Native palms, such as the Sabal palmetto, play an important role in maintaining the ecological balance in Florida. As a potential side-effect of modern globalization, new phytopathogens like Texas Phoenix Palm Decline (TPPD) have been introduced into forest systems that threaten native palms. This presents new challenges for forestry managers and geographers. Advances in remote sensing have assisted the practice of forestry by providing spatial metrics regarding the type, quantity, location, and the state of health for trees for many years. Spatial details regarding the general palm decline in Florida were elucidated by using the tools found in Hexagon's ERDAS IMAGINE software in conjunction with R classification programing packages.

For its inaugural re:Mars conference, Amazon invited attendees it calls "dreamers and builders" -- business leaders, scientists and others who are making contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. During the Wednesday keynote at the Las Vegas event, Amazon brandished its own AI credentials, making the case to its potential customers and partners that its teams -- across the business -- are pushing forward the stat of the art. Across every step of its e-commerce operations, AI is at work: Amazon shared the way it uses AI to power e-commerce forecasting, and it showcased StyleSnap, an AI-powered feature that lets shoppers in the Amazon app takes a picture of a piece of clothing and find similar items for sale. Amazon also revealed newest fulfillment center robots, called Pegasus and Xanthus, as well as a new drone that Amazon says will start commercial deliveries within months. For in-store shopping, Amazon revealed new details about the technology that drives its Amazon Go stores.

As more data is gathered from individuals, and artificial intelligence (AI) is employed to make important decisions, we must continue to ask precisely who is benefiting. We must also be intentional about inclusive and ethical AI. Only then can the benefits of AI be equitably distributed. For example, in the last few years, advances in AI have renewed hope in the capacity of technology to help drive precision healthcare--the ability to deliver the right treatment to the right person at the right time seems ever more attainable. With enough health data, we can train algorithms to make precise medical decisions.

Once upon a time, media content had a price. To consume it, you had to pay for it. Years passed, and with advances in technology along came digital piracy. The problem grew significantly with Internet making its way into everyone's home and then expanded exponentially when the same technology was made accessible from everyone's hands. Some media domains, such as live sports, only later began being exploited by modern day pirates.

Business competition is increasingly defined not just by product quality or delivery logistics, but also by unique data assets and the ability to capitalize on them. It should be no surprise, then, that as companies invest heavily in AI strategy and execution, data scientists find themselves in heavy demand. The data scientist star has actually been in ascendance for some time. In 2012, the Harvard Business Review infamously declared the position "the sexiest job of the 21st century." More recently, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) rosily projected six-figure salaries and thousands of new positions for the years ahead.

Take a look around any big hospital and you'll find plenty of imposing technology: surgical robots, artificial organs, wireless brain sensors, three-dimensional imaging visualizations. But you have to look harder to find what's been touted for years as the future of medicine: artificial intelligence, or the use of computers to reason, learn and make critical decisions in patient care, with little or no human involvement. The medical field's lofty dreams of unleashing the power of artificial intelligence to transform medicine have yet to materialize in a major way. The thought of replacing doctors with machines remains a science-fiction fantasy. Even so, health-information experts say artificial intelligence has its place and can perform valuable tasks, from helping doctors identify diseases earlier to matching call-center customers at an insurance company with the person most qualified to help.

Recorded live during ConTech 2018 - London UK For more information about this and the next ConTech Live event please visit www.contechlive.com Hear from experts on machine learning, artificial intelligence, content publishing, data science, data technology, and data science and how to make the most of whats happening now in data tech for your publishing and data needs.

Sandie Young started at the agency during the summer of 2012, with experience in magazine journalism and a passion for content marketing. Sandie is a graduate of Ohio University, with a Bachelor of Science from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

The evolution of AI has been a rich tale of exploration since its origins in the 1950's, with the last decade providing an especially dramatic chapter of breakthrough innovations. But I believe the real story is what comes next -- when the disruption stabilizes and machine learning transitions from a staple of Silicon Valley headlines to an everyday technology. It'll be a far longer chapter -- perhaps decades -- in which developers all over the world use a mature set of tools to transform their industries. In 2019, we find ourselves at the start of this new chapter. AI has undergone a remarkable refinement in recent years, as barriers to entry have fallen and a wide range of products, services, resources, and best practices have emerged. As our focus shifts -- finally -- from AI itself to the impact that AI can have on your business, the question is no longer how this technology works, but what it can do for you.

Gesture-based interfaces are applications that allow users to control devices using hand and other body parts. Today, they are found in devices used in home automation, shopping, consumer electronics, virtual reality and augmented reality gaming, navigation, and driving, among others. A study reported that the global gesture recognition in the retail market is projected to grow by 27.54 percent from 2018 to 2023. To date, some of the top producers of gestural interface products include Intel, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. According to research titled Hand Gesture Recognition Using Computer Vision, gesture recognition is done in two ways: data glove sensor devices that transform hand and finger motions into digital data, and computer vision which uses a camera. The second method may let humans interact more naturally with machines because it leaves their hands free to move.