Google's DeepMind division has announced a partnership with the NHS's Moorfields Eye Hospital to apply machine learning to spot common eye diseases earlier. The five-year research project will draw on one million anonymous eye scans which are held on Moorfields' patient database, with the aim to speed up the complex and time-consuming process of analysing eye scans. The hope is that this will allow diagnoses of common causes of sight loss, like diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, to be spotted more rapidly and hence be treated more effectively. For example, Google says that up to 98 percent of sight loss resulting from diabetes can be prevented by early detection and treatment. Mobile app called "Streams" provides medical staff with latest clinical information.

For a team of Norwegian researchers, a tiny labyrinth modeled on the 1980s arcade game "Pac-Man" provides the ideal environment to study a real-life cat and mouse game involving microorganisms. In a video produced by the researchers at the University College of Southeast Norway, single-celled euglena and ciliates take on the role of Pac-Man as they are chased through a liquid-filled, 3D maze by multi-celled rotifers, much like the original game's hungry ghosts. The researchers say recreating a tiny version of the game – less than a millimeter in diameter – offers both scientific benefits and the additional bonus of being able to better communicate their research to the public. Created with the help of filmmaker Adam Bartley, it's also "tremendous fun," they note in a blog post (translation via Google Translate). The maze's neon blue top-light and lens flare effects make for an attractive visual package, but scientists who create these kinds of publicity-friendly contrivances run the risk of alienating their funders, particularly in the United States, where scientists frequently face skepticism from Congress when it comes to explaining the utility of their research.

It may look strange, but this robotic rectum could help doctors and nurses detect prostate cancer. The device, made up of a prosthetic buttocks and rectum with in-built robotic technology, is designed to recreate the feel of a rectum, to help medics learn how to perform a prostate examination. It will also provide doctors and nurses feedback on their examination technique. It may look slightly strange, but this robotic rectum could help doctors and nurses detect prostate cancer. The device, made up of a prosthetic buttocks and rectum with in-built robotic technology, is designed to recreate the feel of a rectum.

Natural Language Processing seems to have become somewhat of a commodity in recent years. More than a few companies have sprung up that offer basic NLP capabilities through a cloud API. If you'd like to know whether a text carries a positive or negative message, or what people or companies it mentions, you can just send it to one of these black boxes, and receive the answer in less than a second. Superficially, all these NLP APIs look more or less the same. Textrazor, AlchemyAPI, Aylien, MeaningCloud and Lexalytics all offer similar services (named entity recognition, sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, topic identification, etc.), and do so through similar interfaces.

Our planet is turning into an electronically controlled ball of energy. There is a lot of hype over Internet of Things (IoT) in today's technology oriented world. Let's just step back in time, say about a decade ago, when Internet of Things was as anonymous as the iPhone. And now all of a sudden it is all over the place and news. It was done in 1999 by Kevin Ashton. As per him it is an Internet system which connects to the world via sensors and storage of data.

NVIDIA invented the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999. To some, it seems counterintuitive that a chip originally designed to play 3D games has become the engine of today's AI revolution. But in fact the problem of computer graphics has features in common with many other applications, from computational fluid dynamics and medical imaging to computer vision and natural language processing. At a high level, the unifying factor is that these problems can be parallelised. Our chip might be called a'graphics' processor, but in fact it's an incredibly versatile parallel processing engine which is playing a pivotal role in democratising AI.

Robots are starting to become more present in our daily lives, and some experts believe the future will be filled with helpful AI. Now a new robot is aiming to tackle on of the most important parts of our lives - our health. 'Pillo' is the personal pharmacy that combines face recognition, video conferencing, machine learning and automation to create a personal health assistant that can dispense vitamins and medication. 'Pillo' (pictured) is the personal pharmacy that combines face recognition, video conferencing, machine learning and automation to create a personal health assistant that can dispense vitamins and medication Built by Pillo Health, the robot will recognise each user's face and voice, dispense the proper pills at the appropriate time, and automatically reorder medicine before it runs out. The company claims the robot can have a conversation with its owners, and will learn as he goes along.

The skies above are growing increasingly crowded with satellites zipping across Earth's upper atmosphere, relaying signals for everything from the picture on your television to the map on your phone. While this constant communication makes the world go round, all of that orbiting technology brings with it a problem, in the form of space junk – the debris from rocket launches and defunct satellites which hangs on in space. Lapping the Earth at thousands of miles per hour means even smallest chunks of metal or flecks of paint can cause significant damage if they run into the path of a satellite. But scientists at the University of Surrey are gearing up to test technologies which could target potentially hazardous space junk and remove it from orbit before it can cause any damage. The first experiment will use a net to capture a target in the form of a small CubeSat launched from the main satellite.

There is increased chatter around the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive technologies to automate many tasks that once only humans could do. Research by the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford estimates that 47 percent of total US employment is at high risk as a result of automation of cognitive tasks.1

Ed Rex believes we're heading towards a world where artificial intelligence will master creativity. Professor Lynda Gratton explains how people should prepare for it. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein but also to philosopher C.E.M. Joad, among others: a well-hidden source indeed. But the idea behind the phrase raises questions: if creativity is copied, is it original?