Our eyes are wonderful organs, but even they are not able to see around corners – yet. The US's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing technology that aims to use holograms to allow soldiers to see what lies behind a wall or around the next bend. They have asked researchers to develop a computer program that can unscramble the light that bounces off irregular surfaces to create a holographic image of hidden objects. Engineers are developing new technology that will build up a holographic image of objects that are hidden out of sight behind obstacles or around corners. The system works by looking for the faint photons of light that are scattered by uneven surfaces.

A humanoid robotic diver has been developed that scientists and archeologists hope will open up a new realm of deep sea exploration. OceanOne, created by researchers at Stanford University, combines artificial intelligence with human-controlled haptic feedback systems to carry out underwater tasks too dangerous for human divers. Guided by a team of deep-sea archeologists, OceanOne has already been used to investigate the shipwreck of La Lune, the flagship vessel of King Louis XIV that sank in 1664 off the southern coast of France. "OceanOne will be your avatar," said Oussama Khatib, a professor of computer science at Stanford. "The intent here is to have a human diving virtually, to put the human out of harm's way.

Find out his thoughts on the practicality of self-driving cars, and what the average man needs to do to adapt to them.

Training a software program to play an ancient Chinese board game helped Google's DeepMind move artificial intelligence forward.Video provided by Newsy Newslook SAN FRANCISCO -- Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the next big evolution for technology is artificial intelligence. "Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the'device' to fade away," Pichai wrote in the technology giant's annual founders' letter to shareholders. His vision: Over time, computers, whatever shape they take, a mobile device in your hand or a mini computer on your wrist, "will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day." Google is far from alone. Artificial intelligence in which Google was a pioneer, is an increasingly crowded field.

And that's probably the reason he's into the Google service that automatically generates replies to incoming messages. Smart Reply, as my editor will tell you, is pretty smart (It is!--Ed.). Having analyzed millions of messages from across Google's Gmail service, it can guess how you might respond to a particular missive. That may sound impersonal, but it's useful. It lets you instantly reply to someone when you don't have time to open a laptop or even tap out a message on your smartphone.

North Korea on Friday accused U.S. soldiers of trying to provoke its frontline troops with "disgusting" acts and encouraging South Korean soldiers to aim their guns at the North. A North Korean military statement warned U.S. soldiers to stop what it called "hooliganism" at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom or they'll meet a "dog's death any time and any place." "GIs hurled fully armed MPs of the South Korean puppet army into perpetrating such dangerous provocations as aiming at" the North Korean military side last week, said the statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency. It said U.S. troops pointed their fingers at North Korean soldiers and made strange noises and unspecified "disgusting" facial expressions. North Korea occasionally accuses South Korean and U.S. troops of trying to provoke its border troops and vice versa.

Effective data governance consists of protocols, practices, and the people necessary for implementation to ensure trustworthy, consistent data. Its yields include regulatory compliance, improved data quality, and data's increased valuation as a monetary asset that organizations can bank on. Nonetheless, these aspects of governance would be impossible without what is arguably its most important component: the common terminologies and definitions that are sustainable throughout an entire organization, and which comprise the foundation for the aforementioned policy and governance outcomes. When intrinsically related to the technologies used to implement governance protocols, terminology systems (containing vocabularies and taxonomies) can unify terms and definitions at a granular level. The result is a greatly increased ability to tackle the most pervasive challenges associated with big data governance including recurring issues with unstructured and semi-structured data, integration efforts (such as mergers and acquisitions), and regulatory compliance.

Tempting as it is to lay as much blame as possible at the feet of Philip Green – a man whose 63rd birthday cake involved an edible version of himself, topless, in bed with his chihuahua, silk sheets recreated in sugar paste, gold candles fringing the mattress like a flaming cage – the decline of British Home Stores was not entirely his fault. Like Austin Reed, the high-street tailor that went into administration the day after BHS, this was a business that collapsed in large part because it failed to be flexible in a changing marketplace. Both came to rely on the patronage of people who, either through a lack of access or an abundance of ethics, opted to shop physically rather than digitally. But as discussions on Twitter over what you'll miss about BHS (mostly: somewhere to go to the loo) also indicate, unless your shop serves a need that cannot be met online, it will now struggle to survive. Even Argos, whose current raison d'être is to trump Amazon by letting you get your mitts on a cheap toaster the same day, has seen a 36% year-on-year drop in profits. This its chief executive credits to "a continuation of the challenges we saw towards the back of last year with high street footfall and the move online".

I first confess that I will be plugging my alma mater in the process, and I come from the viewpoint of traditional, rigorous statistics training more than what is broadly and commonly regarded as'analytics'. Internationally, Stanford certainly stands out as the powerhouse of statistics programs, with well-respected faculty like Hastie and Tibshirani providing the cutting edge. As an aside, you might be interested in the Statistical Learning and Data Mining short course that Hastie et al open to the public once every 6 months or so (independently of Stanford I believe, but do check). It runs for 2 days, and could give you a flavor. You are probably right to identify India and Singapore as the hubs for analytics in Asia.

Personal assistants and software bots have enjoyed significant buzz in recent months. New assistants are launched every week, and the Slack App Store already lists more than 40 bots. Working with Opus Research, we have published an update of the Intelligent Assistance Landscape that looks into the implications of this trend. This report features 110 companies (increased from the 70 participants in the initial report from October, 2105). A high-resolution version of this landscape is available here.