Last summer it was reported that patents had been filed in the USA and Europe listing an artificial intelligence system as the inventor. The patents in question were for a food container and a warning light and were filed by Stephen Thaler on behalf of DABUS (an AI system). Those applications have been considered, and on 22 April the US patent and trademark office (USPTO) reached the same verdict as the UK and European offices, denying the patents. In his application Thaler asserted that the inventions were generated by DABUS (which he dubs a "creativity machine"), and that the system was not created to solve any particular problem. He claims it was, therefore, the machine, not a person, that recognised the novelty of the invention. The USPTO ruled that applications require the inventor to be a "natural person", and denied the patents on that basis.

When Switzerland decided to slash congestion and pollution by removing tens of thousands of cargo trucks from its Alpine highways, it built the Gotthard Tunnel, the longest and deepest rail tunnel in the world. This feat of modern engineering is a boon to civilian and commercial entities alike, but such ingenious construction projects aren't the only way we can improve the future of transportation and logistics. Instead, in an increasingly competitive and connected world where just 29 percent of transportation and logistics (T&L) CEOs are confident their company's revenues will grow in the next year, more and more T&L companies are turning to new, cloud-based machine learning services that can help them become more efficient and drive a better experience for their customers. This convergence of the cloud and AI is enabling widespread innovation in autonomous technology, especially mobility. That's game-changing, as 68 percent of heads of T&L companies believe that changes in core technologies of service provision will disrupt their industry in the next five years, according to PWC, while 65 percent anticipate progress in distribution channels will do the same.

Many countries have introduced social distancing measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand if these recommendations are effective, we need to assess how far they are being followed. To assist with this, our team has developed an urban data dashboard to help understand the impact of social distancing measures on people and vehicle movement within a metropolitan city in real time. The Newcastle University Urban Observatory was established to better understand the dynamics of movement in a city. It makes use of thousands of sensors and data sharing agreements to monitor movement around the city, from traffic and pedestrian flow to congestion, car park occupancy and bus GPS trackers.

America's meat processing crisis, mainly triggered by labor shortages and plant closings due to coronavirus spread, is set to unleash a new wave of automation across plants to ease labor and health woes. Bloomberg Law reports JBS SA, the world's largest meat producer, is preparing to install robots in slaughterhouses to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 among human employees working on the production line. JBS SA CFO Guilherme Cavalcanti recently said the Brazilian processing company expects to expand automation at its facilities across the world. Cavalcanti said the adoption of automation started before the pandemic as labor tightened at US plants due to a decline in immigration sparked by the Trump administration. He said labor shortages have developed in the US as the virus infects workers and shutters plants.

Human trafficking is a huge problem which has at times proved so difficult to solve. Largely operated by criminal organisations, there is often a lot of money involved in trafficking. Whilst money remains a massive incentive for criminal gangs, often trafficking is motivated by pure greed and lust – notoriously the'grooming gang' of Rochdale. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently been crucial in bringing traffickers to justice, so how do we use AI to put a stop to this? AI is already having a huge impact on human trafficking investigations in some parts of the worlds. Traffic Jam is a project started by American tech company Marinus Analytics.

Elon Musk has suggested introducing an augmented reality game similar to Pokemon Go that Tesla owners could play while driving. The Tesla boss initially tweeted "Minecraft has amazing legs," in reference to the hugely popular video game, before speculating whether it would be possible to develop games for the electric cars. He then called out to his 33 million followers to see if any were able to integrate games through Tesla's operating system, which could be displayed on the vehicles' 12.3-inch LCD screen. "Anyone think they can get a good multiplayer Minecraft working on Teslas?" he tweeted. "Or maybe create a game that interacts virtually with reality like Pokemon Go while driving safely?

As the new coronavirus burns its way across the world, scientists are rushing to find ways to identify those who have been infected -- including those who have recovered from COVID-19. Those people, the thinking goes, may be immune to the deadly virus and could theoretically help restart the economy without fear of reinfection. One key piece of this puzzle is rolling out what are known as serological tests that look for specific antibodies in a person's blood. So far, they have been used to estimate how much of the population has been exposed in different areas, such as New York City and Los Angeles. But what are these tests, and can they really help to identify who is immune to SARS-CoV-2? From how they work to what they tell us, here's everything you need to know about coronavirus antibody testing.

What great data analysts do--and why every organization needs them.

The demand for convenient retail is the main force shaping the industry today and both online shops and brick-and-mortar stores strive to offer the best experience to their customers. And while there are many strategies devised to increase customer satisfaction in digital retail, physical stores still struggle with meeting shoppers' expectations. At Abto Software, we have already developed an easily deployable Cashierless Checkout for retail outlets that eliminates queues and ensures the growth of the store attendance. Today we offer yet another retail automation technique: camera-based product recognition technology for smart fridges and intelligent vending machines. Abto Computer Vision engineers have developed an AI-driven grocery product recognition model for vending machines and smart fridges.