All across the wrinkly expanse of the brain's outer layer, a constellation of different regions handle the meaning of language, scientists report online April 27 in Nature. One region that responds to "family," "home" and "mother," for example, rests in a tiny chunk of tissue on the right side of the brain, above and behind the ear. That region and others were revealed by an intricate new map that charts the location of hundreds of areas that respond to words with related meanings. Such a detailed map hints that humans comprehend language in a way that's much more complicated -- and involves many more brain areas -- than scientists previously thought, says Stanford University neuroscientist Russell Poldrack, who was not involved in the work. In fact, he says, "these data suggest we need to rethink how the brain organizes meaning."

The benefits of speaking more than one language have long been debated - with some experts claiming it gives the brain a boost, while others describing it as a distraction. But a new study has now suggested that even speaking two dialects of the same language can be as good for your brain as speaking two separate languages. The researchers found that bi-dialectalism - the ability to speak slang and proper English - can boost memory. Using slang (cockney rhyming slang on a cash machine pictured) can boost the brain in the same way as learning a new language. They found that while some people speak African American English at home, they also use Mainstream American English at school, which can benefit their brain.

In his many years as an artificial intelligence researcher, Eric Horvitz has worked on everything from systems that help determine what's funny or surprising to those that know when to help us remember what we need to do at work. On Wednesday, Horvitz, a technical fellow and managing director of Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, research lab, received the ACM – AAAI Allen Newell Award for groundbreaking contributions in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. The award honors Horvitz's substantial theoretical efforts and as well as his persistent focus on using those discoveries as the basis for practical applications that make our lives easier and more productive. Harry Shum, the executive vice president of Microsoft's technology and research group, said Horvitz epitomizes a style of research that is unique to places like Microsoft because it is focused on having an impact in both the research and industry domains. "People talk about basic research and applied research. What we are doing here is Microsoft research," Shum said.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has backed growth of artificial intelligence over virtual reality as the next era of computing. Speaking on the company's earnings call, where Google reported year-on-year revenue growth of 23% to 20.3 billion for Q1, Pichai highlighted investments in machine learning projects and artificial intelligence will continue, though the team is not discounting virtual reality completely. "And overall, I do think in the long run, I think we will evolve in computing from a mobile first to an AI first world," said Pichai. "And I do think we are at the forefront of development. And so that's the core of what we do, and we'll continue to do that."

When thinking of a word it may seem like its meaning is plucked from the ether, but new research has revealed the brain uses a highly organised system for storing words based on their meaning and context. Scientists in the US have produced a'semantic atlas' that pinpoints where in the brain definitions of individual words are stored, in stunning detail, and it could lead to a map of the brain that helps experts decode people's inner thoughts. The mesmerising atlas shows the words in vivid colours and multiple dimensions and it has been dubbed the'brain's dictionary.' New research has revealed that the brain uses a highly organised archiving system for language, where words are grouped by related meaning and context (pictured). Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley produced an atlas pinpointing where in the brain definitions of individual words are stored, illustrating the brain's semantic system in stunning detail The model shows that rather than every word having its own chunk of brain real estate, networks of words are grouped together. Different parts of the brain are given over to different tasks, such as the vision, hearing or emotional processing.

Scientists in the US have mapped out how the brain organises language. Their "semantic atlas" shows how, for example, one region of the brain activates in response to words about clothing and appearance. The researchers found that these maps were quite similar across the small number of individuals in the study, even down to minor details. The work, by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, is published in the journal Nature. It had previously been proposed that information about words' meaning was represented in a group of brain regions known as the semantic system.

In 2010, a group of students and faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University in Doha, Qatar, introduced their campus to Hala, the latest in a line of what the school termed "roboceptionists." Consisting of a truncated torso and an LCD screen featuring a blue-skinned female CGI head, Hala was designed to provide students and visitors with instructions, directions, and anecdotes in either formal Arabic or American English. In addition to educating visitors about Qatar, Hala's purpose was to explore human-robot interaction (HRI) in a multicultural setting. The population of Doha is a demographic mosaic; the city is primarily inhabited by expatriates from all over the world (most of whom speak Arabic and/or English). Because of this relative diversity, Hala interacted with visitors from a slew of countries, using features like natural language understanding and facial expressions to conduct, in Carnegie Mellon's words, "culturally appropriate" exchanges.

Adjusted earnings per share exclude one-time items but include stock-based compensation expense. Management sounded upbeat and mentioned several initiatives including the collection of data from sellers, application of artificial intelligence for a better user experience, increased use of social media to drive traffic, and focus on discovery-based user experience to name a few. Therefore, the best way to understand the business is through its revenue/volume growth, customer growth, revenue per customer and cash flows. Revenues Gross revenue of 2.137 billion was up 3.7% on a year-over-year basis (up 6% on an Fx-neutral basis) and beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 2.081 billion. The Gross Merchandise Volume grew 5% year over year on an Fx-neutral basis.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Since we released our text summarization resources, the legal technology community has shown interest in leveraging summarization technology to support litigation document review, deposition digests, and contract analysis. Data scientist interest to use machine learning to mine legal document corpuses and support legal strategy was also one factor motivating our summarization research. The time is therefore ripe for data scientists to apply new text analytics capabilities for legal use cases. But to be effective, data scientists must first understand how lawyers think: what problems they're trying to solve, how their processes are structured, and, perhaps most importantly, what fears may hinder the adoption of new technologies. This guest blog post from Dean Gonsowski, kCura's VP of Business Development, provides tips to help data scientists explain the value of machine learning to lawyers. Electronic discovery software helps manage the exchange of electronically stored information, documents that could be used as evidence in various forms of litigation like investigations or contract reviews.