Google has made one its largest European acquisitions to date with a deal to buy DeepMind technologies, a London-based artificial intelligence firm which specialises in machine learning, advanced algorithms and systems neuroscience. The Guardian understands that Google paid 400m ( 650m) for DeepMind, which develops technologies for e-commerce and games, and has demonstrated computer systems capable of playing computer games. It aims, it says, to develop computers that think like humans. The two-year-old artificial intelligence startup was founded by former child chess prodigy and neuroscientist Demis Hassabis alongside Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. DeepMind has reportedly competed with Google and other major artificial intelligence companies for talent and Google's chief executive Larry Page is said to have led the deal himself.

The virtual brain will be an exceptional tool giving neuroscientists a new understanding of the brain and a better understanding of neurological diseases. The Blue Brain project began in 2005 with an agreement between the EPFL and IBM.The Blue Brain Project goal is to create a synthetic brain by reverse engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level. The project, founded in May 2005 in Switzerland, is to study the brain's architectural and functional principles. There are a number of sub-projects, including the Cajal Blue Brain, and others run by universities and independent laboratories. HNeT Application Development System which was released in 1990 contained a number of example applications, based on the complex valued phase coherence/decoherence process including complex valued Hopfield network or complex associative memory.

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

This is the core of the event. This is where you will meet a lot of cool people. There will probably be beer and pizza.

ISIS has created training videos to teach millions of aspiring muslims who dream of becoming'heroic' mujahideens how they can turn cats into self-driving bomb machines and create missiles from shells to shoot down passenger planes – and all from basic materials that can be acquired and purchased anywhere. Put this into perspective: the EU has deliberately sent navy ships to import 1.3 million muslims from the coast of Libya and Turkey of which a massive majority support and endorse jihad according to polls, to now walk the streets all across Europe. In addition, the EU has rewarded Turkey for their willing participation in infiltrating jihad into Syria and Europe by promising to offer them 3bn euros and quicker EU-entry rather than penalizing Turkey. Obama has opened the door to over 100,000 of the same jihad aspiring muslims per year to walk American streets, hating Americans, aspiring for their death and destruction. Meanwhile both the Obama administration ( 46.6 billion for fiscal 2015) and the EU memberstates (over 3.3bn euros in 2010) have been selling military equipment and weapons to muslim countries which are then quickly funneled by these governments to their jihad'heroes' around the world fighting for Allah.

Today, Facebook has apologised for a Safety Check error that led to people around the world being texted in the wake of the Sunday's bombing in Lahore, Japan's Hitomi X-ray satellite has lost communication with Earth, Microsoft has issued a formal explanation for the actions of its short-lived machine learning chatbot, Tay, and more. Get WIRED Awake sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning by 8am. Click here to sign up to the WIRED Awake newsletter. In the wake of a suicide bombing that left at least 69 people dead in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday, Facebook has apologised for an error in its Safety Check disaster response system that saw people around the world being asked to check in as safe (The Guardian). Users in areas as geographically diverse as Australia, Egypt and Belgium received text messages asking if they'd been affected by the explosion, without any information on where the incident had occurred.

Logistic regression is another technique borrowed by machine learning from the field of statistics. It is the go-to method for binary classification problems (problems with two class values). In this post you will discover the logistic regression algorithm for machine learning. This post was written for developers interested in applied machine learning, specifically predictive modeling. You do not need to have a background in linear algebra or statistics.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: How Google Plans to Solve Artificial Intelligence Tom Simonite MIT Technology Review "It's supposed to be just an early checkpoint in an effort Hassabis describes as the Apollo program of artificial intelligence, aimed at "solving intelligence, and then using that to solve everything else"...Hassabis wants to create what he calls general artificial intelligence--something that, like a human, can learn to take on just about any task." ROBOTICS: What Is a Robot? Adrienne LaFrance The Atlantic "What is a robot, anyway? This has become an increasingly difficult question to answer. Yet it's a crucial one...Whether we will end up losing a piece of our humanity because they are here is unknowable today. But such a loss may prove worthwhile in the evolution of our species. In the end, robots may expand what it means to be human. After all, they are machines, but humans are the ones who built them."

Neuroscientists have constructed a network map of connections between cortical neurons, traced from a 100 terabytes 3D data set. The data were created by an electron microscope in nanoscopic detail, allowing every one of the "wires" to be seen, along with their connections. Some of the neurons are color-coded according to their activity patterns in the living brain. The largest network of the connections between neurons in the cortex to date has been published by an international team of researchers from the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Harvard Medical School, and Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders (NERF). In the process of their study*, the researchers developed new tools that will be useful for "reverse engineering the brain by discovering relationships between circuit wiring and neuronal and network computations," says Wei-Chung Lee, Ph.D., Instructor in Neurobiology at Harvard Medicine School and lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Nature.

A pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Adam Cheyer has spent most of his life living by what he calls "Verbally Stated Goals" -- that is, continuously striving to do and achieve more each year. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a magician and, in many ways, he did just that: in 2008, as inventor, computer scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur, he co-created the world's first intelligent personal assistant, Siri, with Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber. Siri, Inc. was a technology company borne out of SRI International, a nonprofit research unit, to create a highly clever and personable virtual assistant for smartphone consumers. By 2010, the company had been acquired by Apple Inc., and the Siri app was incorporated into Apple's iPhone 4S handsets. Cheyer became Director of Engineering for the iPhone/iOS team at Apple, where he remained for two years before leaving to spend more time with his family and to pursue personal endeavours. Cheyer is also a founding member of Change.org, a social network for positive social change, and is co-founder of Genetic Finance, which applies advanced artificial intelligence to solve problems within a wide range of industries, including financial trading, insurance, computer networking, and electronics design. Newnham: Take me back to your childhood. What first excited you about technology? Adam Cheyer: As a child, I was allowed to watch an hour of TV a week, and in that time, I got my fill of commercials selling me on the latest toys.