Cambridge Science Festival 2016 was the biggest and best ever, organisers have revealed. More than 350 events were held during the fortnight-long festival, attracting 60,000 visitors. Cambridge University, which runs the events, said the festival's main theme, artificial intelligence, sparked "considerable interest". This year was the 22nd in the festival's history, and it finished last Sunday with dozens of events on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. A spokeswoman said: "We had two momentous weeks of over 350 events and 60,000 visits, making it the largest festival to date in terms of both events and visits. "This year was marked by the considerable interest from both the public and the media in many of the artificial intelligence and machine learning events, testament to both the fascination and the concern we all feel with our growing interaction and reliance on machines.

Data scientists often spend hours or days tuning models to get the highest accuracy. This tuning typically involves running a large number of independent Machine Learning (ML) tasks coded in Python or R. Following some work presented at Spark Summit Europe 2015, we are excited to release Scikit-learn integration package for Spark that dramatically simplifies the life of data scientists using Python. Python is one of the most popular programming languages for data exploration and data science, and this is in no small part due to high quality libraries such as Pandas for data exploration or scikit-learn for machine learning. Scikit-learn provides fast and robust implementations of standard ML algorithms such as clustering, classification, and regression. Scikit-learn's strength has typically been in the realm of computing on a single node, though.

Summary: At least one instance of Real Time Predictive Model development in a streaming data problem has been shown to be more accurate than its batch counterpart. Whether this can be generalized is still an open question. It does challenge the assumption that Time-to-Insight can never be real time. A few months back I was making my way through the latest literature on "real time analytics" and "in stream analytics" and my blood pressure was rising. The cause was the developer-driven hyperbole that claimed that the creation of brand new insights using advanced analytics has become "real time".

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

IBM's Watson AI product is mostly rolled out live with machine learning halted to avoid "losing control" of its behaviour, Europe CTO Duncan Anderson has confirmed. Anderson said the idea of AI always learning and adjusting its behaviour is still something people are "a bit nervous about". "At the moment, you stop the learning before it goes live, so you don't get any surprises," Anderson told Computing at our Big Data & Analytics Summit 2016 in London. The aim, explained Anderson, is to "get a sensible kind of answer" from an AI in line with the business's expectations. He added that Watson's modular-based learning updates are now so advanced in specific areas of industry that it's now possible to sell "off the shelf" versions of the AI that can immediately get to grips with traditional tasks in a given area.

Mauna Kea Technologies (Euronext: MKEA, FR0010609263; OTCQX: MKEAY), inventor of Cellvizio(R), the multidisciplinary confocal laser endomicroscopy platform, today announced its full-year results for the financial year ended December 31, 2015, as approved by the Board of Directors at its meeting on March 23, 2016. Benoît Jacheet, Chief Financial Officer of Mauna Kea Technologies, stated: "2015 was a critical year in the implementation of our updated strategic plan and this affected our sales performance. Even so, we successfully delivered a significant improvement in our gross margin and operating performance by streamlining our cost structure to reduce fixed operating costs. Increased financial flexibility is expected to support the continued growth of our global user base." As previously reported, Mauna Kea Technologies recorded a 22% decline in its full-year 2015 sales to EUR8,547 thousand.

Editor's note: Kevin Gray is president of Cannon Gray LLC, a marketing science and analytics consultancy. He would like to thank Marco Vriens of Ipsos for his helpful comments on a draft of this article. Machine learning gets a lot of buzz these days, usually in connection with big data and artificial intelligence (AI). But what exactly is it? Broadly speaking, machine learners are computer algorithms designed for pattern recognition, curve fitting, classification and clustering.

BlinQ is a dating app that has developed a new feature recently. With the help of an AI developed by the University of Zürich, the app now can rank photos by attractiveness on a six-point scale. The worst one is simply "Hmm…" and the best is "Godlike". But let's test it with a bunch of video game (and other) examples and see how well they perform. Wario and Link from the CD-i Zelda games were too much for its face recognition feature (which certainly means they're both way above "Godlike"). But it works with almost everything else.

Auto makers need to push regulators around the world for consistent rules to allow autonomous cars to proliferate, the chief executive of Renault SA RNO -1.16 % and Nissan Motor NSANY -1.97 % Co. said Wednesday. Carlos Ghosn, speaking at the New York International Auto Show, said he expects autonomous vehicles to become more commonplace in coming years, eventually changing lanes on highways and driving through cities on their own. His companies plan to offer 10 autonomous-drive models by 2020. But differing regulations could present hurdles to clearing them for operation, he said. "It's very important that we…lobby in every single country with the regulatory authorities to take our eyes off the road and our hands off the wheel," Mr. Ghosn said, noting that his companies are working with U.S. and Japanese regulators.

Robotics companies and academics descended on a resort in Palm Springs this week for an invitation-only conference organized by Amazon.com Inc. to bring together experts in artificial intelligence, robotics, home automation and space exploration. At the event, held at the Parker Palm Springs, there were robotic arms dueling with light sabers from Star Wars, seminars about imbuing machines with human values and a celebrity appearance by film director Ron Howard, known for his portrayal of Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days. Jeff Bezos mingled with attendees; one said he drank single-malt whiskey with Amazon's chief executive officer. Representatives from companies such as Rethink Robotics, Toyota Motor Corp., and others attended the conference, called MARS, short for Machine-Learning (Home) Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration.