Hierarchical clustering methods produce dendrograms which contain more information than mere flat clustering, for instance cluster proximity. A particular hierarchical clustering method, namely Single-Linkage, enjoys several nice theoretical properties (Zadeh and Ben-David, 2009) and (Carlsson and Mémoli, 2010) despite being known to give poor results in practice. Nonetheless, in (Awasthi et al., 2012), authors show that if the center-based clustering instance verifies some perturbation resilient properties, finding the optimal center-based clustering is possible in polynomial time by cutting efficiently the Single-Linkage dendrogram while in the general case, finding the optimal clustering is NP-hard. The common practice to flatten dendrograms in $k$ clusters is to cut them off at constant height $k-1$. Yet it leads to poorer clusters than efficiently pruning the tree.

A programmer recently turned to artificial intelligence to create positively charming images of so-called "botanical dinosaurs," representations of tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs, triceratops and others, all constructed entirely out of flowers. To generate the unusual effect, coder Chris Rodley used a web app that employs a technique known as style transfer, in which an algorithm "learns" a specific visual style and re-creates an image in that style. In this case, the algorithm re-created a selection of dinosaurs in the style of botanical illustrations, using all the visual elements that you'd expect to find in a field guide to local flora -- stems, leaves and blossoms in a variety of colors. Style transfer isn't new, but the unlikely pairing of dinosaurs and flowers was unusual and eye-catching enough to garner quite a bit of attention online. As of today (June 21), Rodley's June 15 tweet sharing the images has gathered over 32,000 likes and about 14,000 retweets.

NEW YORK – Intel Corp. will sponsor the Olympics through 2024 in the company's latest bid to show off its technology through high-profile sports events. The chipmaker said it will partner with the International Olympic Committee to use Intel's technology, such as virtual reality, 360-degree video, artificial intelligence and drones, to enhance the Olympic Games. Intel is signing on at a time when global interest in the Olympics is waning. Television ratings have fallen, and cities have dropped out of the running to host the games as costs spiral. Yet for Intel, the sponsorship is part of a broad push into sports after it launched a group to explore such deals last fall, seeking to highlight initiatives other than its main computer processor business.

Softbank Group Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son said that he will pick his successor from executives at group companies. At a general shareholders meeting in Tokyo, Son said his successor "will be a person who plays an important role with me in the group's management for five to 10 years, is compatible and leads the management in the same direction as I do." In 2014, Softbank Group invited former Google Inc. executive Nikesh Arora to succeed Son. But in June last year, Son said he intended to stay on for 10 more years, citing his interest in leading the telecommunications and technology group's artificial intelligence business by himself. Arora left the group as a result.

A mysterious circular rock formation on the surface of Mars has been captured by one of NASA's Orbiters. The formation was photographed by the Curiosity Rover this week and has excited alien hunters who invited speculation over how it came to be online. They suggested that the rocks were'arranged', laid out by another form of life, or that it was part of a larger, buried structure which has never before been seen. NASA's Curiosity Rover has captured a mysterious circular formation on rocks on the surface of Mars Alien hunters were excited by the images (above, after color enhancement) and suggested that the rocks had been'arranged' or could even be evidence of a larger, buried structure'Whatever we're seeing here, it's in a perfect circle and it's much different from the craters that we normally see on Mars and the moon and throughout the other planets in the solar system. This almost looks like these rocks were arranged in this circular formation.

Hampshire, UK: 9th May 2017: A new study from Juniper Research has found that chatbots will redefine the customer service industry, with healthcare and banking sectors set to benefit the most. The new research, Chatbots: Retail, eCommerce, Banking & Healthcare 2017-2022, forecasts that chatbots will be responsible for cost savings of over $8 billion per annum by 2022, up from $20 million this year. Juniper expects dramatic cost savings to be made in the healthcare and banking sectors, as enquiry resolution times are reduced and cost savings boosted. Research author Lauren Foye explained: "We believe that healthcare and banking providers using bots can expect average time savings of just over 4 minutes per enquiry, equating to average cost savings in the range of $0.50-$0.70 per interaction. As Artificial Intelligence advances, reducing reliance on human representatives undoubtedly spells job losses."

This smart doll demonstrates a new cheap, privacy-oriented computer vision platform in action. OK, let's get this out the way up top: A robot doll that can sense your child's emotions and change how it behaves accordingly sounds like the kind of high-concept horror movie a Hollywood screenwriter would pitch after binge-watching Westworld and a Chucky marathon. In reality, it describes research being carried out by investigators at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Ciudad Real, Spain. What they've built as a proof of concept is an artificially intelligent doll that can recognize eight different emotions and runs on an AI chip costing just 115 euros (around $130). Emotion recognition is carried out through facial-recognition technology, via a camera hidden in the doll's mouth.

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A study found smart people have fewer genetic mutations that negatively affect intelligence and health, rather than having more mutations that make them smarter. Scientists said the results could be used to guide gene editing - as'fixing' these mutations could make people healthier and smarter at the same time. The researchers used statistical techniques to work out the effect of rare genetic mutations on intelligence. The rare genetic mutations studied by the researchers are thought to have a negative impact on intelligence and health.

We consider settings where owners of electric vehicles (EVs) participate in a market mechanism to charge their vehicles. Existing work on such mechanisms has typically assumed that participants are fully rational and can report their preferences accurately via some interface to the mechanism or to a software agent participating on their behalf. However, this may not be reasonable in settings with non-expert human end-users.Thus, our overarching aim in this paper is to determine experimentally if a fully expressive market interface that enables accurate preference reports is suitable for the EV charging domain, or, alternatively, if a simpler, restricted interface that reduces the space of possible options is preferable. In doing this, we measure the performance of an interface both in terms of how it helps participants maximise their utility and how it affects deliberation time. Our secondary objective is to contrast two different types of restricted interfaces that vary in how they restrict the space of preferences that can be reported. To enable this analysis, we develop a novel game that replicates key features of an abstract EV charging scenario. In two experiments with over 300 users, we show that restricting the users' preferences significantly reduces the time they spend deliberating (by up to half in some cases). An extensive usability survey confirms that this restriction is furthermore associated with a lower perceived cognitive burden on the users. More surprisingly, at the same time, using restricted interfaces leads to an increase in the users' performance compared to the fully expressive interface (by up to 70%). We also show that some restricted interfaces have the desirable effect of reducing the energy consumption of their users by up to 20% while achieving the same utility as other interfaces. Finally, we find that a reinforcement learning agent displays similar performance trends to human users, enabling a novel methodology for evaluating market interfaces.