The UNICEF Innovation Fund's Data Science Call for Proposals seeks to invest in innovative companies that are using data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or similar technologies to improve development outcomes. Apply Now! Deadline is February 28 The UNICEF Innovation Fund will make investments in for-profit companies registered in a UNICEF programme country that has an artificial intelligence solution with the potential to positively impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. Sign up now to get more funding opportunities emailed to you! The existing prototype should have promising results from initial pilots and be generating publicly exposed real-time data that is measurable and have the potential to benefit humanity. Companies interested in The UNICEF Innovation Fund's early-stage financing are required to complete and submit an Expression of Interest Response form showcasing how their project will score highly on the following criteria: Do you want to get advice on how to apply for USAID grants or get startup investments for technology entrepreneurs?

Martin F.R. works as a Technology Journalist at Analytics India Magazine. He usually likes to write detail-oriented articles which are well-researched in articulated formats. Other than covering updates on analytics, artificial intelligence & data science, his interests also include covering politics, economics, finance, consumer electronics, global affairs and issues regarding public policy matters. When not writing any articles, he usually delves into reading biographies of successful entrepreneurs or experiments with his new culinary ideas.

In enterprise AI, C3 (formerly C3 IoT) is amassing an impressive and seemingly unmatched record, one that the company has extended with its latest win, the expansion of a five-year engagement with Enel, Europe's largest power utility, to encompass nearly 50 million smart meters in homes and businesses. This follows C3 contract wins last year with Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S. Air Force and 3M, along with partnerships with AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. In the large utilities space, other customers include Con Edison, covering the New York metropolitan area, and Engie, one of the biggest utilities in France. The new contract (dollar amount not disclosed) expands on C3's existing, five-year engagement for Enel in Italy involving 32 million smart meters. C3 will provide the €74.6 billion utility with AI and smart grid analytics applications enabling Enel to deploy the Unified Virtual Data Lake, integrating data across its retail, distribution, trading, renewables and conventional generation businesses. The C3 AI Suite automates elements of data management, data science and AI application building, enabling the entirety of corporate data, regardless of data format or system – such as ERP, HR, financial and operational systems, including SAP Hana, Oracle, Siemens, PostGreSQL, MongoDB, and Cloudera – "to enable and deliver next-generation AI applications across Enel's business," C3 said.

It's a sunny afternoon in early January and, at the moment, Google owns this town. The search giant has come here for a marketing blitz at CES, the biggest tech showcase in the world. Its sole mission is trumpeting the Google Assistant, its digital concierge software for controlling your smart thermostat, getting your flight information and reading you headlines. Huffman, vice president of engineering for the Assistant, is standing with me in a big glass orb on the High Roller, Sin City's version of the London Eye observation wheel. We've just about reached the apex of the ride.

In July 2017 the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) launched its Digital Health Innovation Action Plan to provide Americans "timely access to safe and effective digital health products," many of which are being developed using artificial intelligence technologies. A key component of the Digital Health Innovation Action Plan is the innovative Software Precertification (Pre-Cert) Pilot Program, which a number of AI-based digital health projects have already completed, spiking FDA AI Med approvals in 2018. Synced takes a look at some of these companies and their FDA 510(K) clearance and Premarket Approval (PMA) AI-empowered medical product innovations. IDx is a technology company applying AI in medical diagnostics. In April 2018 the company received FDA premarket approval (PMA) for its product IDx-DR, an AI diagnostic system that detects signs of diabetic retinopathy in retinal images.

Past industrial revolutions have generated significant changes in the balance of power, international competition, and international conflict. The First Industrial Revolution generated massive increases in productivity in Europe and the United States, first in Great Britain and then beyond. The consequences for the balance of power were significant. Through its technological and organizational leadership, Great Britain became the leading power in Europe, pulling away from France and Prussia. The relative edge the British gained by being the first mover in the First Industrial Revolution generated returns that fueled the continued expansion of the British empire and gave Great Britain a lead that the rest of the world would take decades to catch up to.

A new anonymous texting bot program is aimed at helping children, teenagers and young adults quit using Juuls and other e-cigarettes. Developed by the large anti-smoking and public health non-profit the Truth Initiative, the text-based coaching is being integrated into the group's This Is Quitting and BecomeAnEx online quitting aids. The need for adolescent-focused programs is dire, according to a slew of recent studies and declarations of a youth vaping'epidemic' from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Surgeon General. FDA Commissioner Gottlieb called for cessation drugs for teens last month, but in the mean time the Truth Initiative's program hopes to help fill that void with text-coaching designed with teens in mind. Truth Initiative's new program texts encouragement geared toward teenagers who are trying to quit vaping in general - but focuses on the addictive Juul in particular Between 2017 and 2018, the number of high school students using e-cigarettes double, according to a University of Michigan study published in December. The rise of vaping was the steepest single-year change documented by the survey in all of its 44 years - a greater increase than has ever been seen in teen drinking, smoking or drug use.

Medicare fraud is quite, unfortunately, an ongoing epidemic according to a recent study. Machine learning has recently become a very useful tool in rooting out a variety of Medicare fraud that has been occurring, however. It's estimated that Medicare fraud is responsible for almost $65 billion in losses each year. With AI going through a wide range of cases it could be possible to prevent some of these effects from happening. According to researchers at Florida Atlantic University, it may be possible to use machine learning to identify instances of fraud effectively.

The White House will take "executive action" in the coming weeks to make sure the United States keeps its research and development advantage in artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, quantum computing and next generation wireless networks, known as 5G, a White House official said on Wednesday. President Donald Trump discussed investing in what he called "industries of the future" as part of expanded infrastructure investment in his State of the Union address Tuesday evening. The White House, which held meetings last year to discuss these technologies, did not provide detail on what the actions might be. The Wall Street Journal reported the administration wanted to increase the government's role to quicken the pace of development. "Within the coming weeks we could expect to see executive action designed to preserve American R&D leadership," the official said.

The governments of many cities just starting smart city development will face a critical cold-start problem: how to develop a new smart city service with limited data. We investigate the common process of urban transfer learning, i.e., leveraging transfer learning to accelerate smart city development, and also provide city planners and relevant practitioners with guidelines for applying this novel learning paradigm.