Singapore: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., a US-based information technology (IT) firm with most of its employees working out of India, expects its business growth in the Asia-Pacific region to outpace the company average this year, maintaining the trend seen in recent years, Jayajyoti Sengupta, president and Asia-Pacific head, said in an interview. Automation, which includes robots, machine learning and artificial intelligence, will be among the new frontiers for Cognizant, as rote and repetitive processes become "digital, instrumented, analyzed and intelligent", he said. Cognizant has said it expects its revenue growth to slow to between 10% and 14.3% for the calendar year 2016. How do you see the situation in the Asia-Pacific? It would be pertinent to note that Cognizant's growth of 21% in calendar 2015 included revenues from the acquisition of TriZetto.

The Drone Racing League flew in to the capital this week as machines soared around Wembley Stadium at speeds of 75mph (120km/h). Drones buzzed around the iconic venue and further proved why the sport of drone racing is gaining popularity. The racing was live streamed to spectators for the first time over EE's 4G network at the stadium, with 4G cameras attached to the drones giving people a drone's-eye-view. The event was attended by 16-year-old Luke Bannister, from Somerset, who recently won 174,000 ( 250,000) in the Drone Grand Prix in Dubai. First Person View (FPV) drone racing involves live video being streamed to the pilot's headset to enable split-second manoeuvres. This perspective is usually only available to the team controlling the drone, however for the first time spectators in the stadium and online were also able to'ride' around the stadium.

Technology has transformed how customers and brands interact with each other. Shoppers once relied on face-to-face, in-store interactions to make purchases and receive support. Now, shoppers do their research before entering a store (81 percent of shoppers conduct online research before buying) and seldom rely on salespeople to help them make decisions. Retailers, for their part, have realized that by embracing technology, they can extend their storefronts to their customers' fingertips. The Internet, buy buttons, mobile payment apps such as Square and Venmo, and couponing and price-matching apps like SnipSnap have changed how we shop.

A Russian photographer has proved how easy it is to track down people on social media using facial recognition software. Yegor Tsvetkov took photos of strangers on St Petersburg's metro and used a facial recognition app which trawls through profiles on VKontakte, Russia's biggest social network, to track down their online profiles. Named "Your Face is Big Data", the series of photographs shows how powerful facial recognition software has become, to the point that a complete stranger can find you at the click of a button. Tsvetkov told the Guardian the project aimed to show technology can affect privacy, particularly if you don't activate the relevant settings on your social media profiles. "Nobody noticed that I photographed them, but I used a simple camera and I didn't try to hide it," he said.

BRUSSELS--The European Union could require Internet search engines, such as Alphabet Inc.'s Google, to provide more transparency about advertising systems and conditions of use as part of new rules to regulate Web platforms. European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip said on Friday that the EU wouldn't create one set of rules for all Internet companies operating in Europe, but would try to target specific problems, such as a...

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

Saqib Shaikh is a software developer from London, England who is currently working for Microsoft on the firm's Bing search engine. Shaikh lost his sight when he was seven years old. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has strived to be a leader in the artificial intelligence arena, developing advanced AI theories and applications that permit machines to learn, evolve and make independent decisions. Microsoft's AI research team is building … Microsoft certainly hasn't been scared off doing further experiments with artificial intelligence after the whole racist bot debacle. The tech firm is back with an AI powered API that can identify (or at least try) what's in a picture.

Iran concluded a major, three-day military exercise Friday intended to review the readiness of its armed forces. The drills, called "Great Prophet," also field-tested new military technology, including the Iranian-made Karrar tank and the Hamasseh drone, Middle East Monitor reported. The Iranian air force, elite units and local forces were involved in the exercise. The drills covered four provinces in Iran's southeast region near the border with Pakistan. The exercises came amid growing tensions in the area over the protracted civil war in Syria and the threat posed by the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.

The Lenny Letter This is a project from Lena Dunham and her partner, Jenni Konner, and is essentially just an email newsletter, but it has become very popular. It offers perspective on politics and society for a mostly female audience and it is attracted over 400,000 subscribers in six months. What's most important about the Lenny Letter is that it has a 65% open rate and advertisers are taking notice. In tech and growth hacking, engagement is still what matters most in marketing. You can check out the Lenny Letter at lennyletter.com.

It's almost a given that you'll ride in an autonomous car at some point in your life, and when you do, the AI controlling it just might have honed its skills playing Minecraft. It sounds crazy, but open-world games like Minecraft are a fantastic tool for teaching learning algorithms--which power the next generation of advanced artificial intelligence--how to understand and navigate three-dimensional spaces. Achieving that is a major stepping stone toward creating AI that can interact with the real world in complex ways. It's easy to consider videogames mindless escapism, but because they generate such vast amounts of information--think of the expansive world players create in Minecraft--they are exceptionally well suited to teaching an AI how to perceive the world and interact with it. "It's hard for a human to teach AI," says Xerox researcher Adrian Gaidon, because they are "worse than the worst toddlers in the world--you have to explain everything."