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. 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.

BCS Technology, a Global IT company headquartered in Australia providing end to end solutions in big data and analytics, announced the launch of their chatbot solution -- Interactive Social Airline Automated Companion (ISAAC) built on Cloudera's modern platform for machine learning and analytics optimized for the cloud -- Cloudera Enterprise. ISAAC is now available on Cloudera's Solutions Gallery. ISAAC, analyses customer conversations in the airline and travel industry to derive insights and gain a 360-degree view of their customers in the easiest and most convenient way possible. The solution combines the use of modern big data analytics technologies and natural language processing (NLP) by leveraging Microsoft's LUIS framework and the Cloudera Enterprise platform. Businesses are able to create a customer experience using ISAAC that not only generates effective communication using predictive analytics, but also has the ability to collect this data and transform and translate it into prospective strategies and opportunities.

Drones using artificial intelligence will be deployed off beaches in New South Wales, Australia, to detect sharks and warn swimmers. The new drones will patrol beaches and use artificial intelligence to detect sharks in the water. It's not the first time drones have been used in Australia to detect sharks, but what makes the new drones interesting is that they do not rely on human operators controlling the drones to look for sharks. Instead, they use artificial intelligence software so they can spot sharks by themselves. To improve the results, additional software is also deployed to analyze the video feed from the drones to doubly make sure that sharks aren't missed.

It's a role-playing video game that, like many of its kind, allows users to choose and customize their own avatar, including a hairstyle and clothing. Set in a medieval fantasy world, users build up their power as their character travels across "provinces," overcoming obstacles and challenges along the way. What's unique about SPARX -- which stands for smart, positive, active, realistic, X-factor thoughts -- is that it's designed specifically for people with mild to moderate depression. SPARX was developed in the late 2000s by researchers and clinicians at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who became alarmed by the high suicide rate among teenagers in the country. They decided to develop a way to reach out to young people who shy away from seeking face-to-face counseling. The game's original English version is currently available only in New Zealand.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - AUGUST 03: Isuru Fernando of IBM speaks during the TILT / Fresh Directions In Healthcare Marketing seminar on August 3, 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. TILT is an interactive seminar designed to inspire healthcare marketers to use digital tools to communicate with their customers. In May 2014, IBM announced the acquisition of an AI startup, Cognea, that developed a cognitive computing and conversational artificial intelligence platform. IBM aimed to integrate it with Watson, the company's question-answering supercomputer, for more real conversations with users. Since then, it's been a wave of sorts with technology companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others investing in their own AI efforts while acquiring several startups in the space.

Sophie, the'digital human', greeted guests at the recent US launch of Air New Zealand's global marketing campaign A Better Way to Fly. Sophie showed her advanced emotional intelligence and responsiveness as she answered questions about New Zealand as a tourist destination and the airline's products and services. Air New Zealand worked with Soul Machines to create'Sophie' as it explores how artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies can be used to help travelers. Soul Machines says the technology behind Sophie uses neural networks and brain models to bring its digital humans to life from their cloud based human computing engine which sits on top of an artificial Intelligence platform powered by IBM Watson. "We know there is a lot of pain points and frustrations that we can solve with digital innovation," says Air New Zealand CEO Christopher Luxon.

You can already use Google Home to order from Walmart, watch CBS All Access on your TV and hear daily news updates from former-VP Joe Biden. Now, Google has just updated Home with the ability to set reminders with your voice. The company confirmed to Engadget that (English) reminders would start rolling out Monday to the US, UK, Australia and Canada (French is coming soon). Google Home users can now set one-off and recurring reminders (daily or weekly) and even set reminders for months down the road. Google Assistant also understands context - if you ask it to remind you to walk the dog at 6 while you get ready for bed, for example, it will know to set the reminder to 6 AM.

In our high-vocational stress household, the most volcanic tension usually erupts over control of the PlayStation. I'm still – still – absorbed in the game of Fallout 4 I started a year ago, with thousands of hours spent on perfecting the aesthetics of post-apocalyptic settlement-building. My partner prefers a wordless immersion in the splattery worlds of first-person shooters and war games but we reconcile over rounds of two-player Diablo, fighting demons and hoarding treasure together. I've come a long way from the handheld Donkey Kong I cherished as a child, or the Pitfall caves I explored on a home PC, or the small parties of teens that gathered to play Sonic the Hedgehog on the loungeroom TV. The demands of fun are more complex now – but the need for fun remains the same.