Graduating university represents the culmination of years of hard work for most, but for Canberra man and paraplegic Paul Jenkins it marked something much more. Mr Jenkins has spent the past six months training in an exoskeleton device and on Tuesday realised his dream of walking on stage at Parliament House and accepting his two bachelor degrees from the University of Canberra. Paul Jenkins, left paralysed by a motorcycle accident, is the first person in Australia approved under the NDIS to use a robotic walker that allows him to walk with the help of crutches. Counter-terrorism police are investigating links to terrorism in the stabbing death of a man in Queanbeyan, New South Wales. Police hunt for two teenagers after a service station worker was stabbed to death near the ACT border on Thursday night.

We're surrounded by more and more connected devices we're calling the Internet of Things. We can turn our heating on from our phones on the commute home. Pegs can tell us when to bring the washing in so it doesn't get wet. Cars know the hazards ahead and warn us before we get there so that we can avoid them. Many of the'things' have been manufactured within the'Industrial Internet of Things' or'Industry 4.0'.

AI Arms Race Principle: An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided.* Perhaps the scariest aspect of the Cold War was the nuclear arms race. At its peak, the US and Russia held over 70,000 nuclear weapons, only a fraction of which could have killed every person on earth. As the race to create increasingly powerful artificial intelligence accelerates, and as governments increasingly test AI capabilities in weapons, many AI experts worry that an equally terrifying AI arms race may already be under way. In fact, at the end of 2015, the Pentagon requested $12-$15 billion for AI and autonomous weaponry for the 2017 budget, and the Deputy Defense Secretary at the time, Robert Work, admitted that he wanted "our competitors to wonder what's behind the black curtain."

When was the last time you set foot on a farm? If you're a city or suburb dweller, it's probably been quite a while. People in both the developed and developing countries largely take the food available in their grocery stores for granted today. Drive down to your local Super Target or Farmer's Market and you're presented with a seemingly endless supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Unless you're in a poor country, like Nepal for example, where many families in villages own small pieces of land where they plant, maintain and harvest their crops manually, agriculture has largely been "mechanized."

If you have seen the latest Wolverine movie, Logan, you might have noticed a crucial scene where automated trucks speed up and down the highways of the United States. Experts say artificial intelligence (AI) is coming sooner than you think and robotics will soon replace the work now being done by humans. And they will not just replace truck drivers -- think taxis, trains and even your local salad maker. In Australia, the jobs most at risk include those involving driving, according to Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the CSIRO's technology unit, Data61. "There's a real financial imperative for developing autonomous cars," Mr Walsh said, adding the industry was currently worth around $1 trillion.

The importance of algorithms in our lives today cannot be overstated. They are used virtually everywhere, from financial institutions to dating sites. But some algorithms shape and control our world more than others -- and these ten are the most significant. Just a quick refresher before we get started. Though there's no formal definition, computer scientists describe algorithms as a set of rules that define a sequence of operations.

In the 2012 sci-fi film Prometheus, scientists release small drones into a mysterious tunnel complex to create a detailed 3D map of the caverns in minutes. Australian researchers plan to use a similar approach to explore parts of old mines that are unsafe to visit. The drones, which are controlled by a pilot, will be able to carry out safety checks by monitoring the build-up of water and checking the extent of roof collapses, and search for valuable mineral deposits that may have been missed. They are being developed by Craig Lindley and his colleagues at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's government research agency. The researchers' model is based on a commercial quadcopter.

While the manufacturing sector is increasingly using physical robots to improve industrial processes, the market for virtual bots or "chatbots" is also gaining serious traction in the space where humans and computers interact. Bots are essentially software technologies that automate tasks and enable effective human-computer interactions. Bots are increasingly taking over customer service operations in businesses around the globe, while technology giants like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are getting in on the game with their own bot platforms. And the bot market is starting to attract big bucks too. Recent figures indicate that 180 bot-related companies have attracted $24 billion in funding to date, with hundreds of other bot companies vying for investor dollars.

The ritualized procreation in the novel--effectively, state-sanctioned rape--is extrapolated from the Bible. " 'Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her,' " Atwood recited. "Obviously, they stuck the two together and out came the baby, and it was given to Rachel.