In 1976, Frank Collin, an ambitious leader in the small but resilient Nazi party of the United States, planned a march in Skokie, Illinois--an attempt to raise the profile of his organization and build support for his cause. The town, many of whose residents were Jewish and had lived through the war, vehemently opposed the demonstration, and the case went to the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union came to the legal defense of Collin and his fellow Nazis on First Amendment grounds--a move that would be almost unthinkable today. Aryeh Neier, the national executive director of the ACLU at the time, received thousands of letters condemning his organization's decision to defend the free speech rights of Nazis. Neier was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1937 and fled from Germany to England along with his parents as a child.

Development of robust concrete mixes with a lower environmental impact is challenging due to natural variability in constituent materials and a multitude of possible combinations of mix proportions. Making reliable property predictions with machine learning can facilitate performance-based specification of concrete, reducing material inefficiencies and improving the sustainability of concrete construction. In this work, we develop a machine learning algorithm that can utilize intermediate target variables and their associated noise to predict the final target variable. We apply the methodology to specify a concrete mix that has high resistance to carbonation, and another concrete mix that has low environmental impact. Both mixes also fulfill targets on the strength, density, and cost. The specified mixes are experimentally validated against their predictions. Our generic methodology enables the exploitation of noise in machine learning, which has a broad range of applications in structural engineering and beyond.

Polar Manufacturing has been making metal hinges, locks, and brackets in south Chicago for more than 100 years. Some of the company's metal presses--hulking great machines that loom over a worker--date from the 1950s. Last year, to meet rising demand amid a shortage of workers, Polar hired its first robot employee. The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works.

Advanced safety systems using AI are being delivered in cars today, whether the customer asks for them or not. This is big business, with the value of AI in automotive manufacturing and cloud services projected to exceed $10.7 billion by 2024. Reaction to the new systems from the auto consumer public is mostly positive based on reactions seen so far. When a deer jumped in front of a 2017 Subaru Outback being driven in Skokie, Ill, recently, the vehicle came to a complete stop on its own, before the driver could react, according to an account in Consumer Reports, based on a survey of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). "Without the car's automatic emergency braking system, I'd have hit the deer, no question about it," the driver said.

One hundred years from now, hospitals will be nearly unrecognizable as care moves to the outpatient setting and organizations integrate artificial intelligence, telemedicine and other IT applications to care for patients outside the walls of their institution. Forty-five healthcare executives, including five from hospital C-suites, describe the key trends disrupting the traditional hospital and how institutions can prepare for the future. Here is what 45 healthcare executives had to say about the hospital of the future. Responses are organized by category -- hospital CEOs and executives, physicians, health IT leaders, consultants and healthcare firms and organizations -- and in alphabetical order within each category. Responses have been edited lightly for length and clarity. Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Memorial Hermann (Houston): "For decades, healthcare institutions operated under the assumption that people who are sick or injured should be seen by a ...

Multisourced data helps determine how to target offers to consumers on computers and in stores. There's been a flurry of recent developments that suggest retailers this holiday season may summon the nerve to reboot their omnichannel marketing efforts, tapping into Big Data tactics that in years past may have seemed more like Big Brother. Crate and Barrel is testing a program, dubbed Mobile Totes, in its Skokie, Ill., store in suburban Chicago that leans on several branded tablet devices. The endeavor, bolstered by CloudTags' software, encourages patrons to use the tablets to email themselves products they want but are not available in the store. Yet, here's the thing: When such emails are clicked on, thanks to recipients' cookie IDs, the merchant retargets people on its website with banner ads that pitch products they first showed interest in during a store visit.

With increases in the complexity of information that must be communicated either by or to computer comes a corresponding need to find ways to communicate that information simply and effectively. It makes little sense to force the burden of communication on a single medium, restricted to just one of spoken or written text, gestures, diagrams, or graphical animation, when in many situations information is only communicated effectively through combinations of media.