The idea is to make vehicles safer, as Gerdes says, he wants to "develop vehicles that could avoid any accident that can be avoided within the laws of physics." In this interview, Gerdes discusses developing a model for high-performance control of a vehicle; their autonomous race car, an Audi TTS named'Shelley,' and how its autonomous performance compares to ameteur and professional race car drivers; and an autonomous, drifting Delorean named'MARTY.' Chris Gerdes is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, Director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) and Director of the Revs Program at Stanford. His laboratory studies how cars move, how humans drive cars and how to design future cars that work cooperatively with the driver or drive themselves. When not teaching on campus, he can often be found at the racetrack with students, instrumenting historic race cars or trying out their latest prototypes for the future.

A few days after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Mexico City last month, Carnegie Mellon University roboticists were contacted to see if their snake robots could help with search-and-rescue efforts. Mexican rescuers were still trying find people in the rubble of collapsed buildings, and even though several days had passed, they thought it'd be worth trying to bring in the snakebots. Within 24 hours, a team of CMU roboticists had packed their gear and headed out to the disaster site. We spoke with Matt Travers, who was on the ground in Mexico City operating the robots, along with Howie Choset, who heads CMU's Biorobotics Lab where the snake robots are developed, about their experience with using robots in a real disaster and how, although no survivors were found during the rescue missions they assisted with, they learned an enormous amount being on-site. IEEE Spectrum: Were you and your robots ready for a real disaster? Howie Choset: Since the beginning of my adventure into snake robots, I've been interested in search and rescue.

Well if you guessed it to be Alice you are correct. Perhaps your reasoning would be the content has words love, great and wonderful that are used by Alice. Now let's add a combination and probability in the data we have.Suppose Alice and Bob uses following words with probabilities as show below. Now, can you guess who is the sender for the content: "Wonderful Love." Now what do you think?

We hear a lot about the under-representation of women in so-called STEM fields - science, technology, engineering and maths. But the proportion of women in economics is by some measures smaller. In the US, only about 13% of women hold permanent academic positions in economics; and in the UK the proportion is only slightly better at 15.5%. Only one woman has ever won the Nobel Prize in economics - American Elinor Ostrom in 2009. And there wasn't even a single woman on some of the lists floating about guessing who this year's prize winner would be - it went to the behavioural economist Richard Thaler.

Four out of 10--that's how many Americans the National Cancer Institute estimates will be diagnosed with cancer at some point. While 33 percent of those patients won't live longer than five years, giving them precious little time to find effective treatments, it takes over a decade to bring new cancer drugs to market. The process involves animal testing, human trials and regulatory review--a gantlet through which less than 7 percent of experimental medicines successfully pass. Is it any wonder, then, that there are less than 2,000 Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmaceuticals on the market? Insilico Medicine, a Baltimore-based biotech research company, hopes to revolutionize drug development by slashing the time necessary for research with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). In a study published in the medical journal Oncotarget, a team led by Insilico Medicine details their approach.

In science news around the world, a deadly plague epidemic spreads through Madagascar, Japan's economy ministry announces a successful first test of seafloor mining for metallic ore deposits near hydrothermal vents, the World Health Organization releases a new strategy for fighting cholera, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moves to roll back limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Also, economist Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago in Illinois wins the Nobel economics prize for his study of irrational human economic behavior, scientists discover evidence of rice domestication in South America, and a Carnegie Mellon University roboticist describes how his robotic snakes combed through rubble of the 19 September earthquake in Mexico.

Sally Jones, a former punk rocker from Kent, United Kingdom, who gained notoriety as "Mrs Terror" after joining the Islamic State group (also called ISIS), was reportedly killed in a United States drone strike along with her 12-year old son Jojo in Syria as she tried to escape Raqqa, the Sun reported. Though Whitehall sources confirmed reports that Jones was killed, according to the Guardian, the Pentagon was unable to confirm the news. Maj Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Guardian, "I do not have any information that would substantiate that report but that could change and we are looking into this." Rukmini Callimachi, a correspondent for the New York Times, also said two senior U.S. officials denied that Jones was dead. Fifty-years-old Jones was born in Greenwich, southeast London, and later moved to Kent.

Regina Barzilay, a professor in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who does research in natural language processing and machine learning, is a recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes referred to as a "genius grant." The Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Barzilay does research in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Career Award, the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, and multiple "best paper" awards in her field. For her contributions to teaching machine learning and natural language processing, she was awarded the Jamieson Award for Excellence in teaching.

As the director of Stanford's AI Lab and now as a chief scientist of Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li is helping to spur the AI revolution. But it's a revolution that needs to include more people. She spoke with MIT Technology Review senior editor Will Knight about why everyone benefits if we emphasize the human side of the technology. Why did you join Google? Researching cutting-edge AI is very satisfying and rewarding, but we're seeing this great awakening, a great moment in history.

Chief executive of Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas enhanced security at his properties after deciding a year ago that Las Vegas was a soft target. This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Sunday," October 8, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. Hurricane Nate hits the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In a week after the Las Vegas massacre, we're still left a simple question: Why? JOE LOMBARDO, LAS VEGAS POLICE SHERIFF: Anything that would indicate this individual trigger points and would cause him to do such harm, we haven't understood that. WALLACE (voice-over): We'll have a live report from Las Vegas with the latest on the investigation. We'll talk with the owner of the town's biggest hotels and casinos, Steve Wynn, who decided a year ago, Las Vegas was a soft target. STEVE WYNN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, WYNN RESORTS: We profile or inspect or examine everybody that enters the building. And then, even gun rights advocates are calling to revoke bump stock, like the Las Vegas gunman used to make his automatic weapons fire faster. PAUL RYAN, R-WIS., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Fully automatic weapons have been outlawed for many, many years. This seems to be a way of going around that. WALLACE (on camera): Is this the start of sweeping gun control? We'll ask Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association. Plus, as President Trump decides to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, his, his secretary of state denies he is considered quitting. REX TILLERSON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The vice president has never had to persuade me to remain the secretary of state because I have never considered leaving this post. DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We must put an end to Iran's continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. WALLACE: We'll ask our Sunday panel about the relationship between the president and Rex Tillerson as they weigh on a major policy change. And our power player of the week, a professional football player goes out of this world to make a difference. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My perspective shifted, I wanted to come home and really help inspire that next generation. We'll get the latest from the investigation into the Las Vegas mass shooting in a moment with a live report, but we begin with breaking news. Hurricane Nate made landfall early this morning striking Biloxi, Mississippi, with rain and winds of 85 miles per hour, causing flooding and power outages.