This article presents a logical formalization of the emotional appraisal theory, i.e., it formalizes the cognitive process of evaluation that elicits an emotion. This formalization is psychologically grounded on the OCC cognitive model of emotions. More specifically, we are interested in event-based emotions, i.e., emotions that are elicited by the evaluation of the consequences of an event that either happened or will happen. The formal modelling presented here is based on the AfPL Probabilistic Logic, a BDI-like probabilistic modal logic, which allows our model to verify whether the variables that determine the elicitation of emotions achieved the necessary threshold or not. The proposed logical formalization aims at addressing how the emotions are elicited by the agent cognitive mental states (desires, beliefs and intentions), and how to represent the intensity of the emotions. These are important initial points in the investigation of the dynamic interaction among emotions and other mental states.

Baby boomers aren't getting any younger, and IBM knows it. Over the last several years, the computing giant has spent much of its time researching ways to keep America's second-largest generation happy and healthy in old age. That research has zeroed in on outfitting boomers' living spaces with artificially-intelligent sensors that can measure things like air quality, sleep quality, movement patterns, falls, and changes in scent and sound. Susann Keohane, senior technologist at IBM Research, says the data captured by those sensors can then help family members and doctors provide people with better care when needed. Critically, the sensors could detect when people deviate from a baseline to offer person-specific alerts.

The Bonassama District Hospital in Douala, Cameroon and six other African hospitals are adopting SOPHiA to – no matter their experience in genomic testing – get up to speed and analyze genomic data to identify disease-causing mutations in patients' genomic profiles, and decide on the most effective care. A release from the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, Sophia Genetics, says in addition to the Bonassama district hospital, the modern technology is being adopted by Pharma Process in Casablanca, Morocco; ImmCell in Rabat, Morocco; The Al Azhar Oncology Center in Rabat, Morocco; The Riad Biology Center in Rabat, Morocco; The Oudayas, Medical Analysis Laboratory, Morocco;and The Center for Proteomic & Genomic Research (CPGR) in Cape Town, South Africa. As new users of SOPHiA, they become part of a larger network of 260 hospitals in 46 countries that share clinical insights across patient cases and patient populations, which feeds a knowledgebase of biomedical findings to accelerate diagnostics and care. Speaking about the adoption of SOPHiA in Africa, Jurgi Camblong, Sophia Genetics' CEO and co-founder, declared: "Since inception, our vision has been to develop innovative technological solutions that analyze patients' genomic profiles to offer better diagnosis and care to the greatest number of patients, wherever they live. Today, I am very proud that SOPHiA is triggering a technological leapfrog movement in healthcare across Africa."

Representatives from angel investors, venture capital, private equity and corporate venture funds awarded Movus, started by technology strategy consultant Brad Parsons in January 2015, the Investor Award at KPMG Australia's Energise accelerator program last Friday. Having developed an automation monitoring blueprint for BHP Billiton and Aurizon trains and condition monitoring blueprint for Sydney Trains while working for Perth-based Ajilon Australia, Parsons realised the technology was totally applicable for the billions of assets globally that sit below those big heavy assets. Parsons has now developed a condition monitoring sensor that works in the industrial environment picking up the health of machinery using artificial intelligence and a machine learning engine on the backend. It is magnetically attached and can be installed in minutes, the same as a Fitbit for humans. Parsons has already talked about it with Energise sponsors Woodside Petroleum and Chevron Corporation, and will meet Wesfarmers and Western Australia's Water Corporation representatives in Perth in the next fortnight.

Here are some incredibly smart people that are pushing boundaries and/or doing some incredibly inventive things in emerging technology and other areas. Whether it's healthcare, news or immersive technologies - these are the people you'll be hearing a lot more from - collaborate with them now and be a bigger part of the future. Burrell was described as "offering new thinking and fresh ideas to strengthen the future of broadcasting" after taking top honors at the National Association of Broadcasters Innovation Pilot Award for "In Your Shoes" (a broadcast and 360 VR series), Recently working with heavy-hitters like Steven Spielberg's virtual reality company ('The VR Company'), Burrell's work with Oculus has been considered for an Interactive Emmy ("Take Back the Mic: The World Cup of Hip Hop"). Recently returning from South Africa where she created a partnership with Ndaba Mandela (grandson to Nelson Mandela and Founder of Africa Rising), to bring the coding, robotics and emerging technology program permanently to the continent. IN HER OWN WORDS: "There's a strong feeling of uncertainty in the world right now, but when we ask ourselves, 'how can I use the the tools of today and the technology of tomorrow to harness something meaningful and good', we are empowered to reshape our experience of the world."

