In one example of the problems that could arise, an 18-year-old sued Apple last month because, he alleged, a face recognition system in one of its stores falsely linked him to thefts. In another case, tenants at Atlantic Plaza Towers, an apartment building in New York City, are fighting their landlord's plan to replace a key-fob entry system with a face recognition system. The technology is discriminatory, the tenants say, because the tower residents are mostly people of color. "Why did [the landlord] choose our building to try this system out? Versus 11 other buildings that have a different makeup?" asks Icemae Downes, one of the residents.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A company working to make open-source self-driving software reliable enough to be used in commercially available vehicles said it had hired a former German car boss as it seeks to expand its reach. Palo Alto, California-based Apex.AI has added Karl-Thomas Neumann, an industry veteran who in the past served as the chief executive of Continental AG and led Volkswagen AG's China business, to its board. "Karl-Thomas is a great fit for us as we're trying to learn off what worked in the past and reach out to more industry players," Apex.AI co-founder Jan Becker told Reuters in an interview this week. The U.S. firm is expanding to Europe, opening an office in Munich, Germany in July. Founded by Becker and Dejan Pangercic, two longtime self-driving car engineers formerly at automotive technology supplier Bosch Corp, Apex.AI plans to make a safer and more reliable version of the so-called Robot Operating System, or ROS.

AI researchers at Samsung have developed a way to animate classic portraits, bringing them to life. In a new paper, researchers from Samsung's AI center in Moscow, along with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, detail how they built a system for modelling human faces using as few images as possible. The findings build on existing so-called "deepfake" techniques, which is used to graft one person's face onto a video of someone else. Read more: The AI tech behind scary-real celebrity "deepfakes" is being used to create completely fictitious faces, cats, and Airbnb listings Deepfake software usually relies on capturing lots of data about a person's face, usually using clips of video. The new technique focuses on using just a few photographs, or even just one still image.

In June 2018, Babylon Health hosted an event in London at which it showed off its latest digital healthcare development. It had developed artificial intelligence (AI) that it claimed was "better than a doctor". Considered a world-first, the AI proved it was on par with practising clinicians by taking tests, including a set of questions from the MRCGP exam – a test that has to be taken by every GP in the UK. Scoring higher than the average score over a period of five years, the AI achieved 81% during its first sitting. The industry and media alike were abuzz with excitement.

Robot bees are no replacement for our vital pollinators here on Earth. Up on the International Space Station, however, robots bearing the bee name could help spacefaring humans save precious time. On Friday, NASA astronaut Anne McClain took one of the trio of Astrobees out for a spin. Bumble and its companion Honey both arrived on the ISS a month ago, and are currently going through a series of checks. Bumble passed the first hurdle when McClain manually flew it around the Japanese Experiment Module.

Living in a dense urban environment brings many startup-fuelled conveniences, be it near instant delivery of food -- or pretty much whatever else you fancy -- to a whole range of wheels that can be hopped on (or into) to whisk you around at the tap of an app. But the biggest problem afflicting city dwellers is not some minor inconvenience. And there's no app to fix that. Nor can hardware solve this problem. But smart hardware can at least help. For about a month I've been road-testing a wi-fi connected air purifier made by Swedish company, Blueair. It uses an Hepa filtration system combined with integrated air quality sensors to provide real-time in-app feedback which can be reassuring or alert you to unseen problems. If you're even vaguely environmentally aware it's fascinating and not a little horrifying to see how variable the air quality is inside your home. Everyday stuff like cooking, cleaning and changing the sheets can cause drastic swings in PM 2.5 and tVOC levels.

Titanfall 2: This impressive sci-fi action game for Xbox One can be found for just $3 – at Dollarama stores. While you might pop into your local dollar store to pick up odds and ends – such as school supplies, snacks, or loot bag gifts – be sure to take a walk down the electronics aisle as you'll likely be surprised what you can find. So long as you have reasonable expectations when it comes to the quality and longevity, you won't be disappointed with most of what's available on the shelves. Hey, there are even some stellar games from yesteryear you can buy with spare change. Here's what I found, based on many visits to various discount retailers including Dollar Tree, Dollar General, 99¢ Depot, and Dollarama (in Canada).

Tech columnist Marc Saltzman suggests some accessories to improve mobile gaming including controllers, battery boosters and wireless headphones. Memorial Day is a day to remember those in the military who have died serving our country. The three-day weekend also unofficially marks the start of summer, which for many means barbecues or parties – or catching up with some recent video game releases you've had to put aside in recent weeks. Our choices include "Overwatch," which celebrates its third anniversary, "Days Gone," the PlayStation thriller released last month, and "The Division 2," a massive action game out in March. Three years in, Blizzard Entertainment's hero-centric first-person shooter continues to thrive.

The Game of Thrones ended this week and with it potentially tons of HBO Now subscriptions as well. That was clearly the morning-after chatter on Twitter. Why continue paying now that the show is history? To pay or not to pay and why do I have to subscribe to so many services I rarely watch are also huge questions in households that are being deluged with offers for more and more subscription services. This year alone, we'll see new ones from Apple and Disney, with others down the pike from WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal.

The first chapter is the Introductory chapter. The second chapter aims to provide an update of the recent advances in the field of rational design of PDE inhibitors. The third chapter includes designing a series of peptidic inhibitors that possessed a substrate transition-state analog and evaluating the structure-activity relationship of the designed inhibitors, based on docking and scoring, using the docking simulation software Molecular Operating Environment. The aim of the forth chapter is to develop structure-property relationships for the qualitative and quantitative prediction of the reverse-phase liquid chromatographic retention times of chlorogenic acids.