Ocean scientists are using robot submariness to detect barrels of toxic chemicals under the sea. Thousands of barrels of DDT and other substances are believed submerged in the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles, but authorities aren't sure where or how many. To get an idea, researchers have launched two'underwater Roombas,' Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS (REMUS) that can operate in waters ranging from 80 feet to about 20,000 feet. The vehicles take 12 hours to recharge, so while one is scanning the seafloor with its sonar the other is powering up and passing along its findings. Ocean scientists are using'underwater Roombas' to scan the ocean floor for barrels of toxic chemicals, including the banned pesticide DDT.

Tercero Technologies is an artificial intelligence startup based in Pittsburgh. We launched in 2019 to focus on hardware accelerated edge AI applications and are looking for a Principal/Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join our team. The Principal/Senior Machine Learning Engineer initially will be responsible for developing, testing, and deploying machine learning models for advanced embedded sensor processing systems. This position requires access to U.S. Government Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and ITAR/EAR export controlled information. Employment offers and/or continued employment will be conditioned on applicants' successful completion of a U.S. Government T-1/NACI background investigation (unless they have a current T-1/NACI or national security clearance) and their authorization by the U.S. Government to access CUI and ITAR/EAR controlled information.

Civil liberties activists are suing a company that provides facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies and private companies around the world, contending that Clearview AI illegally stockpiled data on 3 billion people without their knowledge or permission. The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court in the San Francisco bay area, says the New York company violates California's constitution and seeks a court order to bar it from collecting biometric information in California and requiring it to delete data on Californians. The lawsuit says the company has built "the most dangerous" facial recognition database in the nation, has fielded requests from more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies and private companies and has amassed a database nearly seven times larger than the FBI's. Separately, the Chicago Police Department stopped using the New York company's software last year after Clearview AI was sued in Cook County by the American Civil Liberties Union. The California lawsuit was filed by four activists and the groups Mijente and Norcal Resist.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling on its sister agency to implement stricter regulation related to automated vehicle technology. In a letter it sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) at the start of February (via CNBC), the NTSB says the regulator "must act" to "develop a strong safety foundation." What's notable about the document is that NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt frequently cites Tesla in a negative light to support his department's suggestions. The automaker is referenced 16 times across the letter's 15 pages. For instance, in one section, Sumwalt writes of NHTSA's "continued failure" to implement regulations that would prevent driver-assist systems like Autopilot from operating beyond their intended use.

Cognitive computing, an advanced type of artificial intelligences, leverages various forms of AI, including machine-learning algorithms and deep-learning networks, that get stronger and smarter over time. Watson for Cyber Security, IBM's cognitive AI, learns with each interaction to connect the dots between threats and provide actionable insights. The result: You can respond to threats with greater confidence and speed. Watch the video to see how IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson helps you get a head start in assessing incidents to reduce your cyber risk.

Florida's short-lived climate change czar, Chief Resilience Officer Julia Nesheiwat, set a clear priority for the state: Protect the real estate market. Nesheiwat's [unpublished] January 2020 report is loaded with proposals aimed to keep Florida's most important industry, real estate, high and dry. Her plan proposes stricter building codes, but also more controversial measures, such as disclosing flood risks to home buyers, providing state-sponsored home buyouts, and requiring vulnerability studies for cities and counties. "Florida's coastal communities and regions do not have time to waste and need a partner at the highest level to help manage and prepare against impending threats," wrote Nesheiwat, who took a job with the Department of Homeland Security after six months in Florida. A case study by McKinsey echoed Nesheiwat's dire projections for much of the state, including the Florida Keys, but also many coastal areas far North of Atlantis [formerly South-Florida].

If you've ever wanted to know what it might be like to see Kim Jong-un let loose at karaoke, your wish has been granted, thanks to an app that lets users turn photographs of anyone – or anything remotely resembling a face – into uncanny AI-powered videos of them lip syncing famous songs. The app is called Wombo AI, and while the future of artificial intelligence and the ability to make fake videos of real people strikes fear into the hearts of many experts, some say that Wombo could help by raising awareness of "deepfakes". Wombo CEO Ben-Zion Benkhin said he came up with the idea "while smoking a joint with my roommate on the roof". The app launched in Canada in February and has since been downloaded on Apple's App store and Google Play more than 2m times. There are 15 songs users can choose from, including Michael Jackson's Thriller and the more recent Gunther's Ding Dong Song.

Business units have started identifying processes they want to automate within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, now that its CIO is managing the infrastructure and licensing. The Robotic Process Automation Governance Team within the Office of the CIO handles configuration management and cybersecurity vetting to standardize the credentialing of bots, while business analysts pick the automations. Analysts need only fill out an RPA intake form, the first step of the governance process, which asks nine questions before calculating the necessary bot's complexity and expected time savings. "We've reached a point with our maturity where we're really encouraging different business units to come to the table with their own ideas for automation," said Jacob Feldman, program analyst at USPTO, during an ACT-IAC event Wednesday. "This is implementing a federated model of development."

Purpose: This study evaluated a novel approach for diagnosis and classification of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), called Obstructive Sleep Apnea Smart System (OSASS), using residual networks and single-channel nasal pressure airflow signals. Methods: Data were collected from the sleep center of the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, and the Integrative Department of Guangdong Province Traditional Chinese Medical Hospital. We developed a new model called the multi-resolution residual network (Mr-ResNet) based on a residual network to detect nasal pressure airflow signals recorded by polysomnography (PSG) automatically. The performance of the model was assessed by its sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and F1-score. We built OSASS based on Mr-ResNet to estimate the apnea‒hypopnea index (AHI) and to classify the severity of OSA, and compared the agreement between OSASS output and the registered polysomnographic technologist (RPSGT) score, assessed by two technologists. Results: In the primary test set, the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and F1-score of Mr-ResNet were 90.8%, 90.5%, 91.2%, and 90.5%, respectively.

Believe it or not, fighter jets, flying cars, natural gas pipelines and plastic bottles may be more alike than you think. They might one day be made with TuFF -- a high-performance short-fiber composite material invented at the University of Delaware that is superstrong, ultra-lightweight and virtually indestructible. It might even be the Superman of materials. Developed by researchers at UD's Center for Composite Materials as part of a Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office program, TuFF (Tailored Universal Feedstock for Forming) has properties equal to the very best composites used in space and aerospace applications today. And, according to CCM Director Jack Gillespie, the uses for TuFF are starting to take off -- literally.