Delivery drones could hitch a ride by landing on public transport to deliver to far away locations. Most prototype delivery drones can currently travel around 12 miles to make a delivery before their battery fails. This range could be extended by about four-and-half times if the agile machines landed on the roofs of buses or trams to piggyback in the right direction, finds study. Shushman Choudhury, who led the research at Stanford University in California told The New Scientist: 'We already have this existing, generally decent infrastructure for most good cities and we're just benefiting from that. 'You could now service deliveries over a city while having far fewer depots.'

To effectively manage and treat tremors in PD patients, there is an urgent need for an approach that can continuously measure tremors accurately without the need for patients to perform specific tasks as they go about their daily activities. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the University of Rochester Medical Center, are teaching machines to accomplish this job. They have developed algorithms that, combined with wearable sensors, can continuously monitor patients and estimate total Parkinsonian tremor as they perform a variety of free body movements in their natural environments. Results of the study, published in the journal Sensors, indicate that this new approach holds great potential for providing a full spectrum of patients' tremors throughout the course of the day. "A single, clinical examination in a doctor's office often fails to capture a patient's complete continuum of tremors in his or her routine daily life," said Behnaz Ghoraani, Ph.D., senior author, an assistant professor in FAU's Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a fellow of FAU's Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems (I-SENSE) and FAU's Brain Institute (I-BRAIN).

A University of Alberta artificial intelligence expert is behind a project meant to provide isolated seniors with companionship. Osmar Zaïane is the project head for the Automated Nursing Program, an in-development chatbot designed to simulate dynamic conversation and provide social fulfilment for elders experiencing loneliness. We don't have enough nursing homes for everybody and not everyone wants to go to nursing homes," Zaïane said. "Often they lose their partner in life, so they live at home, alone, and their families are far away. The project differs from popular chatbots like Siri and Alex, which are task-oriented, meaning they respond to inputs to perform functions like playing a song or turning on the lights.

One reason for the widespread interest in AI is that it has the potential to reduce the degree of bias underpinning human decisions. For example, meta-analytic studies have long highlighted the pervasive nature of bias in hiring and recruitment. Even in the rich and liberal world, there are many biases at play in the workplace, which account for the unmeritocratic or unfair advantage that some groups have over others, irrespective of their actual talent or potential: sexism, racism, and ageism, to name just a few. But one of the most prominent biases is hardly ever discussed or acknowledged, namely the beauty bias -- also known as "lookism." Indeed, the existence of a beauty premium in the labor market is well-documented.

Starbucks Corp. is getting personal with its customers, enlisting help from advanced technologies that the company says will kick its digital capabilities up a notch. Kevin Johnson, Starbucks' SBUX, 0.44% chief executive, talked on the post-earnings conference call with analysts about Deep Brew, an artificial intelligence program, saying it has been percolating for the past year. The company has been ramping up its investment in artificial intelligence during the course of the program. "Deep Brew will increasingly power our personalization engine, optimize store labor allocations and drive inventory management in stores," said Johnson, according to a FactSet transcript. With more customers signing up for the company's loyalty program, the opportunity for personalization is increasing.

The reality of current self-driving systems doesn't match up with consumers' expectations, he said. "What we've done is we've misled the public into thinking this car is going to be like a human brain to be able to really figure out new things and say, 'Here's something I hadn't seen before, but I know what's going on here, and here's how I should handle it,' " Wozniak said. "A human can do that." His statements come as more automakers and governments are beginning to predict that artifcial intelligence (AI) and self-driving cars might take longer to become reality, in the wake of fatal accidents by "autopilot" cars that have shown the complexity of the technology. Component manufacturers and venture companies working on the technology are revising their timeline for AI deployment significantly, Toyota's Executive Vice-President Shigeki Tomoyama said at the Tokyo motor show.

Remember when researchers predicted that professional services jobs in industries like insurance, tax and accounting, and finance and legal would soon be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI)? That was in 2013 when AI was just starting to peak on the hype cycle, and headlines like "Your Next Accountant Will Be a Robot" and "The Robots are Coming for Wall Street" were being cooked up daily. Today, six years into the evolution of AI in professional services, it's safe to say that the dystopian version of the future has not materialized. In fact, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of accounting professionals is projected to increase 10% over the next 10 years, which is faster than average for all other professions. In fact, there is a growing talent shortage in the industry that has many large and mid-size accounting firms struggling to fill open roles.

With the rise of digitisation and a decline in readers' attention spans, news consumption has definitely changed. People are constantly on the lookout for mobile-friendly and easy-to-read content, especially on social media and messaging applications. However, with the plethora of information out there, users find it difficult to discern the genuine from the fake and get the context of the news. NewsBytes, a Gurugram-based startup, is striving to address this by providing everyday news in a concise and contextual manner by drawing on the strengths of artificial intelligence (AI). The startup has built a digital platform, as a web portal and a mobile application, which integrates the relevant background information for all the news content.

Commerce moved beyond brick-and-mortar stores, seized the online space, and is steadily crippling into mobile. Modern online shopping offers unparalleled flexibility of access and selection of available interfaces. You can shop away while on a bus. You can buy your next favorite gadget while relaxing on a lawn on a beautiful sunny day. That's why mobile commerce is such a fast-growing niche that caters specifically to smartphone users and their respective app ecosystems.

During my first job after college, I worked at a startup in the customer service department. I talked to customers, figured out what was concerning them and tried to stop them from canceling their service. Quickly, I learned that I wanted to solve the customer problems I was hearing about daily. That desire led to me working more closely with engineering teams. Eventually, that path took me into my current career in technology.