Timothy Amukele, an assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, and systems engineer Jeff Street are trying to figure out how to use drones to deliver blood samples. Timothy Amukele, an assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, and systems engineer Jeff Street are trying to figure out how to use drones to deliver blood samples. Three years ago, Geoff Baird bought a drone. A Seattle dad and hobby plane enthusiast, Baird used the 2.5-pound quadcopter to photograph the Hawaiian coastline and film his son's soccer and baseball games. But his big hope is that drones will soon fly tubes of blood and other specimens to Harborview Medical Center, where he works as a clinical pathologist running the hospital's chemistry and toxicology labs.

After learning so much from Kaggle's collaborative community over the past eight months since I first joined, I wanted to share some of my favorite data science resources including suggestions from my fellow Kagglers. Like many others who have a seemingly endless queue of languages and techniques we hope to learn, I had tried MOOCs like Udacity and coding platforms like HackerRank. Right before joining Kaggle earlier this year, I was working through Andrew Ng's famed machine learning Coursera. Following the blogs, newsletters, and podcasts I'm sharing here is another way I try to stay (or become) savvy about topics in machine learning, data visualization, and industry trends. This list is far from exhaustive, so if you have any favs that are tragically missing, please add them to the comments!

In one example, Classic Car Liquidators used Ascend to find the best design for its affiliate revenue program, testing copy, layout, format and image changes of multiple items. The total number of potential designs was 28,800. Ascend determined the best option in only three weeks, and 40,000 visitors, lifting performance by 557%. "Sentient is bringing to market a disruptive product that can easily be described as a modern marketing director's dream," said Courtney Connell, marketing director for Cosabella, another Ascend customer. "Their CRO platform is allowing us to test all variables at once without human intervention, fear of contamination or traditional timelines. I see this type of solution sending tremors throughout the entire industry and ultimately shifting all conversion related benchmarks into hyper-drive."

Mercedes-Benz, whose engineers have been working on self-driving car technology, is eager to increase the size of its engineering team both in Silicon Valley and in Germany. SAN FRANCISCO - So you say you want join the automotive revolution? Over the past few years, only elite roboticists have been positioned to heed the self-driving car's call to action. Armed with degrees from places such as Carnegie Mellon University and experience at institutions such as NASA, these tech titans have been highly sought after by technology and automotive companies looking to build the future. But now massive open online course pioneer Udacity has a proposition: Give the Web-based education outfit 36 weeks and 2,400, and they'll turn graduates onto jobs at autonomous-car partner companies Mercedes-Benz, Didi Chuxing, Nvidia and Otto.

BRANFORD, Conn., Sept. 13, 2016 -- BioXcel, a privately held biopharmaceutical company based in Connecticut, today announced that the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Orphan Drug Designation to BXCL101 for the treatment of Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF2), an orphan disease with significant unmet medical need. BXCL101 is the first and only systemic therapy being developed to eliminate existing lesions and prevent the formation of new lesions by targeting the molecular mechanism of NF2 pathophysiology. BXCL101 is a proprietary version of an approved drug, bortezomib, adapted for chronic use in NF2 patients with both a novel dosing regimen and delivery approach. NF2 is a rare disease associated with neurologic and ophthalmologic abnormalities caused by benign tumors of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. BXCL101 is the first drug candidate discovered using BioXcel's R&D Platform, to be granted orphan drug status by the FDA.

Timandra Harkness is a regular on BBC Radio 4, writing and presenting BBC Radio 4's FutureProofing series and documentaries such as Data, Data Everywhere, and Personality Politics. Her book Big Data: does size matter? A regular public speaker and chair on scientific and technological topics, she works with the Cheltenham Science Festival, the British Council, the Institute of Ideas, the Wellcome Collection and a Robotics conference in Moscow, among many others. She is a member of the Royal Statistical Society and has 86% of a Mathematics and Statistics degree with the Open University. She hopes to reach 100% in 2017.

Still think the Great Pyramid is an ancient tomb? Some experts in deep learning may beg to differ. They have discovered that a particular application of deep learning methodology applied to the ancient structures on the Giza Plateau, including the Great Pyramid, may in fact show that it is a three dimensional process diagram. "We were using a deep learning methodology that helps us identify and categorize unknown symbols and processes. We thought it would be fun to use it on something everyone knows. We were amazed to find that the Giza Plateau may in fact be a three dimensional process diagram."

The corporate learning environment has been experiencing a great deal of development over recent years. It shows no signs of stopping as learners become more involved in their own education. Gone are the days when the organization dictated what should be learned and how. Learners are now demanding that they are educated in a way that works for them. The teams usually responsible for corporate learning within companies, human resources, are also undergoing a period of change as they identify areas where they need to come up to speed to deliver the most tangible results for their companies.

It's a problem we can all relate to: sitting in traffic and waiting for a green light. While waiting, you may have even pondered how you would try to improve traffic efficiency--surely there's got to be some way for everyone to get to work on time. But ponder no longer, because a team of engineers from Tsinghua University in China has handed the problem over to machines. The team's recent study makes use of deep reinforcement learning algorithms to optimize traffic signaling, and its promising results suggest there may be a way to arrive on time after all. Let's be clear: traffic is a complex problem to solve, and traffic control engineers have long worked on improving efficiency.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the United States Tennis Association (USTA) today announced that IBM Watson is coming to the US Open Tennis Championships for the first time via a new cognitive concierge feature being piloted within the tournament's official mobile apps to enhance the fan experience at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The US Open mobile app Guest Services companion will pilot a Watson-enabled discovery tool that allows fans to input natural language questions and receive immediate responses about a range of tournament topics, such as transportation and directions, food and drink options, on-site services and facilities, as well as other topics. By tapping into the Natural Language API from the Watson platform, the AI-infused app will enable fans to ask questions in natural language and get the information they need to plan and navigate their tournament experience. For example, fans can ask questions like, "Where can I get a soda?" or "Where are the taxi stands?" Due to Watson's machine learning capabilities, the app also continuously learns from previous interactions helping further refine its responses over time.