Experts say the development of self-driving cars over the coming decade depends on an unreliable assumption by many automakers: that the humans in them will be ready to step in and take control if the car's systems fail. Instead, experience with automation in other modes of transportation like aviation and rail suggests that the strategy will lead to more deaths like that of a Florida Tesla driver in May. Decades of research shows that people have a difficult time keeping their minds on boring tasks like monitoring systems that rarely fail and hardly ever require them to take action. Tesla will release a software update to improve the Autopilot system in its cars following a crash that killed a driver, founder Elon Musk has revealed. The electric car manufacturer's chief executive said he had been talking to the German supplier of the radar systems used in the vehicles about ways of improving the feature.

Kaushik Raghu, Senior Staff Engineer at Audi, is reflected in the passenger side visor mirror while demonstrating an Audi self driving vehicle on I-395 expressway in Arlington, Va., Friday, July 15, 2016. Experts say the development of self-driving cars over the coming decade depends on an unreliable assumption by most automakers: that the humans in them will be ready to step in and take control if the car's systems fail. Experience with automation in other modes of transportation suggests that strategy will lead to more deaths like that of a Florida Tesla driver in May. Kaushik Raghu, Senior Staff Engineer at Audi, is reflected in the passenger side visor mirror while demonstrating an Audi self driving vehicle on I-395 expressway in Arlington, Va., Friday, July 15, 2016. Experts say the development of self-driving cars over the coming decade depends on an unreliable assumption by most automakers: that the humans in them will be ready to step in and take control if the car's systems fail. Experience with automation in other modes of transportation suggests that strategy will lead to more deaths like that of a Florida Tesla driver in May.

Experts say the development of self-driving cars over the coming decade depends on an unreliable assumption by many automakers: that the humans in them will be ready to step in and take control if the car's systems fail. Instead, experience with automation in other modes of transportation like aviation and rail suggests that the strategy will lead to more deaths like that of a Florida Tesla driver in May. Decades of research shows that people have a difficult time keeping their minds on boring tasks like monitoring systems that rarely fail and hardly ever require them to take action. The human brain continually seeks stimulation. If the mind isn't engaged, it will wander until it finds something more interesting to think about.

Your eyes may be more sensitive than you ever thought possible. In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers report that our warm, wet, multicellular eyes have evolved such a high level of sensitivity that they can, on occasion, detect a single photon aimed at the retina. Even the most sophisticated man-made devices require a cool, temperature-controlled environment to achieve the same feat. A single photon is the the smallest particle that light is made of, and it is extremely hard to see. "It's not like a dim flash of light or anything like that," said Alipasha Vaziri, a quantum physicist at Rockefeller University in New York City and the senior author on the paper.

The ortho giant's purchase of French surgical robotics firm Medtech could give competitor Mazor Robotics a run for its money, according to one analyst. Zimmer Biomet has officially entered the surgical robotics market with its acquisition of a majority of shares in the French firm Medtech, maker of a robotics platform for neurological and spine procedures. The Warsaw, IN-based company, a leader in the musculoskeletal space, announced July 18 that it had purchased almost 59% of shares in Medtech and also intends to mount an all-cash simplified tender offer to acquire the remaining shares. Zimmer Biomet will continue to operate Medtech out of its current headquarters in Montepellier, France, which will also serve as a "center of excellence" for Zimmer Biomet's surgical robotics development efforts, according to a joint press release from the companies. With the Medtech acquisition, Zimmer Biomet gains the Rosa platform, which is currently used in 20 hospitals in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, according to the company's website.

Now Silicon Valley has found its next shiny new thing. And it does not have a "Like" button. In the pixelated cube world of "Minecraft," players can create almost anything their hearts desire. Now, Microsoft is using the popular world-building game to build and test artificial intelligence in the fictional environment. Microsoft has made a platform for (AI) research using a modified version of "Minecraft" that will become available to the public following a limited release to select researchers.

The satisfiability problem for SPARQL 1.0 patterns is undecidable in general, since the relational algebra can be emulated using such patterns. The goal of this paper is to delineate the boundary of decidability of satisfiability in terms of the constraints allowed in filter conditions. The classes of constraints considered are bound-constraints, negated bound- constraints, equalities, nonequalities, constant-equalities, and constant-nonequalities. The main result of the paper can be summarized by saying that, as soon as inconsistent filter conditions can be formed, satisfiability is undecidable. The key insight in each case is to find a way to emulate the set difference operation. Undecidability can then be obtained from a known undecidability result for the algebra of binary relations with union, composition, and set difference. When no inconsistent filter conditions can be formed, satisfiability is decidable by syntactic checks on bound variables and on the use of literals. Although the problem is shown to be NP-complete, it is experimentally shown that the checks can be implemented efficiently in practice. The paper also points out that satisfiability for the so-called ‘well-designed’ patterns can be decided by a check on bound variables and a check for inconsistent filter conditions.

Inbenta is a company specialized in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing which was born in Barcelona and nowadays has presence in 8 different countries (Spain, USA, Chile, Brasil, Mexico, France, The Netherlands and Singapore).

For the past year, Tara Hutchinson has been trying to figure out what will happen to a tall building made from thin steel beams when "the big one" hits. To do that, she has erected a six-story tower that rises like a lime-green finger from atop a shrub-covered hill on the outskirts of San Diego, California. Hundreds of strain gauges and accelerometers fill the building, so sensitive they can detect wind gusts pressing against the walls. Now, Hutchinson just needs an earthquake. In most of the world, this would be a problem.

A team of scientists has developed a model that can predict bat species most likely to transmit Ebola and other filoviruses. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillover events has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.