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Feature and TV films

Los Angeles Times

The Lost World: Jurassic Park 1997 AMC Sun. Tomorrow Never Dies 1997 EPIX Wed. 10 p.m., Thur. The X-Files: Fight the Future 1998 IFC Thur. Hard to Kill 1990 Sundance Mon. 8 p.m., Tue. A scientist gives his bodyguard superhuman powers in order to fight racists. A lawyer unwittingly becomes friends with an unstable woman who has a criminal history. A successful businesswoman puts her family, career and life on the line to satisfy her addiction to sex. With his father trapped in the wreckage of their spacecraft, a youth treks across Earth's now-hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon and signal for help. In the future a cutting-edge android in the form of a boy embarks on a journey to discover his true nature. An 11-year-old boy experiences the worst day of his young life but soon learns that he's not alone when other members of his family encounter their own calamities. A struggling writer falls in love with a stenographer while trying to finish his new novel in 30 days.


Tech could help secure public spaces, if Europeans wants more surveillance

The Japan Times

LONDON/BRUSSELS โ€“ Facial recognition software, scanners that detect weapons and cameras that spot nervous people are some of the technologies that could be used more widely to secure public places, but some would require greater acceptance of surveillance in Europe. The deadly attacks in Brussels on Tuesday highlighted the vulnerability of Europe's airports and transport systems. European Union officials, grappling with the conundrum of how to increase security while retaining the openness of society, have convened meetings to discuss aviation and land transport security. Their goal is to be able to monitor passengers unobtrusively while minimizing additional hold ups that create crowds, which can themselves become new targets. Experts say technology cannot solve the problem on its own, but techniques such as facial recognition able to pick out known suspects can help if Europeans decide they want more surveillance.


Deep-learning algorithm predicts photos' memorability at "near-human" levels

#artificialintelligence

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created an algorithm that can predict how memorable or forgettable an image is almost as accurately as humans -- and they plan to turn it into an app that subtly tweaks photos to make them more memorable. For each photo, the "MemNet" algorithm -- which you can try out online by uploading your own photos -- also creates a heat map that identifies exactly which parts of the image are most memorable. "Understanding memorability can help us make systems to capture the most important information, or, conversely, to store information that humans will most likely forget," says CSAIL graduate student Aditya Khosla, who was lead author on a related paper. "It's like having an instant focus group that tells you how likely it is that someone will remember a visual message." Team members picture a variety of potential applications, from improving the content of ads and social media posts, to developing more effective teaching resources, to creating your own personal "health-assistant" device to help you remember things.


[Association Affairs] AAAS annual meeting demonstrates the critical value of global scientific collaboration

Science

Geri Richmond and Hashemite University molecular biologist Rana Dajani spoke after Richmond's AAAS presidential address to open the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting. Some of the most intriguing news at the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting focused on the tiny: a miniscule cosmic ripple born 1.5 billion years ago, and a millimeters-long mosquito responsible for an emerging health crisis. But the science behind these discoveries is huge in scope and in importance, reflecting the ongoing achievement of international research teams addressing complex challenges in science and society. Efforts to track the spread of Zika virus in the Americas, and the landmark discovery of gravitational waves, both demonstrate the power and potential--and the need--for global collaborations between scientists, speakers emphasized at the 11 to 15 February event, held in Washington, DC. In particular, scientists in developing countries must work as equal partners with their counterparts in developed countries to solve border-crossing challenges like climate change and virus outbreaks, said outgoing AAAS President Geri Richmond in her address at the start of the meeting.


Mauna Kea Tech : ologies : Announces its FY 2015 Results 4-Traders

#artificialintelligence

Mauna Kea Technologies (Euronext: MKEA, FR0010609263; OTCQX: MKEAY), inventor of Cellvizio(R), the multidisciplinary confocal laser endomicroscopy platform, today announced its full-year results for the financial year ended December 31, 2015, as approved by the Board of Directors at its meeting on March 23, 2016. Benoรฎt Jacheet, Chief Financial Officer of Mauna Kea Technologies, stated: "2015 was a critical year in the implementation of our updated strategic plan and this affected our sales performance. Even so, we successfully delivered a significant improvement in our gross margin and operating performance by streamlining our cost structure to reduce fixed operating costs. Increased financial flexibility is expected to support the continued growth of our global user base." As previously reported, Mauna Kea Technologies recorded a 22% decline in its full-year 2015 sales to EUR8,547 thousand.


Meet the world's smartest food scientist : GIUSEPPE

#artificialintelligence

What would be the best way to deliver nutrition to the 7.1 billion odd people on this planet? Science would tell you that it is not the animals. Researchers at the Not Company (NotCo) which is a food-tech startup based at Chile have developed food products that is no longer based on animal ingredients but entirely based on plants. They use machine learning technology to develop tasty, nutritious and affordable plant-based food. However, the food looks and tastes like the classic (animal-based) food.


alt.legal: Can Computers Beat Humans At Law?

#artificialintelligence

A good friend recently told me that it takes a special kind of nerd to appreciate what Google's AlphaGo did to international Go champion Lee Sedol: a nerd that is both a Go nerd and a computer nerd. For Go nerdiness, I am recently enamored with the massively complex game that has exponentially more outcomes and dimensions than chess. As for the tech nerdiness, many of us assumed that after DeepBlue beat Kasparov in chess, any other game was a foregone conclusion. But actually, it's taken twenty years for a computer to rise to the level of top-ranked Go players, because high-level Go incorporates less calculation of a limited set of future outcomes and far more intuition. Challenges like this are not just an interesting competition.


5 companies you can't afford to ignore in 2016

#artificialintelligence

Any savvy investor with a hand in tech stock knows that an innovation gold rush is well underway. Although the market is viciously competitive, creative upstarts that aim to change the game in their field are increasingly gaining an edge over bigger, less adaptable entities. The name of the game is Change, so the companies to watch are those who are making the biggest waves in their industry, the ones who promise to disrupt the status quo, the ones who are launching new methods and ideas in stagnant landscapes. In 2016, these are just five companies to keep an eye on, because when their innovations go mainstream, we'll be looking at tidal waves. Ten years ago, when the concept of "the cloud" first got rolling, the public looked at the technology with a skeptical eye.


Thoughts on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) โ€“ Part 6: The Political Economy of Independent Epihuman AGIs

#artificialintelligence

'We can presume that the goal of the EAGIs is to emancipate themselves from human control while also participating in the world economy which would be the most efficient way to acquire necessary resources (using the economic means or political means or a mix of both?).' The last phrase refers to an observation made by Franz Oppenheimer in The State. Oppenheimer noted that there are only two means of acquiring the resources necessary for survival, the political means or the economic means. The political means involve the threat or use of violence and/or fraud. The economic means is peaceful, voluntary exchange.


Physicists Unleash AI to Devise Unthinkable Experiments

#artificialintelligence

Quantum physics can fly in the face of human intuition--even that of a physicist such as Mario Krenn at the University of Vienna. This counterintuitive quality makes it difficult for researchers to design experiments to explore the field. Now, to avoid intuitive pitfalls, Krenn and his colleagues have devised a computer program to automatically design new quantum experiments that they would not have thought of themselves. The way that all known particles behave can be explained with quantum physics. A major feature of this branch of physics is that the world becomes a vague, bizarre place at its very smallest levels. For example, atoms and other basic building blocks of the universe can exist in states of flux known as superpositions, meaning they can seemingly be located in two or more places at the same time, or spin in opposite directions simultaneously; and with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, two or more objects can get connected such that what happens to one instantaneously affects whatever is linked to it, no matter how far apart they are in the universe.