The area burned by wildfires each year across the Western United States has increased by more than 300 percent over the past three decades, and much of this increase is due to human-caused warming. Warmer air holds more moisture, and the thirsty air sucks this from plants, trees, and soil, leaving forest vegetation and ground debris drier and easier to ignite. Future climate change, accompanied by warming temperatures and increased aridity, is expected to continue this trend, and will likely exacerbate and intensify wildfires in areas where fuel is abundant. Park Williams, a Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory associate research professor and a 2016 Center for Climate and Life Fellow, studies climatology, drought, and wildfires. He has received a $641,000 grant from the Zegar Family Foundation that he'll use to advance understanding of the past and future behavior of wildfires. His goal is to create a tool to help scientists understand why wildfires in Western U.S. states have changed over the last century, ways they may evolve in the future, and how humans can most effectively respond to them.

The Beatles were a huge cultural phenomenon. Their timeless music still resonates with people today, both young and old. In my humble opinion, they are the greatest band to have ever lived¹. Their songs are full of interesting lyrics and deep ideas. When you've seen beyond yourself Then you may find peace of mind is waiting there² However, the thing that made the Beatles great was their versatility.

As machine learning applications increase, the threats of data poisoning also rise, making it imperative for organizations to secure their machine learning data against fraudulent manipulation. FREMONT, CA: Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models are algorithms designed to make decisions and perform actions based on the data they ingest. However, like all data-based systems, they are not invincible to attacks. One of the most common threats to ML is ML poisoning, which involves feeding fraudulent or misleading data into the ML algorithms. Business data is based on data, and any errors in the data can lead to bad decisions.

Clinicians who order common diagnostic chest x-rays for patients have been sitting on a goldmine of unused prognostic information. The radiographs, used since the 19th century to detect specific abnormalities, could soon be repurposed to identify long-term mortality risk -- with a little help from machine learning. Using data from two large randomized trials, researchers have developed a convolutional neural network, called CXR-risk, that stratifies participants by all-cause mortality risk. They trained the artificial intelligence (AI) system with 85,000 x-rays and follow-up data from more than 40,000 individuals. Extracting information from single chest radiographs, the system found a graded association between risk score and mortality.

I was alarmed to read this week that the Alabama Senate has passed a bill to outlaw abortion under almost all circumstances, including cases of rape and/or incest. Under the bill, doctors face 10 years in prison for attempting to terminate a pregnancy and 99 years for carrying out the procedure. Fortunately, for decades, women's reproductive rights groups, health providers, technologists, and hackers have been working together internationally to support a women's right to choose. They've created a legacy of work that may be able to help. The worst major city for abortion access is Rapid City, South Dakota, where women must travel 318 miles to get an abortion.

Submittable, the leading application review and opportunity marketplace, announced a $10 million Series B funding led by Next Coast Ventures with continued participation by returning investors True Ventures, Next Frontier Capital and Flywheel Ventures. The financing will further accelerate the company's ongoing investment in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered matching, review technology and mobile apps connecting more opportunity-seekers with organizations of all sizes. "We haven't just built one of the cleanest and easy-to-use UI's out there, we've perfected the customizable review processes for hundreds of use-cases and are now building out a suite of AI-matching technologies that will help any organization find the right opportunity for them." Since launching in 2010 and graduating from Y Combinator's accelerator program, Submittable has provided over 10,000 organizations a platform for accepting, reviewing and ranking more than 20 million digital submissions and applications from over three million users. The "CRM for submissions" was launched by three creatives -- a writer, a filmmaker and a musician -- who wanted not just to simplify and improve the process of submitting their own work, but also wanted to create a marketplace to match the submissions with real opportunities across many industries including publishing, academia, philanthropy, contests and corporate giving.

Ursula von der Leyen was elected on Tuesday as the new President of the European Commission by 383 Members of the new European Parliament. She is the first woman to hold the office. A centre-right politician and close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she was until this week Germany's defense minister. So what does her election mean for EU tech policy over the next five years? We did get a glimpse of her priorities in her Tuesday morning speech addressing the plenary of the European Parliament ahead of her confirmation vote.

In the early 1500s Lorenzo Lotto and Giovan Battista Moroni began the psychological analysis through portraiture. From this moment, the focus on the sitter's identity becomes the leitmotif in the history of portrait. Portraits interpret the external beauty, social status, and then go beyond our body and face. A portrait becomes a psychological analysis and a deep reflection on our existence. AI Portraits Ars uses Artificial Intelligence to reproduce artistic human portraits, with different styles and levels of abstraction.

A new algorithm could enable quicker and more accurate detection of severe weather. When forecasting weather, meteorologists use a number of models and data sources to track shapes and movements of clouds that could indicate severe storms. However, with increasingly expanding weather data sets and looming deadlines, it is nearly impossible for them to monitor all storm formations -- especially smaller-scale ones -- in real time. Now, there is a computer model that can help recognize severe storms more quickly and accurately, thanks to a team of researchers partially funded by the National Science Foundation. The researchers from Penn State, AccuWeather, Inc. and the University of Almería in Spain developed a framework based on machine learning linear classifiers -- a kind of artificial intelligence -- that detects from satellite images rotational movements in clouds that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

AI has developed from the early years of pure research to something we will take for granted as part of our daily business and home lives. Three big trends drive the adoption of AI. Let's take a brief look at each of them and what they might mean for your organization today, tomorrow and in the future. Each of these alone would not be enough to bring about "the life of AI." It is a chain of technology that together brings about the perfect ecosystem to deliver the AI storm.