Elon Musk's Starhopper has taken another major step toward reality. The prototype ship blasted off from the Boca Chica, Texas test site on Tuesday evening just after 5 p.m. local time (6 p.m. ET) for its 150-meter untethered flight test. While it was at first enshrouded in smoke and flames, the water tower-shaped vehicle emerged moments later to be seen rising high above the ground without any obstructions to the view. The successful test comes after SpaceX was forced to abandon its attempt on Monday to allow for a last-minute inspection of the craft's igniters. Musk tweeted his congratulations to the SpaceX team not long after Tuesday's achievement wrapped up.

A customer receives a weekly email from their bank sent on an exact time and day of their choosing and includes the three data points this customer values most: their balance, weekly spending analysis, and savings projection. The email includes ads tailored to that customer's browsing choices, or appears completely free of ads--again, depending on what the customer chooses. Unless the bank senses truly unusual activity on this customer's account, that's the only time each week that the customer will receive a notice from the bank--and that's just the way they like it. Customers today yearn for a personalized human experience tailored to their needs, wants, and expectations – whether they are in your branch, dialing into your call center, or contacting you over social media. Advanced technologies can help banks create such experiences.

IBM designed Summit, the fastest supercomputer on Earth, to run the calculation-intensive models that power modern artificial intelligence (AI). Now MIT is about to get a slice. IBM pledged earlier this year to donate an $11.6 million computer cluster to MIT modeled after the architecture of Summit, the supercomputer it built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. The donated cluster is expected to come online this fall when the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing opens its doors, allowing researchers to run more elaborate AI models to tackle a range of problems, from developing a better hearing aid to designing a longer-lived lithium-ion battery. "We're excited to see a range of AI projects at MIT get a computing boost, and we can't wait to see what magic awaits," says John E. Kelly III, executive vice president of IBM, who announced the gift in February at MIT's launch celebration of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

Are you startled by the rise of cyberattacks globally? Well, your business is not immune to these attacks, and you should never be complacent with your existing security measures. There is a need to employ professionals to handle the security aspect of your business. Some of the people that will give high-level ideas on your security systems include data scientists, ethical hackers, and IT professionals. Over recent years, the development of reliable security systems has greatly relied on technology. As such, you need to exhaustively apply data science, which will help in the analysis of data from different sources to detect threats.

JERUSALEM – The long shadow war between Israel and Iran has burst into the open in recent days, with Israel allegedly striking Iran-linked targets as far away as Iraq and crash-landing two drones in Hezbollah-dominated southern Beirut. These incidents, along with an air raid in Syria that Israel says thwarted an imminent Iranian drone attack, have raised tensions at a particularly fraught time. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to project strength three weeks before national elections, while Iran has taken a series of provocative actions in recent months aimed at pressuring European nations to provide relief from crippling U.S. sanctions. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, vowed to retaliate after a drone crashed on the militant group's Beirut media office and another exploded midair early Sunday. Israeli forces along the border with Lebanon are on high alert, raising fears of a repeat of the 2006 war.

Defense and intelligence have long been a leader when it comes to AI. The Department of Defense (DoD) recently launched the Joint AI Center (JAIC) with a mission to transform the DoD by accelerating the delivery and adoption of AI to achieve mission impact at scale. This center is meant to provide expertise to help the DOD harness the game-changing power of AI. A few people listed who are influential in helping continue drive AI investment and technologies forward in the DOD are LTG Jack Shanahan who is the JAIC Director. In this role General Shanahan is responsible for accelerating the delivery of AI-enabled capabilities, scaling the department-wide impact of AI and synchronizing AI activities to expand joint force advantages.

It's no secret that our cybersecurity industry today suffers from a yawning talent gap -- a statistical juggernauton track to reach 3.5 million unfilled positions by 2021. As the wakeup call spreads, we're seeing more cross-disciplinary trainingsand nurture efforts deep into the educational pipeline -- from pre-K, elementaryand middle schoolinitiatives, to programs for high schooland higher education. We just got fresh momentum from the recent White House "Executive Order on America's Cybersecurity Workforce," which proclaims our collective cybersecurity talent pool "a strategic asset that protects the American people" and in need of "work-based learning, apprenticeships, and blended learning approaches…for both new workforce entrants and those who are advanced in their careers." As a cybersecurity education evangelist, this proclamation is at once music to my ears and the mother of all to-do lists. That's because the Executive Order focuses primarily on the Why and What -- meaning it's largely up to the industry to keep figuring out the How.

MOSCOW – It was second time lucky on Tuesday as an unmanned spacecraft carrying Russia's first humanoid robot docked at the International Space Station following a failed attempt over the weekend. Am ready to carry on with work," the robot's Twitter account said in a jokey first tweet from space. Copying human movements and designed to help with high-risk tasks, the life-size robot, Fedor, is due to stay on the ISS until Sept. 7. Speaking to Russian cosmonauts on the ISS via a video link-up, President Vladimir Putin lavished praise on them for the way they handled the glitch. The problems with docking were "in some way abnormal," he said, adding that "as usual for our cosmonauts, you dealt with this work magnificently. The robot sat in the commander's seat of an unmanned Soyuz spaceship that blasted off Thursday from a Russian spaceport in southern Kazakhstan.

Visual Connections, LLC (VC) has secured an unrestricted, prime award as a SDVOSB, HUBZone Small Business for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Program Support Centers'(PSC), Intelligent Automation/Artificial Intelligence IDIQ (IAAI).This award enables VC and its partners to compete for Requests for Task Order Proposals (RFTOPs) issued via this innovative IAAI contract vehicle providing solutions, services and products. VC assembled a strategic team of partners comprised of "technology partners" and "service partners" to facilitate robust offerings for this contract. A key technology partner for this contract is Deep Labs, Inc. (Deep Labs), a unique persona-based artificial intelligence company yielding intelligent predictive decisions for its clients. Via a VC prime contract, VC and Deep Labs have previously partnered to conceive, develop and implement a successful artificial intelligence pilot for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Program Integrity (CPI) department utilizing deep visioning and learning techniques and tools for CMS's Medicare Part D program, which covers prescriptions for over 39 million beneficiaries. This pilot was designed to discover potentially fraudulent activity before it occurs related to Excluded Providers (EP) to help reduce and minimize the "pay-and-chase path of recovery of funds" and to enhance CMS's ability to proactively identify and investigate potential fraud.

IBM designed Summit, the fastest supercomputer on Earth, to run the calculation-intensive models that power modern artificial intelligence (AI). Now MIT is about to get a slice. IBM pledged earlier this year to donate an $11.6 million computer cluster to MIT modeled after the architecture of Summit, the supercomputer it built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. The donated cluster is expected to come online this fall when the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing opens its doors, allowing researchers to run more elaborate AI models to tackle a range of problems, from developing a better hearing aid to designing a longer-lived lithium-ion battery. "We're excited to see a range of AI projects at MIT get a computing boost, and we can't wait to see what magic awaits," says John E. Kelly III, executive vice president of IBM, who announced the gift in February at MIT's launch celebration of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.