Storm damage repairs and preventative maintenance on power lines and trees are two of the most important tasks utility companies take on, requiring a large amount of time and budget. Currently, ground crews inspect assets manually or via helicopter, and then based on their observations, they'll identify areas that need attention. New technology on the horizon will help protect the grid from potentially dangerous storms and trees that pose a risk of falling. Affordable drone technology, coupled with big data software, is paving the way for a more detailed, holistic approach to storm damage assessment and utility maintenance. Through the collaboration of Edison Electric Institute and Palo Alto-based drone service company Sharper Shape, the EEI Sharper Utility partnership was formed to fast-track long-distance commercial drone inspections of power lines in the U.S. Drone flights have already found their footing in Europe with help from Sharper Shape's European affiliate and are looking to make an impact on the utility industries in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

So far I have talked about decision trees and ensembles. But I hope, I have made you understand the logic behind these concepts without getting too much into the mathematical details. In this post lets get into action, I will be implementing the concepts that we learned in these two blog posts. The only concept that I haven't discussed about is SVM. I suggest you to watch Professor Andrew Ng's week 7 videos on Coursera.

April 29, 2016 - With an ever-increasing volume of electronic data being collected by the healthcare system, researchers are exploring the use of machine learning--a subfield of artificial intelligence--to improve medical care and patient outcomes. An overview of machine learning and some of the ways it could contribute to advancements in plastic surgery are presented in a special topic article in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). "Machine learning has the potential to become a powerful tool in plastic surgery, allowing surgeons to harness complex clinical data to help guide key clinical decision-making," write Dr. Jonathan Kanevsky of McGill University, Montreal, and colleagues. They highlight some key areas in which machine learning and "Big Data" could contribute to progress in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Machine learning analyzes historical data to develop algorithms capable of knowledge acquisition.

The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis is the site of the FIRST Championship opening ceremonies on Wednesday, April 28, 2016. Team 9915: Robo Thunder from Bellevue, Wash., left, and team 6899: Blue Bots from Kingston, Jamaica, participate in the FIRST qualification matches in St. Louis. Team 2881: Lady Cans from Austin, Texas, is an all-girl team of 24. Dean Kamen stands in the Dome at America's Center in St. Louis before the STRONGHOLD games begin on Wednesday, April 28, 2016. Team 1011: CRUSH from Tucson, Ariz., takes part in its qualifying match.

The students have qualified for this week's championship by beating others at state and regional competitions throughout the school year. During the competition, the robots work to outmaneuver one another by hurling boulders through the window of a tower and attempting to scale their opponent's tower. "It's really spectacular and kind of a rush," said Thomas Mills, a high school senior from Florissant. Another league gives kindergarten through eighth-grade students a real-world problem to solve. This year's theme is solid waste.

Editor's note: This month marks the centennial of the birth of Claude Shannon, the American mathematician and electrical engineer whose groundbreaking work laid out the theoretical foundation for modern digital communications. To celebrate the occasion, we're republishing online a memorable profile of Shannon that IEEE Spectrum ran in its April 1992 issue. Written by former Spectrum editor John Horgan, who interviewed Shannon at his home in Winchester, Mass., the profile reveals the many facets of Shannon's character: While best known as the father of information theory, Shannon was also an inventor, tinkerer, puzzle solver, and prankster. The 1992 profile included a portrait of Shannon taken by Boston-area photographer Stanley Rowin. On this page we're reproducing that portrait along with other Shannon photos by Rowin that Spectrum has never published. Shannon died in 2001 at age 84 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. He is regarded as one of the greatest electrical engineering heroes of all time.

First it was software, then the website, then the app. While it is still too early to say for certain whether or not this will indeed be the case, the hands of intelligent automation are becoming more and more common across multiple industries and fintech is certainly among them. Here are three reasons why AI and smart bots will play a greater role in payments. The first quarter of 2016 saw payments firms raise USD274.3m in disclosed investment deals. This was down 45% on figures from Q1 2015, where payments startups raised USD500m.

Guest blog post by Christopher Dole and other contributors, originally posted here. Deep Learning is one of the most revolutionary and disruptive technologies ever developed in Data Science. Essentially, this is a class of algorithms inspired by how the human brain works, and it has the ability to automate and replace most of the world's jobs. This is what enables self-driving cars to function and what allows Spotify to create very customized playlists and recommendations. This is how YouTube is able to identify faces and animals in videos and how Siri can understand and process free speech in milliseconds.

The last few years have seen considerable advances in artificial intelligence (AI) using technology inspired by animal brains. Neural networks and deep reinforcement learning allowed Google Deep Mind's AlphaGo AI to beat champion Go player Lee Se-dol. The same methods are being used to teach AI to explore in Minecraft and win deathmatches in Doom. Neural networks can even influence the art world. Google's Deep Mind famously produces surreal art that took the internet by storm.

Deep Learning is one of the most revolutionary and disruptive technologies ever developed in Data Science. Essentially, this is a class of algorithms inspired by how the human brain works, and it has the ability to automate and replace most of the world's jobs. This is what enables self-driving cars to function and what allows Spotify to create very customized playlists and recommendations. This is how YouTube is able to identify faces and animals in videos and how Siri can understand and process free speech in milliseconds. Deep Learning has also led to several recent advancements in healthcare.