Whether it's varying your route to the shops, trying a new exercise, or going for a walk during lockdown, visiting more places and getting new and varied experiences could be the key to happiness, a new study reveals. They established that those who had been to the most places and spent a similar amount of time in each were more likely to say they felt'happy', 'excited' or'attentive'. MRI scans showed that, for these people, activity in the hippocampus and striatum - areas of the brain associated with the processing of novelty and reward - had increased. The findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, reveal a previously unknown connection between our daily physical environments and mental wellbeing. Participants were based in New York and Miami and asked to report how they were feeling by text each day.

Scientists claim to have found a small area of the brain in mice that can turn off their sense of pain like a light switch. US researchers say the amygdala, a small almond-shaped cluster of neurons located in each side of the brain, can turn off multiple parts of the brain that process pain. Beams of light activate a set of neurons in the amygdala, called'CeAga' neurons, which inhibit'pain-promotion centres' in the brain, they say. In experiments, activating the CeAga neurons dramatically reduced signs of discomfort in mice who had received a mild pain stimulus. While mice have a relatively large central amygdala compared to humans, it's likely humans have a similar system for controlling pain.

Google's next Pixel phone may do away with one of its predecessor's key features. According to 9to5Google, which cited sources from Google in a recent podcast, the tech giant may forego the inclusion of its Soli radar chip in its upcoming Pixel 5. Using radar, the chip enables features like hand gestures that allow users to control their device from a distance. In yesterday's show, we also touched on some things we're hearing about Pixel 5 from sources -- specifically that it will likely leave behind hobbies like Soli Specifically Soli-enabled users are able to wave a hand over phones to change music, take a call, interact with digital avatars and more. The chip will also be used to predict certain actions before users even tell the phone to carry them out. For instance, if the Pixel 4's alarm is going off, the phone will automatically quiet the ring once it senses a hand coming to shut it off.

The UK-based smart home company Hive finally works with HomeKit, 9to5Mac reports. A handful of Hive devices -- Hive Active Heating, Hive Active Lights and Hive Active Plugs -- can now be controlled via Apple's Home app, and customers can use HomeKit to control the smart home gadgets across Siri-compatible devices. There are a few caveats. You'll need the newer Hive Hub, and if your Hive Active Heating is connected to a hot water supply, HomeKit won't be able to control it. HomeKit support is not available for the Hive Wired Thermostat.

A fundamental goal of artificial intelligence research and development is the creation of machines that demonstrate what humans consider to be intelligent behavior. Effective knowledge representation and reasoning (KR&R) methods are a foundational requirement for intelligent machines. The development of these methods remains a rich and active area of artificial intelligence research in which advances have been motivated by many factors, including interest in new challenge problems, interest in more complex domains, shortcomings of current methods, improved computational support, increases in requirements to interact effectively with humans, and ongoing funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other agencies. The article by Richard Fikes and Tom Garvey, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning – A History of DARPA Leadership, highlights several decades of advances in KR&R, paying particular attention to research on planning and on the impact of DARPA's support. Fikes and Garvey are joined by David Israel, a principal scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International, who provides his own brief commentary on KR&R.

Uber's firing of thousands more of its employees this week, starting Monday, will bring the number of people it has dismissed from responsibility over the past year to more than 10,000, according to some estimates. Uber's previous round of job cuts saw it remove 3,700 people, or 14% of its total global workforce, in the first week of this month. Sources inside Uber, cited by Business Insider, said surviving employees are bracing for the latest round of mass layoffs, which will definitely run into thousands. Ahead of the layoffs, Uber last week told employees to be fired that they'd received 10 weeks' salary plus paid healthcare until the end of 2020. Employees to be fired this week will come from freight and the self-driving car unit and Advanced Technologies Group.

SparkCognition, a leading industrial artificial intelligence (AI) company, is pleased to announce that Japanese AI and Fintech company, MILIZE Co., Ltd. will offer Japanese financial institutions fraud detection and anti-money laundering solutions. These solutions will be built using the automated machine learning software of SparkCognition. With the enormous increase of online payment, internet banking, and QR code payments, illegal use of credit cards is on the rise. However, there are not many Japanese companies that have introduced advanced solutions for fraud detection that currently exist internationally. In addition, financial authorities and institutions around the world are expected to report strengthened measures against money laundering in August 2020. As a result, taking these steps against money laundering has become an urgent management issue in Japanese financial institutions.

In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue earned itself the title of becoming the first computer in the world to beat a chess champion when it defeated Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov. More than a decade later, in 2011, the computer giant's question-answering system Watson won the quiz show "Jeopardy!" Intelligent machines had arrived and finally given rest to the chatter around artificial intelligence (AI) that started in Dartmouth College, USA in 1956. There was no more disputing the transformative value of AI and the role it could play in helping businesses create customised products and engage with their clients more effectively. AI systems basically help perform tasks such that if the same task was to be carried out by humans, it would take decidedly longer.

Alpha Lee,co-founder and CSO of #ML company PostEra, read on Twitter that Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron facility, had identified a set of chemical fragments that attach to an important coronavirus protein. So Lee asked the Internet. Then PostEra applied their technology, pro-bono, to determine if and how those designs could be made. "There's an element of'we should do something' ...." says John Spencer, a prof of bio-organic chemistry at University of Sussex. "In times like these, when the world is closing down, science should open up," says Lee.

The GPU Technology Conference is the most exciting event for the AI and ML ecosystem. From researchers in academia to product managers at hyperscale cloud companies to IoT builders and makers, this conference has something relevant for each of them. As an AIoT enthusiast and a maker, I eagerly look forward to GTC. Due to the current COVID-19 situation, I was a bit disappointed to see the event turning into a virtual conference. But the keynote delivered by Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA made me forget that it was a virtual event.