The Ant Colony System (ACS) is, next to Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and the MAX-MIN Ant System (MMAS), one of the most efficient metaheuristic algorithms inspired by the behavior of ants. In this article we present three novel parallel versions of the ACS for the graphics processing units (GPUs). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such work on the ACS which shares many key elements of the ACO and the MMAS, but differences in the process of building solutions and updating the pheromone trails make obtaining an efficient parallel version for the GPUs a difficult task. The proposed parallel versions of the ACS differ mainly in their implementations of the pheromone memory. The first two use the standard pheromone matrix, and the third uses a novel selective pheromone memory. Computational experiments conducted on several Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) instances of sizes ranging from 198 to 2392 cities showed that the parallel ACS on Nvidia Kepler GK104 GPU (1536 CUDA cores) is able to obtain a speedup up to 24.29x vs the sequential ACS running on a single core of Intel Xeon E5-2670 CPU. The parallel ACS with the selective pheromone memory achieved speedups up to 16.85x, but in most cases the obtained solutions were of significantly better quality than for the sequential ACS.

When it comes to handbags, these days there are almost as many ways to jazz up your existing bag as there are new designs. In Selfridges' vast accessories hall in London, you can buy a clip-on set of metal flowers from Louis Vuitton, multi-coloured jangling robots from Prada, and leather tassels at Ted Baker. What customers want, it seems, is a way to stamp a bit of individuality on their purchases. And one new counter at Selfridges will let you go a stage further. At Mon Purse, an Australian brand, you are handed an iPad and samples of leathers, and given the chance to design your own handbag.

GV (formerly Google Ventures) is leading a $10 million investment in Abundant Robotics, a company building apple-picking robots that could eventually be adapted to harvest other fruits. Joining GV in the round were BayWa AG and Tellus partners along with the company's earlier backers Yamaha Motor Company, KPCB Edge and Comet Labs. Abundant Robotics Chief Executive and cofounder Dan Steere said his company began working with the apple industry four years ago to figure out how to automate the cumbersome task of picking apples. "It's very difficult to locate fruit that's ready to be picked within a canopy and then retrieve it without turning it into apple sauce," he said. Every fall in the US and in Australia, the company's engineers can be found in different orchards testing their technologies and working alongside farmers to understand what's still needed. The company's robots are designed to work around-the-clock, identifying and picking apples even in the dark of night.

Researchers at the University of Technology in Sydney in Australia have developed the new Shark Spotter algorithm, which uses video footage streamed from drones to detect sharks and alert swimmers. Researchers at the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS) in Australia have developed Shark Spotter, an algorithm that uses video footage streamed from drones to detect sharks and alert swimmers. The researchers say the algorithm is 90% accurate in distinguishing sharks from dolphins, rays, whales, and other marine life. They note the algorithm's accuracy is a significant improvement over human spotters using their naked eye from helicopters in flight, which are 18% accurate, or those spotting from fixed-wing aircraft, which are 12% accurate. They developed the app by flying drones over coastal waters and capturing about 8,000 images.

Today we present the Mapillary Vistas Dataset--the world's largest and most diverse publicly available, pixel-accurately and instance-specifically annotated street-level imagery dataset for empowering autonomous mobility and transport at the global scale. Since we started our expedition to collaboratively visualize the world with street-level images, we have collected more than 130 million images from places all around the globe. While this number keeps growing at a frantic pace, we are putting serious efforts into researching, implementing, publishing, and releasing smarter computer vision models that can help us understand the semantics within this data. As stated in an earlier blog post, we keep advancing supervised deep learning models as our primary workhorses to extract information that is valuable to our community and improve our products. However, such models are inherently hungry for data--and in particular for a lot of precisely annotated data.

ARTIFICIAL Intelligence technology is being used by an Aussie startup to help select the healthiest embryos for use in IVF treatments. Life Whisperer is based in South Australia and uses a combination of computer vision, human analysis and machine learning techniques to identify healthy embryos for implantation. The non-invasive embryo selection technique applies key algorithms that recognise important information, including morphological features, to grade embryo quality. The company is looking to identify a commercial partner to conduct the next validation phase of its technology. Co-founder and Managing Director Dr Michelle Perugini said machine learning meant the system could efficiently study "tens of thousands" of retrospective cases and build a portfolio of information.

Acorns has today announced a new feature exclusive to Australian customers that provides personalised insights into their spending and saving. Using machine learning, the "My Finances" feature will be able to discover your spending patterns, automatically categorise your transactions and notify you if you're likely to spend more than you have in previous months. Acorns Australia CEO George Lucas says the idea for the feature was born out of Acorns' users. And we said could do that, but we can use machine learning," he said. "We can make the experience as easy as possible because part of saving is also learning about where you're spending your money, seeing if you can pick up where you may be wasting your money, and therefore help you save more.

Microsoft for years has been trying to tackle the growing threat of Google's Chrome OS, which is siphoning PC market share away from Windows. The company's new Windows 10 S operating system, announced on Tuesday, will be Microsoft's latest attempt to tackle Google's surging Chrome OS. The OS is targeted at the education market, which in the U.S. is dominated by Chromebooks. Even with the new Windows OS, worldwide Chromebook shipments are expected to grow by double digits this year, analysts from IDC and Gartner said. The market share of Chromebooks has been growing up consistently since 2015. The new Windows OS is built like Chrome OS.

Mobvoi, a Chinese voice recognition startup, signed a strategic partnership to build a 50/50 joint venture targeting the automotive market with Volkswagen. The deal involved VW investing $180 million in a Mobvoi series D funding. Modvoi has developed an advanced Chinese speech recognition system, Chinese/English translation, semantic analysis and integrated vertical and proactive search, all adapted for and connected with a smart rear-view mirror that provides navigation, messaging and information through voice input. Prof. Dr. Heizmann, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group China said: "This partnership is a particular example of Volkswagen's determination to work with groundbreaking Chinese tech companies like Mobvoi to create new forms of people-oriented mobility technology. We are impressed by Mobvoi's innovative approach of AI technologies, and we are pleased to form this joint venture to explore the next generation of smart mobility."

Description:We are currently going through an evolution with how we interact with technology through the use of voice interfaces. In this talk, we'll look at how the Alexa Skills Kit and Amazon Lex can be used to define a voice interface, how these interfaces work and how they can be used to allow people to work with your applications in unique ways.