Have you ever dreamt of gazing into the eyes of chatbot while explaining your frustration with a service? If so, that would be oddly specific, but you'd also be in luck, thanks to an ambitious New Zealand startup. The company, which has the eerie name of Soul Machines, has created a virtual chatbot that can not only portray human emotion, but also read human facial expressions. The aim is to take chatbot service to the next level by humanizing the interaction between man and machine, basically by making them more like us. Gary Vaynerchuk was so impressed with TNW Conference 2016 he paused mid-talk to applaud us.

Last week the Data Science community had a major event – Strata Hadoop World 2017 at San Jose. The over-arching theme across all talks and the expo was that the focus is increasingly shifting from storing and processing Big Data in an efficient way, to applying traditional and new machine learning techniques to drive higher value from the data at hand. Even as the limelight shifts from Big Data to Machine Learning (and more advanced aspects like Deep Learning), from an implementation perspective, distributed and scalable processing stays dominant as most of the popular ML models have an insatiable appetite for input data and compute power. Mike Olson, CSO and Chairman, Cloudera talked about "The machine-learning renaissance". Most of the fundamental techniques for ML and AI were invented in 1960s and 1970s.

Have you ever dreamt of gazing into the eyes of chatbot while explaining your frustration with a service? If so, that would be oddly specific, but you'd also be in luck, thanks to an ambitious New Zealand startup. The company, which has the eerie name of Soul Machines, has created a virtual chatbot that can not only portray human emotion, but also read human facial expressions. The aim is to take chatbot service to the next level by humanizing the interaction between man and machine, basically by making them more like us. We're inviting 250 to exhibit at TNW Conference and pitch on stage!

Would your banking experience be more satisfying if you could gaze into the eyes of the bank's customer service chatbot and know it sees you frowning at your overdraft fees? Professor and entrepreneur Mark Sagar thinks so. Sagar won two Academy Awards for novel digital animation techniques for faces used on movies including Avatar and King Kong. He's now an associate professor at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, and CEO of a startup called Soul Machines, which is developing expressive digital faces for customer service chatbots. He says that will make them more useful and powerful, in the same way that meeting someone in person allows for richer communication than chatting via text.

Seven million years ago, the first ancestors of mankind appeared in Africa and seven million years later, as we speak, mankind's existence is being traced by archaeologists in South Africa, where they believe they are finding several missing links in our history. A history traced back to the first hominid forms. What is a hominid, I hear you say, and when did it exist? Well, way back when scientists believe that the Eurasian and American tectonic plates collided and then settled, creating a massive flat area in Africa, after the Ice Age. This new massive field was flat for hundreds of miles, as far as the eye could see, and the apes that inhabited this land suddenly found there were no trees to climb. This meant that the apes found it hard going thundering over hundreds of miles on their hands and feet, so they started to stand up to make it easier to move over the land. This resulted in a change in the wiring of the brain, which, over thousands of years, led to the early forms of what is now recognized as human. The first link to understanding this chain was the discovery of Lucy. Lucy--named after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"--is the first skeleton that could be pieced together to show how these early human forms appeared on the African plains in the post-Ice Age world. The skeleton was found in the early 1970s in Ethiopia by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and is an early example of the hominid australopithecine, dating back to about 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of most apes, plus evidence of a walking gait that was bipedal and upright, similar to that of humans and other hominids. This combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded an increase in brain size. Since Lucy was found, there have been many other astonishing discoveries in what is now called the "Cradle of Humankind" in South Africa, a Unesco World Heritage site.