NASA's Curiosity rover has marked the 10th anniversary of its launch to Mars by sending back a spectacular'picture postcard' from the Red Planet. The robotic explorer snapped two black and white images of the Martian landscape which were then combined and had colour added to them to produce the remarkable composite. Curiosity, which launched to the Red Planet almost exactly 10 years ago on November 26, 2011, took the pictures from its most recent perch on the side of Mars' Mount Sharp. It captures a 360-degree view of its surroundings with its black-and-white navigation cameras each time it completes a drive, before beaming back the panorama to Earth. So inspired were the mission team by the beauty of the landscape, they combined two versions of the black-and-white images from different times of the day and added colours to create a rare postcard, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said.

"It really expands the bandwidth of our data scientists to apply materials informatics to our data." At an Intellegens webinar, Dr Josh Stuckner from NASA Glenn Research Center presented work to test and validate the Alchemite machine learning method. NASA had applied the tool to two projects: design of heat exchangers and shape memory alloys. In both cases, Alchemite was compared to alternative machine learning approaches -- the presentation focused on comparisons with the Random Forest method. Alchemite predictions based on complete datasets from the two applications were found to compare well with those from the other methods.

Trailing the US and second-placed China, it holds a slight lead over Canada and South Korea, according to the Global AI Index published in December 2020 by Tortoise Media. Philp continues: "For businesses, we want to ensure that there are clear rules, applied ethical principles and a pro-innovation regulatory environment that can create tech powerhouses across the country." A survey published by Experian in September indicates that more than two-thirds (68%) of UK students wrongly believe that they would need to earn a STEM qualification to stand a chance of landing a data-related job. Dr Mahlet Zimeta, head of public policy at the Open Data Institute, thinks that the widely held view that "the UK needs to produce more people who can code" is unhelpful at best. For employers, this will include ensuring that their staff "have access to suitable training and development opportunities", he adds, pointing out that the government's online list of so-called skills bootcamps is an excellent place to start.Tortoise Media's Global AI Index ranks the UK fourth in the world on its supply of talent and third for the quality of its research.

Samsung has said it will build a $17bn (£12.7bn) The plant just outside Austin would be the South Korean company's biggest US investment and is expected to be operational in the second half of 2024. Samsung had also considered sites in Arizona and New York for the factory, which will be much bigger than its only other US chip plant, also in Austin. Samsung said the new facility would boost production of hi-tech chips used for 5G mobile communications, advanced computing and artificial intelligence, and also improve supply chain resilience. The chip shortage has become a significant business obstacle and a serious US national security concern.

On November 19, Elisabeth Borne, Minister of Labour, Employment and Integration, visited the Matrice innovation institute to sign an agreement with Bruno Sportisse of Inria to create a laboratory dedicated to artificial intelligence. Called LaborIA and operated by Matrice, this resource and experimentation centre will have the mission of "better understanding artificial intelligence and its effects on work, employment, skills and social dialogue in order to develop business practices and public action". According to the OECD's 2019 Employment Outlook report, medium-skilled jobs are increasingly exposed to profound transformations. Over the next 15 to 20 years, the development of automation could lead to the disappearance of 14% of current jobs, and another 32% are likely to be profoundly transformed. The report states that the future of work is in our hands and will depend, to a large extent, on the public policy choices countries make.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a force multiplier that has the potential to deliver faster, smarter and safer military effects with less resources. It is an essential technology that is at the heart of advances in decision support, situational awareness, logistics, robotic process automation, natural language processing and digital twin modelling. Massive investments have already been made by both allies and competitors seeking to lead or gain advantage through application of AI. To highlight this, a recent report from the US National Security Commission on AI recommends that, "by 2025, the (US) Department of Defense and Intelligence Community must be AI-ready". What does an "AI-ready" organisation look like, and what does Air Force need to do to realise the benefits?

Unmanned aerial, ground and underwater vehicles are increasingly being used for national security in Japan and other countries, with the lack of training requirements and risk to human life seen as major benefits. Autonomous vehicles are seen as indispensable to Japan, which has a rapidly aging population and low birthrate. In the National Defense Program Guidelines adopted in late 2018, the government pledged to promote the Self-Defense Forces' use of artificial intelligence and other technological innovations for "automation and manpower-saving," with accelerating population declines now making the recruitment of SDF members a pressing issue. The Defense Ministry has launched a project to develop unmanned aircraft to escort the new fighter jet Japan plans to deploy as the successor to the Air Self-Defense Force's existing F-2s in fiscal 2035 at the earliest. Equipped with AI, the planned unmanned aircraft would be able to detect enemy fighters and missiles, fire missiles, stage electronic attacks and serve as a decoy to disorient enemy missiles.

Apartment building defects are not uncommon these days, but the NSW government has been developing new solutions using AI and blockchain to crackdown on this. Speaking at the 2021 digital.NSW event, Office of the NSW Building Commissioner digital director Yin Man explained how the state government has worked with KPMG, Microsoft, Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Western Sydney University, and Mirvac to build what is being referred to as a trustworthy index, within the state government's building assurance solution. The solution, based on ASX's blockchain technology, has been designed to track a building's provenance -- from the materials that are used, the drawings of the building, and people involved in the construction -- to enable the building industry, current and prospective owners, regulators, and insurers to compare and assess the trustworthiness of different buildings. "You, as a consumer, can now see one building differentiated from another and that helps the insurance companies and the financiers as well, because at the moment, they do not want to be in the market because all the buildings look the same to them, everybody has an occupation certificate, but why are some buildings still defective as we find in our audits, and some are not," Man said. According to Man, the trustworthy index will be piloted for the next six months with a brand new Mirvac building, along with over 200 buildings where combustible cladding is being replaced.

The Secret Service has designated Nantucket a "No Drone Zone" ahead of President Biden's Thanksgiving visit. "Due to protective operations in Nantucket, MA, the Secret Service, in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has established a drone flight restriction from November 23, 2021 to November 28, 2021," the agency said in a press release. The restriction applies to all aircraft and pilots, including drone pilots. The Bidens were scheduled to arrive at Nantucket Memorial Airport at 7:10 p.m. Tuesday, the White House Press Office announced this week. The 46th president is a frequent visitor to the Massachusetts coastal island.

A lab, whose work is concentrated on neuromorphic computing or brain-inspired computing, has new research that introduces hardware improvements by harnessing a quality known as 'randomness' or 'stochasticity'. Their research contradicts the perception of randomness as a quality that will negatively impact computation results and demonstrates the utilization of finely controlled stochastic features in semiconductor devices to improve performing optimization. This has potential to create a more sophisticated building block for creating computers that can tackle sophisticated optimization problems, which can potentially be more efficient. What's more they can consume less power.