The Second National Data Science Bowl, a data science competition where the goal was to automatically determine cardiac volumes from MRI scans, has just ended. We participated with a team of 4 members from the Data Science lab at Ghent University in Belgium and finished 2nd! The team kunsthart (artificial heart in English) consisted of Ira Korshunova, Jeroen Burms, Jonas Degrave (@317070), 3 PhD students, and professor Joni Dambre. It's also a follow-up of last year's team Deep Sea, which finished in first place for the First National Data Science Bowl. This blog post is going to be long, here is a clickable overview of different sections. The goal of this year's Data Science Bowl was to estimate minimum (end-systolic) and maximum (end-diastolic) volumes of the left ventricle from a set of MRI-images taken over one heartbeat. These volumes are used by practitioners to compute an ejection fraction: fraction of outbound blood pumped from the heart with each heartbeat.

It's no longer the preserve of artificial-intelligence researchers and born-digital companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix. Machine learning is based on algorithms that can learn from data without relying on rules-based programming. It came into its own as a scientific discipline in the late 1990s as steady advances in digitization and cheap computing power enabled data scientists to stop building finished models and instead train computers to do so. The unmanageable volume and complexity of the big data that the world is now swimming in have increased the potential of machine learning--and the need for it. In 2007 Fei-Fei Li, the head of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Lab, gave up trying to program computers to recognize objects and began labeling the millions of raw images that a child might encounter by age three and feeding them to computers. By being shown thousands and thousands of labeled data sets with instances of, say, a cat, the machine could shape its own rules for deciding whether a particular set of digital pixels was, in fact, a cat.1 1.Fei-Fei Li, "How we're teaching computers to understand pictures," TED, March 2015, ted.com.

In The Social Express, a cast of animated characters help kids with autism learn helpful social skills. Both Katie and her teacher look like they'd be right at home in a Pixar film, and at first their conversation seems like it would fit in one too. The ponytailed and pink-clad Katie really wants to sharpen her pencil, but her teacher won't let her until the other kids in the class finish taking a test. Katie asks again, but the teacher offers the same, frustrating answer. "Katie seems upset that her teacher said'no.'

Britain Prime Minister David Cameron warned Western leaders Friday the Islamic State plans to use drones to spray nuclear material over Western cities. The UK Daily Telegraph reported that there is growing concerns among world leaders that extremists are looking to buy commercial drones to launch a dirty bomb attack over major metropolitan cities, which could kill thousands. Cameron warned the dangers of ISIS getting hold of nuclear material were "only too real." He met with leaders from the U.S., France and China to plan out a reaction response to such an attack, the newspaper reported. US officials reportedly fear that extremists could steal radioactive material from a medical facility and sold through the "dark web." Cameron said he would deploy counterterrorism police and the UK Border Force while British leaders hold a Cobra meeting.

When Moocs burst onto the scene five years ago, many predicted business schools' demise. Wharton professors Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich wrote Moocs are a "Trojan Horse" with the potential to "destroy" the full-time MBA. But rather than killing the campus, they have become an example of the whizzy digital innovations being embraced by even the oldest Ivy League institutions. "You can expect us to take engaged learning to another level where we implement technology. We're already moving in that direction," says Alison Davis-Blake, dean of the University Of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "Online education is one part of it," says Soumitra Dutta, dean of Cornell University's Johnson School of Management.

France has many hidden gems, and Facebook is well-aware of that. The company is building a new artificial intelligence research team in Paris in order to work on ambitious futuristic projects. The new team will work closely with existing Facebook AI Research (FAIR) teams in Menlo Park and New York on image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition, machine learning, live translating tools and more. There are a couple of reasons behind this choice. First, France has a lot of incredibly talented researchers -- it is one of the leading countries when it comes to math, physics and robotics research.

NEW YORK – Terrorists flying drones to spread highly radioactive material over a civilian area: That's part of the nightmare scenario President Barack Obama urged world leaders to consider as they debated better ways of controlling nuclear material. With the aid of apocalyptic fake newscasts, Obama told the group of 50 heads of state and foreign ministers in Washington Friday to imagine that a terrorist group had bought isotopes through brokers on the so-called dark Web. One shipment was picked up in transit by radiation monitors, but others were thought to be still on the move. The terrorists were believed to be planning to use a drone to distribute the material. Would authorities react in time?

WASHINGTON – The United States has conducted another drone strike in Somalia, targeting a senior al-Shabab leader thought to have been plotting attacks against Americans in Mogadishu, the Pentagon said Friday. The announcement came shortly before President Barack Obama offered detailed remarks about America's controversial drone program, saying some criticism of it had been "legitimate," and acknowledging there was "no doubt" the unmanned aircraft have killed innocent people in the past. Thursday's strike was conducted in cooperation with Somali officials and targeted Hassan Ali Dhoore, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said. The Pentagon said it was still assessing whether Dhoore had been killed. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strike targeted a vehicle Dhoore was riding in with two other al-Qaida-aligned al-Shabab members.

As cloud computing continues to disrupt traditional business models and big data continues to grow exponentially, techies and investors alike are looking for the top trends that will change how we do business in 2016 and beyond. Hybrid and public cloud services continue to rise in popularity, with investors claiming their stakes. Venture capital firms are investing most heavily in SaaS companies, proving that cloud solutions will be even more lucrative in the future. Get your company on stage at TNW Europe. While some have doubted Dropbox's ability to go public based on its 10 billion valuation, the fact that this leading SaaS company has raised 1.1 billion in six rounds of funding is pretty impressive.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the form of intelligence that arises from machines, perceiving their environment and taking actions to maximize their chance of success for a given task. We live in a period where computer power is escalating quickly and where recent discoveries are bringing this power to the general public, often arising controversy. In this ecosystem, academia and industry define together a new paradigm to innovate and benefit humanity as a whole. Don't miss the opportunity to learn about AI in London, together with Imperial College London Innovation Forum (ICLIF). The event will be followed by a networking session with finger food and nibbles for the attendees.