is hidden behind a Facebook Messenger bot, which takes feedback from customers and sends it onto human brewers who change recipes accordingly. IntelligentX, the company behind the beers, said the use of AI would help brewers receive and test customer feedback "more quickly than ever before". Codes printed on the bottles direct people towards the bot, which then asks a series of questions.

The devastating neurodegenerative condition Alzheimer's disease is incurable, but with early detection, patients can seek treatments to slow the disease's progression, before some major symptoms appear. Now, by applying artificial intelligence algorithms to MRI brain scans, researchers have developed a way to automatically distinguish between patients with Alzheimer's and two early forms of dementia that can be precursors to the memory-robbing disease. The researchers, from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, suggest the approach could eventually allow automated screening and assisted diagnosis of various forms of dementia, particularly in centers that lack experienced neuroradiologists. Additionally, the results, published online July 6 in the journal Radiology, show that the new system was able to classify the form of dementia that patients were suffering from, using previously unseen scans, with up to 90 percent accuracy. "The potential is the possibility of screening with these techniques so people at risk can be intercepted before the disease becomes apparent," said Alle Meije Wink, a senior investigator in the center's radiology and nuclear medicine department. "I think very few patients at the moment will trust an outcome predicted by a machine," Wink told Live Science.

Google's Now on Tap service is about to get even more useful with a new update that brings almost instant translation to mobile users. Google Now on Tap was one of the biggest features on Android Marshmallow when it was launched last year. By holding down their phone's home button, users can quickly access more information on what they're looking at without having to leave the app they're in. Since its initial launch, Google has been adding more functions to Google Now on Tap and the latest update brings three new features that make it even more useful as a service. Google celebrates William Morris' 182 birthday with a doodle showcasing his most famous designs Google celebrates Valentine's Day with a romantic Doodle Google celebrate Dmitri Mendeleev's 182nd birthday Google Doodle celebrates 90 years since the first demonstration of television or "the televisor" to the public Google marks St Andrew's Day 2015 with doodle featuring Scotland's flag and Loch Ness monster Google marks the 41st anniversary of the discovery of'Lucy', the name given to a collection of fossilised bones that once made up the skeleton of a hominid from the Australopithecus afarensis species, who lived in Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago The Google Doodle on 2nd November to mark George Boole's contribution to science Google celebrates Halloween 2015 using an interactive doodle game "Global Candy Cup" The most significant new feature is one that allows you to quickly and easily translate any on-screen text.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is really big right now. Big news and big possibilities, but some big questions too, not least about how to get the best out of it. Could it really eliminate whole categories of jobs, as research by Oxford University suggests?[1] Or could it help make all of us smarter, more efficient, and more fulfilled in our work by doing the essential but repetitive tasks, and mundane activities that human beings do not excel at? Transformation is an overused word in the business world, but this is one case where it's justified.