Forrester Research has published a report summing up its impressions from the HIMSS19 Global Conference & Exhibition. Experts said they came away from the show convinced that big momentum is building behind interoperability, and it's not coming from the places one might expect. Health systems will need to do better with the management and sharing of more data than ever if they hope to stay competitive in a value-based care landscape where patients have more choice than ever about where they get their care, according to the study. WHY IT MATTERS As interoperability continues to gain steam, it's set to boost the profiles of an array of other key technologies, said Forrester researchers. At HIMSS19, it was clear that tools "supporting data management and interoperability, including cloud and AI, showcased their ability to add value and hit on the quadruple aim: improving the customer experience, driving better outcomes, lowering costs, and supporting the whole care team," they said.

In the past, the very idea of human-manufactured intelligence stood as an allegory from anything from the pitfalls of mankind itself to the dangers of playing god. Today, however, AI is very much a reality and perhaps shows how well early science-fiction writing predicted a future of digital intelligence. What remains is a tremendous responsibility on the shoulders of us humans to create intelligent, yet ethical, technology – but not everyone sees it that way. In the wrong hands, AI capabilities become an incredible weapon to fuel social unrest, political instability, support propaganda of authoritarian regimes, and even build an autonomous battlefield. In China alone there are over 200 million active surveillance cameras – nearly four times more than in the US.

Spend your tax refund on something you actually want. If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Today's newsroom and any business incentives. Doing your taxes might suck, but getting your tax refund back feels fantastic. It's as if you're getting free money added to your bank account (even thought it's really just money you earned that the government took too much of). Now, you just need to decide on what to spend it on. I mean, a tax refund is the perfect excuse to treat yourself. Instead of blowing your newfound money on some trendy piece of clothing or cool-looking gizmo, you might want to invest a high-quality product that will last you years to come. Here at Reviewed, it's our job to test and rate hundreds of products throughout the year, and we take it very seriously, so we know a thing or two about what's actually worth buying.

The University of Albany in Upstate New York recently unveiled a two-story, 1,700-square-foot drone lab. The College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC) hosted an open house last month to launch the lab, located in the basement of Page Hall at the university's downtown campus. The space, enclosed with netting and rubber flooring, offers a controlled indoor environment for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight training, along with land-based robotics research and educational opportunities. According to a press release from UAlbany, last summer, Brandon Behlendorf, an assistant professor at CEHC, was leaving his office in Richardson Hall when he stumbled upon an aging stairwell on the north corner of the second floor. Wondering where it led, he made his way down five stories to a locked door in the basement.

Once upon a time, cybersecurity was a function of protecting a server or two, and a handful of endpoints from a random virus every now and then. Over the past 20 years, though, the size and scope of the infrastructure most companies need to protect, and the volume of malicious threats those companies face, have skyrocketed exponentially. That's why artificial intelligence (AI) is crucial today. AI has quickly evolved from science fiction pipe dream to overhyped buzzword to business imperative in order to effectively defend against threats today. The halcyon days of a small local network that was easily defined and contained are long gone.

A distant space rock called Bennu is spinning faster meaning its rotation period is getting shorter by about one second every 100 years - but scientists are still trying to figure out why. NASA is observing the asteroid to help them understand the evolution of other similar objects, their potential threat to Earth, and if they could be mined for resources. Scientists used data gathered during the OSIRIS-REx mission, before the probe's arrival, to calculate that Bennu's rotation rate is speeding up over time. Bennu is 70 million miles (110m km) away from Earth. As it moves through space at about 63,000 miles per hour (101,000 km per hour), it also spins, completing a full rotation every 4.3 hours.

With roughly the same population as the State of Missouri, Lebanon is a small country of six million people that borders Syria and Israel. Due to its location, the country has been subjected to a multitude of political and religious factions inhabiting the state. People frequently fight over whose invisible friend is better, and the country has faced long periods of instability including wars with Israel, civil wars and internal conflicts, and most recently some spillover from the Syrian war – which means lots of Syrians flying around on motorcycles. All of this turmoil has contributed to structural problems in the economy such as chronic fiscal deficits that have increased Lebanon's debt-to-GDP ratio to the third highest in the world. Economic growth has slowed to 1-2% over the past decade which constrains government investments in necessary infrastructure improvements. Notwithstanding these challenges, day to day life in Lebanon is pretty awesome.

At the world's top computer-vision conference last June, Google and Apple sponsored an academic contest that challenged algorithms to make sense of images from twin cameras collected under varied conditions, such as sunny and poor weather. Artificial intelligence software proficient at that task could help the US tech giants with money-making projects such as autonomous cars or augmented reality. But the winner was an institution with very different interests and allegiances: China's National University of Defense Technology, a top military academy of the People's Liberation Army. That anecdote helps illustrate China's broad ambitions in AI and recent prominence on the field's frontiers. In 2017 the country's government announced a new artificial intelligence strategy that aims to rival the US in the crucial technology by 2020.

Have you ever discovered a solution to a once vexing problem, only to have it seem obvious in hindsight?

In February 2019, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," also known as the …