Thank you, Mark [Carney], for that kind introduction, and thank you to the Bank of England for inviting me to this wonderful event. This is a moment to celebrate 20 years of independence during which the Bank of England has been a stabilizing force for the U.K. economy, inspiring others in the world of central banking--not least because of your guidance, Mark. This is also a moment to learn from our experiences, build on the progress made so far, and look into the future--to the next 20 years--as our journey continues. This morning, I came up Fleet Street, which always feels like a journey through history. In the Middle Ages, that street was an important center of commerce, much of which has now moved online. By the 19th century, the street was home to ticker machines and reporters racing each other to make the evening papers.

September 29, 2017 Adelaide/Sydney, Australia--To cut costs, Elon Musk's SpaceX company has shrunk the size of the rocket ship it is developing to go to Mars, aiming to start construction on the first spaceship in the first half of next year, Mr. Musk said on Friday. SpaceX plans its first trip to the red planet in 2022, carrying only cargo, to be followed by a manned mission in 2024, Musk, who serves as chief executive and lead designer of Space Exploration Technologies, said at a conference in Adelaide. NASA's first human mission to Mars is expected about a decade later. Musk had previously planned to use a suite of space vehicles to support the colonization of Mars, beginning with an unmanned capsule called Red Dragon in 2018, but he said SpaceX is now focused on a single, slimmer and shorter rocket instead. "We want to make our current vehicles redundant," he said.

Lockheed Martin has revealed plans to set up a'Mars base camp' orbiting the red planet - and says it hopes to launch it within ten years. Using NASA's Orion spacecraft as the command deck, the orbiting outpost could give astronauts the ability to operate rovers and drones on the surface in real time, helping us better understand the Red Planet and plan for manned missions. 'The time is now,' Lockheed Martin said in a video revealing the project at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, where it also showed off a lander that could eventually take astronauts form the station to the red planet's surface. Using NASA's Orion spacecraft as the command deck, the orbiting outpost could give scientists the ability to operate rovers and drones on the surface in real time, helping us better understand the Red Planet and work out where manned missions doulc land'Sending humans to Mars has always been a part of science fiction, but today we have the capability to make it a reality,' said Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin. 'We're proud to have Orion powered-on and completing testing in preparation for its Exploration Mission-1 flight and eventually its journey to Mars.' Mars Base Camp is aligned with NASA's recently-announced lunar Deep Space Gateway approach for developing and testing systems, including Orion, in lunar space before using them to go to Mars.

SAN FRANCISCO/SYDNEY – Entrepreneur Elon Musk, who envisions a human colony on Mars, is planning to create a new, much larger rocket ship code-named "BFR" capable of traveling anywhere on Earth in under an hour. If the concept becomes reality, a journey from New York to Shanghai can be completed in about 30 minutes. The surprise announcement means that Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which has already disrupted the aerospace industry with reusable launches, plans to ferry humans not just to distant planets but across this one as well. "If we are going to places like Mars, why not Earth?" Musk said Friday at the 68th International Astronautical Congress on Friday in Adelaide, Australia.

Peer review, evaluation, and selection is a fundamental aspect of modern science. Funding bodies the world over employ experts to review and select the best proposals of those submitted for funding. The problem of peer selection, however, is much more general: a professional society may want to give a subset of its members awards based on the opinions of all members; an instructor for a MOOC or online course may want to crowdsource grading; or a marketing company may select ideas from group brainstorming sessions based on peer evaluation. We make three fundamental contributions to the study of procedures or mechanisms for peer selection, a specific type of group decision-making problem, studied in computer science, economics, and political science. First, we propose a novel mechanism that is strategyproof, i.e., agents cannot benefit by reporting insincere valuations. Second, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our mechanism by a comprehensive simulation-based comparison with a suite of mechanisms found in the literature. Finally, our mechanism employs a randomized rounding technique that is of independent interest, as it solves the apportionment problem that arises in various settings where discrete resources such as parliamentary representation slots need to be divided proportionally.

