The National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC), a new initiative aimed at empowering microbiome research, is gearing up its pilot phase after receiving $10 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. Spearheaded by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in partnership with Los Alamos (LANL), Oak Ridge (ORNL), and Pacific Northwest (PNNL) national laboratories, the NMDC will leverage DOE's existing data-science resources and high-performance computing systems to develop a framework that facilitates more efficient use of microbiome data for applications in energy, environment, health, and agriculture. Nearly every ecosystem and organism on Earth hosts a diverse community of microorganisms – its microbiome. Yet we know little about the functions of individual microbes, let alone how they interact with each other, their hosts, or their environments, and how their activity varies over time or in response to perturbations. The past decade has seen tremendous advances in genome and metagenome DNA-sequencing technologies, which has led to an unprecedented volume of microbiome data being generated.

The Trump administration's approach to artificial intelligence is not that smart: it's about cooperation, not domination

The Trump administration's approach to artificial intelligence is not that smart: it's about cooperation, not domination

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the backbone of smart cities. As it ushers us into a new era, we are no longer mere spectators. IoT is spreading at a fast pace, evolving and embracing innovation along the way. It is making our dumb-devices, smart and our smart-devices, efficient. Cities are the lifeline of an economy and IoT is making them smarter day by day.

A picture of British mathematician Alan Turing hangs behind one of his notebooks during an auction preview in 2015. Turing argued that the ultimate test of a computer's intelligence was whether it could communicate with a human in a way indistinguishable from another human mind. Increasingly, AI-generated writing is making researchers think again about what the test really means. Jacob Berkowitz is a writer in Almonte, Ont., the founder of Quantum Writing and a writer-in-virtual-residence at University of Ottawa's Institute for Science, Society and Policy. I remember, clearly, my son's first word.

These days, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly commonplace. Companies and governments use facial recognition technology to verify our identities; virtually every smartphone on the market has mapping and translation apps; and machine learning is an indispensable tool in diverse fields including conservation, healthcare, and agriculture. As the power, influence, and reach of AI spreads, many international observers are scrutinizing the dual nature of AI technology. They're considering not only AI's positive transformative effects on human society and development -- think of medical AI applications that help diagnose cancer early -- but also its downsides, particularly in terms of the global security threats to which it can expose us all. AI as a Weapon As AI gets better and more sophisticated, it also enables cybercriminals to use deep learning and AI to breach security systems (just as cybersecurity experts use the same technology tools to detect suspicious online behavior).

There is an open debate about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). Sceptics of AI question how much AI is a "threat" to our privacy, way of life and how much it can ultimately deliver. "It's healthy to approach with a certain sense of humility. People have been talking about the rise of artificial intelligence since Stanford Professor John McCarthy coined the term in 1956," Sam Blatteis, CEO of The MENA Catalysts, a public policy consulting firm for government innovation arms and high tech multinationals, told TechRadar Middle East. However, Blatteis said that, "there are those who believe that the disruptive potential of AI will have nothing less than the social impact of the industrial revolution, Henry Ford's assembly line, the invention of flight, and the Internet."

AI or RPA, which one do I use? That's the number one question asked about the role robotic process automation (RPA) plays vs. artificial intelligence (AI), especially in the context of applying technology to support the challenges of public sector. But I don't see this as a'vs' conversation. Public sector organisations are constantly facing challenges. Budget constraints, antiquated systems, and an aging workforce are among the various issues for many governments.

The advances in Artificial intelligence (AI) have effectively proliferated into numerous sectors, for example, computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing. This new pattern brought about a wave of academic publications in the field of AI-fueled drug discovery, plenty of startups growing new methodologies and seeking after the inventive business models to change the pharmaceutical innovative work. The pharmaceutical business is likewise reinforcing its internal capabilities around thereby bringing together the previously segregated data sources, hiring data scientists and putting resources into infrastructure. Artificial intelligence can be utilized for target identification, in silico drug configuration, drug improvement, big data analytics, forecast of study threats, patient matching and more. Therefore, it is being trialed as well as deployed by numerous pharmaceutical organizations with some building up their own advanced data analytics platforms which use AI.

In 2017 the World Economic Forum's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution teamed up with the Government of Rwanda to draft the world's first framework for governing drones at scale. Using a performance-based approach that set minimum safety requirements instead of equipment specifications, this innovative regulatory framework gave drone manufacturers the flexibility to design and test different types of drones. These drones have delivered life-saving vaccines, conducted agricultural land surveys, inspected infrastructure and had many other socially beneficial uses in Rwanda.