While a new visa system approved by the Diet, set to take effect in April, has been welcomed by Japan's labor-short nursing care businesses, questions remain about how to provide sufficient Japanese-language education for foreign workers. Despite steps taken by the government in recent years to relax rules on foreign workers in the sector, language skills have been a major barrier. Vu Thi Thu Trang from Vietnam is among those who could obtain working status after the government eased the requirement for foreign nationals to work as caregivers. The 31-year-old certified caregiver, who came to Japan in 2014, said she first found out about nursing care work while studying at a Japanese language school. She then entered a caregiver vocational school and finished a two-year curriculum earlier this year.

We report a data mining pipeline and subsequent analysis to understand the core periphery power structure created in three national newspapers in Bangladesh, as depicted by statements made by people appearing in news. Statements made by one actor about another actor can be considered a form of public conversation. Named entity recognition techniques can be used to create a temporal actor network from such conversations, which shows some unique structure, and reveals much room for improvement in news reporting and also the top actors' conversation preferences. Our results indicate there is a presence of cliquishness between powerful political leaders when it comes to their appearance in news. We also show how these cohesive cores form through the news articles, and how, over a decade, news cycles change the actors belonging in these groups.

Doug Engelbart was the first to actually build a computer that might seem familiar to us, today. He came to Silicon Valley after a stint in the Navy as a radar technician during World War II. Engelbart was, in his own estimation, a "naïve drifter," but something about the Valley inspired him to think big. Engelbart's idea was that computers of the future should be optimized for human needs--communication and collaboration. Computers, he reasoned, should have keyboards and screens instead of punch cards and printouts. They should augment rather than replace the human intellect. And so he pulled a team together and built a working prototype: the oN‑Line System. It was a general‑purpose tool designed to help knowledge workers perform better and faster, and that was a controversial idea. Letting nonengineers interact directly with a computer was seen as harebrained, utopian--subversive, even.

News that General Motors plans to cut up to 14,800 jobs in the U.S. and Canada was initially reported as a conventional business-cycle adjustment -- a "trimming of the sails." The main causes of the cuts were understood to be slowing demand in the U.S. and China, slumping demand for sedans, and the need to reduce over-capacity in North America. Then the story turned political, as President Trump lashed out at GM while some observers framed the news as a blow to the president's promises to bring jobs back to the U.S. heartland. And then others focused on the community disruption of plant closings in the Rust Belt and how it might be mitigated. While all of those perspectives are relevant, the most revealing aspect of GM's announcement may well be what the layoffs say about broader technology trends.

Me: "Alexa, tell me what will happen in 2019." Amazon AI: "Do you want to open'this day in history'?" Me: "Alexa, give me a prediction for 2019." Amazon AI: "The crystal ball is clouded, I can't tell." My conversation with Amazon's "smart speaker" or "intelligent voice assistant" just about sums up the present state of "artificial intelligence" (AI) at home, the office, and the factory: Try a few times and sooner or later you will probably get the correct action the human intelligence behind it programmed it to perform. What will be the state of AI in 2019? The following list features 120 senior executives involved with AI, all peering into their not-so-clouded crystal ball, and promising less hype and more practical, precise, and narrow AI. "Self-Driving Finance is a practical implementation of AI that is already used in one form or another by millions of bank customers around the globe and will only get better in the coming years. Based on projects that are currently underway with ...

I've always been a loner, avoiding crowds as much as possible, but last Friday I found myself in the company of 500 million people. The breach of the personal accounts of Marriott and Starwood customers forced us to join the 34% of U.S. consumers who experienced a compromise of their personal information over the last year. Viewed another way, there were 2,216 data breaches and more than 53,000 cybersecurity incidents reported in 65 countries in the 12 months ending in March 2018. How many data breaches we will see in 2019 and how big are they going to be? No one has a crystal ball this accurate and it's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. Still, I made a brilliant, contrarian, and very accurate prediction last year, stating unequivocally that "there will be more spectacular data breaches" in 2018. Just like last year, this year's 60 predictions reveal the state-of-mind of key participants in the cybersecurity industry (on the defense team, of course) and cover all that's hot today. Topics include the use and misuse of data; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a double-edge sword helping both attackers and defenders; whether we are going to finally "get over privacy" or see our data finally being treated as a private and protected asset; how the cloud changes everything and how connected and moving devices add numerous security risks; the emerging global cyber war conducted by terrorists, criminals, and countries; and the changing skills and landscape of cybersecurity.

A crowd gathers in front of the White House this past June. It looks like facial recognition tech may be used around the White House. The Secret Service plans to test a system in and around the official residence of the president of the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a Tuesday blog post. The ACLU pointed to a document published last week by the Department of Homeland Security (PDF). According to the document, the Secret Service wants to see if facial recognition technology can help it identify known individuals entering the White House.

Artificial Intelligence is using data to change the world. Have you considered how AI might be changing architecture? Architects are not sure what to think about Artificial Intelligence. You are probably very familiar with how AI will change industries, like cybersecurity, medicine, and manufacturing. The core issue centers around the idea that creatives will be replaced by super-intelligent robots to design buildings, create art, or design vehicles.

A sunset on Mars, as captured by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit back in 2005.NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell NASA's InSight robot, the newest Martian resident, has been busy in Elysium Planitia. After unfurling its solar panels and soaking up the sunlight, its instruments began to kick into gear, including both its state-of-the-art seismometer and its air pressure sensor. On December 1st, the ghostly, ethereal sounds of Mars were detected and recorded – and you can listen to them in the newly released video from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) below. The first clip you can hear comes courtesy of the seismometer, which picked up the wind causing the solar panels to vibrate. It's barely audible on devices without a decent subwoofer, but fortunately, if you wait a moment, you'll hear the same sounds but two octaves higher.

A SpaceX delivery full of Christmas goodies arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, following a slight delay caused by a communication drop-out. The Dragon capsule pulled up at the orbiting lab three days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Commander Alexander Gerst used the space station's big robotic arm to grab the cargo carrier, as the two craft soared 250 miles above the Pacific. It took two tries to get the Dragon close enough for capture. NASA called off the Dragon's first approach because of trouble with the communication network that serves the space station.