The European Robotics League (ERL) announced the winners of ERL Emergency Robots 2017 major tournament, during the awards ceremony held on Saturday, 23rd September at Giardini Pro Patria, in Piombino, Italy. The ERL Emergency Robots 2017 competition consisted of four scenarios, inspired by the nuclear accident of Fukushima (Japan, 2011) and designed specifically for multi-domain human-robot teams. The first scenario is The Grand Challenge made up of three domains – sea, air, land, and the other three scenarios are made of only two domains. The Awards, given for each scenario to the best performing teams, were introduced by Alan Winfield from Bristol Robotics Laboratory and ERL Emergency Coordinator. "The energy, enthusiasm and spirit of cooperation among the teams competing in ERL Emergency was amazing. We witnessed not only great performances from the teams and their robots, but also the drama and excitement of last minute field repairs and workarounds to the robots", said Alan Winfield.

The European Robotics League (ERL) announced the winners of ERL Emergency Robots 2017 major tournament, during the awards ceremony held on Saturday, 23rd September at Giardini Pro Patria, in Piombino, Italy. In addition to the Competition Awards, Marta Palau Franco from Bristol Robotics Laboratory and ERL Emergency project manager introduced the referees' special awards. "Behind a multi-domain competition there is always a large technical committee, I feel privileged to have worked with such an amazing team of volunteer referees, technical assistants and safety pilots and divers. We were delighted to give these awards to recognise teams' effort, fair play and hard work. The experience of participating in this robotics competition will prove beneficial for team members to develop further their professional career", said Marta Palau Franco.

Setting up a permanent village on the moon is the first step towards exploring Mars, the European Space Agency said as plans to reach and colonise the Red Planet gathered pace. At an annual gathering of 4,000 global space experts in Adelaide, the ESA said the Moon was the'right place to be' as humans expand economic activities beyond low-Earth orbit, even while Mars remained the'ultimate destination'. 'We have been living in low-Earth orbit for the last 17 years on board a space station and we are on our journey to Mars for the first human mission,' ESA's Piero Messina told AFP at the congress. 'In between, we believe that there is an opportunity to create a permanent... sustainable presence on the surface of the Moon.' Reaching and colonising Mars has been viewed by private and public interests as the next stage in exploring the final frontier, and has been a key part of this year's International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide. Messina said the more immediate goal was to have a permanent presence on the Moon, even if it was just a robot, by the end of the next decade.

Airline passengers are suffering major disruption at airports around the world after a computer programme which handles passenger check in systems crashed. Queues formed at check-in desks worldwide this morning after the computer system used by more than 100 airlines crashed. Problems have been reported at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports, as well as Charles de Gaulle Paris, Washington DC, Baltimore, Melbourne, Changi in Singapore, Johannesburg and Zurich. The check-in system which went down is run by Amadeus Altea, which services 64% of the Star Alliance flights, 75% of One World and 53% of the Sky Team, including BA, AirFrance, KLM and Lufthansa. The company behind the programme confirmed a'network issue' is causing the problems, but insisted'services are gradually being restored'.

Capgemini, a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing services, has today announced the findings of "Turning AI into concrete value: the successful implementers' toolkit", a study of nearly 1,000 organizations with revenues of more than $500m that are implementing artificial intelligence (AI), either as a pilot or at scale[1]. The research both counters fears that AI will cause massive job losses in the short term, as 83% of firms surveyed say AI has generated new roles in their organizations, and highlights the growth opportunity presented by AI: three-quarters of firms have seen a 10% uplift in sales, directly tied to AI implementation. The report, which surveyed executives from nine countries and across seven sectors, found that four out of five companies (83%) have created new jobs as a result of AI technology. Specifically, organizations are producing jobs at a senior level, with two in three jobs being created at the grade of a manager or above. Furthermore, among organizations that have implemented AI at scale, more than 3 in 5 (63%) said that AI has not destroyed any jobs in their organization. Alongside the trend towards job creation at management level, the report provides further evidence that organizations see AI as a means of reducing the time employees spend on routine and administrative tasks to enable them to deliver more value.