Amazon today announced the general availability of CodeGuru, an AI-powered developer tool that provides recommendations for improving code quality. It was first revealed during the company's Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2019 conference in Las Vegas, and starting today, it's available with usage-based pricing. Software teams perform code reviews to check the logic, syntax, and style before new code is added to an existing application codebase -- it's an industry-standard practice. But it's often challenging finding enough developers to perform reviews and monitor the apps post-deployment. Plus, there's no guarantee those developers won't miss problems, resulting in bugs and performance issues.

RALEIGH – A startup in Raleigh backed by investor and Sprout Pharmaceuticals CEO Cindy Eckert, is unveiling Thursday a different approach to dealing with Alzheimer's that is powered by artificial intelligence, not drugs. And its solution is part of a new effort launched by the Women's Alzheimer's Movement Prevention Center at Cleveland Clinic, an internationally respected medical institution. ExtND is among the offerings from the Women's Alzheimer's center, which also was unveiled today in Las Vegas, according to a spokesperson for uMETHOD. Several medical institutions already are deploying the method. More than 5 million people are currently afflicted with Alzheimer's and the disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the US, according to the Alzheimer's Assocation.

Yandex, the Russian Alphabet-like company with a self-driving car unit that debuted a fully driverless car in Las Vegas this year, has updated its autonomous driving program. The fourth iteration of the company's self-driving car was officially revealed on Tuesday as a modified Hyundai Sonata. Up until now, Yandex had used hybrid Toyota Priuses, with a fleet of 100 of the self-driving vehicles, including some offering taxi rides in a Russian city. In March five of the new Sonatas were sprinkled into the Moscow fleet. By the end of this year, 100 of the Sonatas will join the collection of electric rides in Russia and Yandex's soon-to-arrive self-driving program in Michigan.

Foodborne illness afflicts 48 million people annually in the U.S. alone. Over 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from the infection. While preventable with proper food safety practices, the traditional restaurant inspection process has limited impact given the predictability and low frequency of inspections, and the dynamic nature of the kitchen environment. Despite this reality, the inspection process has remained largely unchanged for decades. CDC has even identified food safety as one of seven "winnable battles"; however, progress to date has been limited.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JANUARY 07: Mobileye CEO and Intel Senior Vice President Amon Shashua speaks ... [ ] during an Intel press event for CES 2019 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 7, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 8-11 and features about 4,500 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 180,000 attendees. At the EcoMotion self-driving conference held (in cyberspace) from Israel this week, Amnon Shashua, founder and CEO of MobilEye, now a unit of Intel INTC, declared their intention to offer robotaxi service, with no safety drivers, in early 2022. They will begin in their headquarters town of Jerusalem, then move to Tel Aviv, then France, Korea and China. He makes this statement while many other companies, particularly car OEMs, are scaling back their plans and timelines on full robocar service.

Amazon Web Services on Monday announced the general availability of Amazon Kendra, a machine learning-powered service for enterprise search. The service aims to help organizations build a better search engine for their internal documents, without the need for machine learning expertise. When AWS debuted Amazon Kendra at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas last year, the company stressed that -- unlike information on the world wide web -- data within an organization can be hard to search. Internal data is often unstructured and siloed, explained Matt Wood, AWS's VP of AI. Files may use different jargon and formats, and it may exist in SharePoint, Dropbox, or any number of places.

"We've set it to alert us if someone has a fever over 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit," Brett Smith, chief information officer of the airport's operator, Propeller Airports, said about the repurposed device. The camera screens passengers as they line up for standard security checks by the Transportation Security Administration. Passengers with high fevers are screened a second time, and ultimately the airline determines if they pose a danger to others on board, Mr. Smith said. The airport began operations in March 2019 and serves as a northwestern hub for Alaska Airlines and United Airlines. Developed in 2018, in the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Athena's gun-detecting camera operates by combining object detection, computer vision and machine-learning to identify weapons and automatically alert on-site workers and police.

Enterprises are increasingly pushed for faster insights from their ever-increasing data volumes. A TDWI senior analyst looks at how some vendors are responding. Accelerating speed to insight from data is critical to nearly all types of organizations, especially as managers seek to develop strategies for responding to unexpected and rapidly changing circumstances such as the global coronavirus outbreak. TDWI's recently published Best Practices Report, Faster Insights from Faster Data, takes an in-depth look at practice and technology issues that matter most in reducing delays in data life cycles and putting well-prepared and relevant data in the hands of users sooner. Not long after the publication of the report, I had the opportunity to visit with some technology providers exhibiting at the TDWI Las Vegas Conference and Strategy Summit in February.

Las Vegas hacking event, the Cyber Grand Challenge was the ultimate, and only, all-machine hacking competition. Each machine identified software vulnerabilities, exploited them and patched their own systems to protect against threats -- all without a human programmer intervening. This article explains the role of automation in IT security and how it could address the skills shortage. We've all heard of the wider IT skills shortage, but the lack of security skills in the industry is even more critical. According to a report by the Life and Times of Cybersecurity Professionals, IT workers that have specialist cyber security skills are approached with a new job offer at least once a week.

NOTE: Controls wasn't the only area of interest at PACK EXPO. CONTROLS INNOVATIONS Two PACK EXPO Las Vegas exhibitors a few aisles apart in the Lower South Hall featured analytics platforms that provide better real-time visibility into the manufacturing process. From Oden Technologies comes The Oden Platform (1). It's a comprehensive industrial Internet of Things analytics platform that provides employees at each level of a manufacturing plant with clear visibility into multiple data sets pertaining to the manufacturing process. Oden helps manufacturers monitor their production process and improve operational efficiency in real time by diagnosing problems that otherwise would have been missed. Oden helps users track performance metrics of multiple assets and accurately predict downtime based on historical data. In addition, by utilizing the platform, manufacturers can reduce bottlenecks at each stage of production and can save costs by eliminating quality issues, waste, and downtime.Photo 1 This platform is designed to help manufacturing units attain the best performance out of their manufacturing assets and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to empower prescriptive analytics. This allows employees on the floor to diagnose and mitigate issues as soon as they arise or offer alerts to avoid issues. In a connected manufacturing environment, companies need real-time accurate insights to improve the productivity and efficiency of their production lines. While manufacturers are increasingly willing to adopt manufacturing analytics practices, legacy equipment and limited technical know-how among machine operators are holding them back. In addition, employees on the floor are unable to make the most of the analytics tools at their disposal and are simply not achieving the expected impact on their profitability.