Kids walk into kindergarten with big dreams for themselves -- writing their names, making friends, and if they're lucky, maybe even learning about new species of dinosaurs. Though they may not express it this way, young children see school as the key to unlocking their potential, the first step to becoming an astronaut, a veterinarian, a firefighter or whatever they aspire to be when they grow up. Their families, too, have high hopes for what the next 13 years will bring, counting on educators to prepare their children for the future cognitively, socially and emotionally. But unfortunately in many classrooms across the U.S., these kids and their families discover that the education system's goals for them are much less ambitious than their own. Throughout elementary school, then into middle and high school, students are guided to academic milestones that are simply too low, targets that should be baselines rather than ceilings.

The Army recently scanned 7,200 km across four states on the eastern seaboard and used artificial intelligence to find and destroy specific simulated targets in an area the size of a 10-square-foot box. It was all part of the Army's XVIII Airborne Corp artificial intelligence-enabled live-fire target identification exercise on Thursday that used nearly 20 platforms and units from each of the other branches. The event was the fourth of its kind for the Scarlet Dragon program, which began in 2020. The Corps, assisted by elements of the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, worked with various platforms in all domains. But a key ingredient was the National Geospatial-Intelligence Center, which provided satellite imagery for software to sift through and find targets.

Walmart has had drone delivery ambitions for years now, and today they've announced a partnership with Zipline for on-demand delivery of "health and wellness" products. Zipline drones aren't the quadcopters that most think of for these types of delivery services. Instead, they're gliders that have longer range and won't just drop out of the sky if something fails. Trial deliveries using Zipline's drones will take place near Walmart headquarters in northwest Arkansas with a plan to start early next year. Walmart says that the Zipline drones will be able to operate within a 50-mile radius, and they produce no carbon emissions.

Apple will stage its traditional post-Labor Day product reveal on Tuesday, where it is expected to tout new editions of the Apple Watch and iPad. Along the way, there will be new things for Siri to do as well on the iPad, as part of the iOS mobile operating system upgrade. Siri is the oft-maligned but heavily used personal assistant. This year, Siri will tout a "completely new look," with "over 20x more facts than just three years ago." Yes, Apple actually says this, on the promo page for the iOS 14 upgrade, which has traditionally been made available in September.

Shortly after receiving final FAA approval for drone deliveries, Amazon already has a rival. Walmart announced that it will start a pilot program with drone company Flytrex to deliver groceries and other household essentials from its stores in Fayetteville, NC. Flytrex had previously received FAA approval for food deliveries in North Carolina. The pilot program will mostly be used to gather information for a future service, so the Fayetteville skies won't be filled with drones just yet. "The drones, which are controlled over the cloud using a smart and easy control dashboard, will help us gain valuable insight into the customer and associate experience -- from picking and packing to takeoff and delivery," said Walmart senior VP Tom Ward.

Your future Walmart order might be delivered via drone. The retail giant announced the launch of an on-demand drone delivery pilot program in Fayetteville, North Carolina Wednesday with Flytrex, an end-to-end drone delivery company. In a blog post, Tom Ward, Walmart senior vice president of customer products, said the pilot focuses on delivering select grocery and household essential items from Walmart stores using Flytrex's automated drones. "The drones, which are controlled over the cloud using a smart and easy control dashboard, will help us gain valuable insight into the customer and associate experience – from picking and packing to takeoff and delivery," Ward said. Save better, spend better: Money tips and advice delivered right to your inbox.

Passengers embark on the U.S. side of the last hand-pulled ferry at Los Ebanos, Texas on the Mexico-U.S. border in 2008. LOS EBANOS, Texas -- All along the winding Rio Grande, the people who live in this bustling, fertile region where the U.S. border meets the Gulf of Mexico never quite understood how Donald Trump's great wall could ever be much more than campaign rhetoric. Erecting a concrete barrier across the entire 1,954-mile frontier with Mexico, they know, collides head-on with multiple realities: the geology of the river valley, fierce local resistance and the immense cost. An electronically fortified "virtual wall" with surveillance technology that includes night-and-day video cameras, tethered observation balloons and high-flying drones makes a lot more sense to people here. If a 30- to 40-foot concrete wall is a panacea for illegal immigration, as Trump insisted during the campaign, the locals are not convinced.

U.S. drone operators had been stalking the baby-faced British terrorist for days with infrared cameras and other sensors before the order came to kill him. As night fell on April 25, a U.S. warplane dropped a guided-bomb that obliterated the SUV occupied by 23-year-old Raphael Saihou Hostey near Mosul, Islamic State's stronghold in Iraq. Hostey, a recruiter for the militants, was targeted by a U.S. military campaign that has singled out and killed more than 120 Islamic State leaders, commanders, propagandists, recruiters and other so-called high-value individuals so far this year, officials said. The leadership attacks have picked up recently due to intelligence collected by special operations teams on night raids, from captured militants, and from intercepts of emails, cellphones and other communications. The focus on Islamic State's command and control structure, including its recruitment and funding systems, has helped weaken the Sunni extremist group as Iraqi, Syrian and Kurdish forces press the militants on the battlefield.

In this paper we describe ongoing undergraduate research projects that allow us to shift emphasis from teaching to a more active form of student participation. More specifically our projects are on automatic gesture recognition using the Kinect 3D sensor from Microsoft Research and machine learning systems. We have observed the following benefits for our undergraduate students: learning a topic area in AI relatively early; developing proficiency in laboratory practice, specifically, systematic data collection and programming on multiple platforms; learning to use appropriate methodology; applying knowledge to a real situation; learning to analyze data and transform it to various representations; appreciation of scientific experiments and learning what scientific research actually entails.