Drone designs are usually a choice between flexibility and endurance. You can either go with a multirotor that'll let you hover and make pinpoint landings, or you can go with a flying wing, which can handle bigger payloads and longer ranges. Finding a compromise is difficult, and usually, it's also very messy. Amazon and Google, for example, are both working on delivery drones that have a whole bunch of frequently superfluous motors and propellers that help the drone to transition between hovering and efficient forward flight. Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has a history of managing to make successful drones that combine the best features of VTOL and fixed-wing flight.

Microsoft says it is going to "solve" cancer in the next 10 years. The company is working at treating the disease like a computer virus, that invades and corrupts the body's cells. Once it is able to do so, it will be able to monitor for them and even potentially reprogram them to be healthy again, experts working for Microsoft have said. The company has built a "biological computation" unit that says its ultimate aim is to make cells into living computers. As such, they could be programmed and reprogrammed to treat any diseases, such as cancer.

Machine learning developers who want to use Google's Go language as their development platform have a small but growing number of projects to choose from. Rather than call out to libraries written in other languages, chiefly C/C, developers can work with machine learning libraries written directly in Go. Existing machine learning libraries in other languages have a far larger culture of users, but there's clearly an interest in having Go toolkits that take advantage of the language's conveniences. GoLearn, described as a "batteries included" machine learning library, is one of the most prominent. "Simplicity, paired with customisability, is the goal," the developers write in their introduction to the project.

Xinhua News Media Holdings Ltd. said Monday it is seeking to raise up to 42.9 million Hong Kong dollars via a share placement and will use the net proceeds for general working capital. Macau Legend Development Ltd., which operates casino and hotels, said Monday Laurence Yuen resigned as executive vice president and chief financial officer effective immediately. Salesforce.com Inc. said it would embed artificial intelligence technology into its software for salespeople, making it the latest in a gaggle of companies racing to enhance workplace tools with human-like abilities. The company will demonstrate the new software at its annual user conference next month in San Francisco. Newcrest Mining Ltd. said it has agreed to sell its 50% stake in a Papua New Guinea gold operation to partner Harmony Gold Mining Co. Ltd. .

Looking around at the natural world, have you ever wondered why some groups of organisms contain huge numbers of species while others are seemingly barren? Take insects as an example, animals which evolved around 480 million years ago. There are perhaps 6 million species living in all manner of environments, and occupying an incredible diversity of niches. Have you ever wondered why some groups of organisms contain huge numbers of species while others are seemingly barren? Plants have had a species production rate more than twice that of animals, while complex organisms (multicellular eukaryotes) have produced new species at a rate almost 10 times that of simpler one (protists and prokaryotes). Sex seems to have been a major catalyst for increasing the rate at which new species formed, perhaps explaining its success as an evolutionary strategy.

Lines for the iPhone 7 wrapped around the block outside of Apple stores worldwide leading up to today's highly-anticipated launch, and as always, many hopefuls camped out for days to secure a spot. But, with the help of 100 tiny robots, some customers managed to be among the first to get their hands on the device without ever having to leave their homes. New Zealand firm Spark enlisted a fleet of Alpha 1 robots to stand in line in place of their human counterparts – and they can dance, do kung Fu, and live-stream their way through the queue. The'robot army' is made up of devices from Chinese company UBTECH, and each bot is paired with a Spark customer who can control their actions using a smartphone app. This means the robots can be made to do push-ups, Kung Fu, yoga, mimic Olympic sports, and dance.

Waiting in line for the latest iPhone gadget is a tedious task--people camp out for days and wait in line for the hope of nabbing the newest smartphone model. Now, robots can do the lining up for you. In New Zealand, where consumers got an early start purchasing iPhones courtesy of the time difference, miniature Alpha 1 robots stood in line for a hundred people. The "robot army" was purchased by Spark, an Apple carrier in New Zealand, for select customers to save their time while waiting in a queue. "Technology these days is so much more advanced than it used to be, so why shouldn't our customers have their tech queue for them instead?"

Again, remember that this is not a comprehensive list, but that it is notable in that there have been so very many new additions to the base of literature from many disciplines added in just the last few weeks. Just one year ago, we pulled the hype hat over our eyes to some extent–after all, this was most useful in tagging images on social sites and getting machines to paint pictures. The potential for higher purposes was there (the supercomputing world is seeing it too) but just beyond reach. We are, it is safe to say, at the real beginning of mainstream applications for deep learning.

As the global population ages, the number of cancer cases is going up. New cancer diagnoses are expected to rise by 70% in the next 2 decades, from 14 million to around 22 million, according to an estimate by the World Health Organization. Corporate giants like Google and IBM are already focusing on making breakthroughs in oncology, using advanced AI algorithms for early detection and personalized treatment of cancer. We used the CB Insights database to find equity-funded startups that are using artificial intelligence to fight cancer. California-based CureMetrix has developed an algorithm for image analysis, which is currently being tested to identify lung cancer in x-rays and for breast cancer detection in mammograms.

People hoping that the driverless cars of the future will give them more free time while travelling may be in for a disappointment. Increased productivity is one of the expected benefits of self-driving cars, but a new study claims that they will have little impact. The study showed that nearly nearly 36 percent of Americans say they would be so apprehensive using a driverless vehicle that they would only watch the road. Meanwhile UK drivers were even more cautious at 44 per cent. The average vehicle trip is only around 19 minutes long which doesn't give enough time for any sustained productive activity, say the researchers.