The US military is testing delivery drones that can transport supplies over long distances and be thrown away after each use. Made of cheap plywood, the bigger version of the two gliders being tested can carry over 700 kilograms, or roughly 1800 pounds. As reported in IEE Spectrum, the scientists at Logistic Gliders, Inc. revealed that their gliders just successfully completed a series of tests with US Marines. If cleared for mass production, the LG-1K and its bigger counterpart, the LG-2K, could cost as little as a few hundred dollars each. Using unmanned aircraft for delivery is an idea both the military and private sector have explored for years. Traditional aircraft guzzle fuel, cost money to purchase and maintain and require a human pilot.

Two years ago, we spotted an interesting delivery drone concept at a military expo in Washington, D.C., called TACAD, or TACtical Air Delivery. The idea was to use gliders made out of cheap, disposable materials to deliver a substantial amount of supplies over long distances. You'd have to launch these gliders from larger aircraft, but they'd be able to deliver hundreds of kilograms of supplies over a hundred kilometers away, and then they'd just be left where they landed, simple as that. Like many concepts that we see at trade shows, we didn't necessarily expect much to come of this idea, but we're delighted to report that the folks behind it--Logistic Gliders Inc. (LGI), based in Dixon, Calif.--have recently concluded a successful series of flight tests with the U.S. Marine Corps. There are two different kinds of gliders that LGI is working on: The LG-1K, which can carry about 300 kg, and the larger LG-2K, which can carry over 700 kg.

In this article, I'm interviewing a veteran data scientist, Dr Stylianos (Stelios) Kampakis, about his career to date and how he helps decision makers across a range of businesses understand how data science can benefit them. While data science is a field showing immense growth at present, it's somewhat nebulous in its description. I think there's a lot of uncertainty as to exactly what it is and how to apply it. Fortunately, Stelios is an expert data scientist with a mission to educate the public about the power of data science and AI. He is a member of the Royal Statistical Society, honorary research fellow at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies and CEO of The Tesseract Academy.

UPS is teaming up with autonomous delivery drone startup Matternet to experiment with using drones to deliver medical supplies, the companies announced on Tuesday. Starting today, the supplies will be delivered via Matternet's M2 quadcopters to WakeMed hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. The drone delivery program will be overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration and the North Carolina Department of Transportation. It will be small at first: Matternet's drones can only carry payloads of up to five pounds over distances of up to 12.5 miles. Here's how the companies describe the delivery program: Throughout the WakeMed program, a medical professional will load a secure drone container with a medical sample or specimen – such as a blood sample – at one of WakeMed's nearby facilities.

In the latest of our Predictions series we take a look at what the future of healthcare will look like. Could artificial intelligence and smart technology improve every stage of our lives? We look at how the future of healthcare will affect us from birth including wearable tech and the internet of things to capturing baseline health data we can use to monitor our health as we grow older. As part of the government's plan to build a Britain fit for the future, £300 million will go towards developing the innovations and new technologies of tomorrow. From womb to tomb Health scanning and data will become ever present in our lives – even from the very start of life.

In the late 1980s, Canadian master's student Yoshua Bengio became captivated by an unfashionable idea. A handful of artificial intelligence researchers was trying to craft software that loosely mimicked how networks of neurons process data in the brain, despite scant evidence it would work. "I fell in love with the idea that we could both understand the principles of how the brain works and also construct AI," says Bengio, now a professor at the University of Montreal. More than 20 years later, the tech industry fell in love with that idea, too. Neural networks are behind the recent bloom of progress in AI that has enabled projects such as self-driving cars and phone bots practically indistinguishable from people.

Liv., the lifestyle digital bank by Emirates NBD and the fastest growing bank in the UAE, has partnered with US-based Kasisto, to introduce Olivia, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. It added that the chatbot can help customers get quick answers on a range of services and can also answer queries on how much customers have spent last month on groceries or in restaurants, helping them plan and manage their finances better. Olivia can also seamlessly hand over the conversation to the Liv. Chatbots are AI-enabled computer programs designed to simulate human communication, allowing them to answer customer queries in real time. "Virtual assistants are playing an increasingly important part in our daily lives and our new chatbot Olivia will offer millennial customers a new way to engage with and receive information and instant insights on their spending and finances," said Jayash Patel, head of Liv.

Developing and commercializing artificial intelligence has proved an ethical mine field for companies like Google. The company has seen its algorithms accused of perpetuating race and gender bias and fueling efforts to build autonomous weapons. The search giant now hopes that a team of philosophers, engineers, and policy experts will help it navigate the moral hazards presented by artificial intelligence without press scandals, employee protests, or legal trouble. Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president for global affairs and chief legal officer, announced the creation of a new independent body to review the company's AI practices at EmTech Digital, an AI conference in San Francisco organized by MIT Technology Review. Walker said that the group, known as the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), would review the company's projects and plans and produce reports to help determine if any of them contravene the company's own AI principles.

The impending demise of Moore's Law has begun to broadly impact the computing research community.38 Moore's Law has driven the computing industry for many decades, with nearly every aspect of society benefiting from the advance of improved computing processors, sensors, and controllers. Behind these products has been a considerable research industry, with billions of dollars invested in fields ranging from computer science to electrical engineering. Fundamentally, however, the exponential growth in computing described by Moore's Law was driven by advances in materials science.30,37 From the start, the power of the computer has been limited by the density of transistors. Progressive advances in how to manipulate silicon through advancing lithography methods and new design tools have kept advancing computing in spite of perceived limitations of the dominant fabrication processes of the time.37 There is strong evidence that this time is indeed different, and Moore's Law is soon to be over for good.3,38 Already, Dennard scaling, Moore's Law's lesser known but equally important parallel, appears to have ended.11 Dennard's scaling refers to the property that the reduction of transistor size came with an equivalent reduction of required power.8