As expected, the European and Russian space agencies have delayed their next mission to Mars from 2018 to 2020. It is a decision that has been well telegraphed in recent months, with both officials and industry chiefs expressing their doubts that all the hardware could be made ready in time. The mission would see a rover landed on the Red Planet. Capable of drilling up to 2m below the surface, it would search for signs of past or present life. It is the second part of the so-called ExoMars programme. The first part - a satellite to study the atmosphere of the planet - was launched successfully in March and should arrive in October.

Nightmare scenarios involving Artificial Intelligence typically involve computers that become too smart for their own good and turn against their creators. Well, now we have an entirely different cause to be wary of AI, and the culprit is human rather than machine. Dave Gershgorn reports in Popular Science that a risk more imminent and more worrisome than HAL comes with everyday devices using even rather basic versions of AI: Siri (the virtual assistant on Apple iPhones), Alexa (Amazon's assistant) and Google Now (for Android phones). The problem isn't that the computer programs are too smart; it's that they're too gullible. Like the prisoners chained in Plato's cave who mistake manufactured shadows on the wall with reality, Siri and her virtual posse tend to believe what they hear.

Two EteRNA players check out a molecule designed using the online game. The display above shows output from a laser microscope that tests the new designs. Two EteRNA players check out a molecule designed using the online game. The display above shows output from a laser microscope that tests the new designs. Though it's the world's top infectious killer, tuberculosis is surprisingly tricky to diagnose.

Despite more women in the workplace and increasingly multicultural cities, stereotypes are holding firm. And now neuroscientists have discovered our stereotypical views can warp how our brains see faces, ultimately forcing them to conform to preconceptions. The discovery sheds light on how unintended bias affect the way people behave, and why it such biases are so hard to shake. Despite more women in the workplace and increasingly multicultural cities (stock image of a black man is pictured) stereotypes are holding firm. The research was carried out by Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor in New York University's Department of Psychology and his colleagues.

Qualcomm Technologies, with the introduction of the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine, is the first mobile SOC provider to offer a deep learning toolkit optimized for mobile. This SDK will allow OEMs to run their own neural network models on Snapdragon 820 devices such as smart phones, security cameras, automobiles and drones, all without a connection to the cloud. Common deep learning user experiences that can be realized with the SDK are scene detection, text recognition, object tracking and avoidance, gesturing, face recognition and natural language processing. The Zeroth Machine Intelligence Platform is a Snapdragon-optimized software platform designed for mobile machine learning. Zeroth technology currently drives visual intelligence software such as Snapdragon Scene Detect and advanced malware detection software found in Snapdragon Smart Protect.

Facebook's annual F8 conference is an opportunity for the social media giant to showcase its latest technologies and developments to attendees from the developer community. One of the key announcements made at this year's conference was that Facebook will be developing its Facebook Messenger platform in order to cater to its growing business audience. Facebook Messenger will now allow third parties to interact with Facebook's one billion active users, and vice versa, via'chatbots'. A chatbot is a piece of software that is designed to simulate a conversation with a human user, in the interest of providing information or helping to complete a transaction. Chatbots use natural language processing, a type of artificial intelligence, to respond to commands or requests for information, which is a step-up from previous bots that simply scanned for keywords and sent users the most relevant reply from a database.

Our moon is scarred with a series of so-called'lunar swirls' that stretch tens of miles across. They are only found on the moon and their origin has remained a mystery since their discovery in 1970s. Previous observations suggested comets may have caused the'tattoos', while others blamed the mystery marks on solar wind. Now, using computer models to test these theories, Nasa has discovered the most likely cause is how charged particles respond in the satellite's magnetic field. Previous observations suggested comets may have caused the'tattoos' (pictured), while others blamed the mystery marks on solar wind.

This is the leading international symposium where the Ibero-American AI community comes together to share research results and experiences with researchers in Artificial Intelligence from all over the world. The conference will feature a pre-conference program of workshops. The main technical program will consist of invited talks by leading scientists working in the area, presentations of technical papers, as well as system demonstrations. The Proceedings of IBERAMIA 2016 will be published, as in past editions, by Springer in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence LNCS/LNAI series. IBERAMIA 2016, the XV edition of IBERAMIA, welcomes submissions on mainstream AI topics, as well as novel cross cutting work in related areas.

Eyefluence is one of many eye-tracking tech startups that is working on a way for a user of VR or AR headsets to navigate through a series of options using just your eyes. SAN FRANCISCO – The next big leap for virtual and augmented reality headsets is likely to be eye-tracking, where headset-mounted laser beams aimed at eyeballs turn your peepers into a mouse. A number of startups are working on this tech, with an aim to convince VR gear manufacturers such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to incorporate the feature in a next generation device. They include SMI, Percept, Eyematic, Fove and Eyefluence, which recently allowed USA TODAY to demo its eye-tracking tech. "Eye-tracking is almost guaranteed to be in second-generation VR headsets," says Will Mason, cofounder of virtual reality media company UploadVR.

A fearless Frenchman, Franky Zapata, thinks one day people will be able to ride his hoverboard to pick up bread in the morning (it's a French thing). The jet ski champion on Saturday set a new Guinness World Record for the farthest hoverboard flight – yes, just like in the movies – off the coast of Sausset-les-Pins in the south of France. Mr. Zapata rode the 1,000 horsepower drone, standing on top of it, for 7,388 feet, or more than a mile. He hovered 165 feet above the surface of the water, "trailed by a fleet of boats and jet skis," as Guinness reports. His feat shattered the previous hoverboard travel record of 905 feet and 2 inches, set last year by Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandru Duru.