I was NASA's chief orbital technician, as the agency was changing its name to NAIA, the National Artificial Intelligence Administration, responsible for de-orbiting the International Space Station. The ISS name itself was a misnomer, coined when the space program was sliding from dream toward delusion. By definition, space stations are orbital facilities where astronauts transfer from Earth-launch vehicles to interplanetary ships intended for, say, the first human expedition to Mars, which indeed never took place. Having accomplished little worthwhile scientific research since its 1998 launch, the ISS was primarily a propaganda tool, pretending the technologically advanced nations of the world had become partners and that humanity had a glorious future in outer space. After decades of indecision, the alternatives now were to find a new purpose for the ISS and boost it to a higher orbit or crash it back to Earth at a safe location in the vast Pacific Ocean.

Graphs that model social networks, numerical simulations, and the structure of the Internet are enormous and cannot be manually inspected. A popular metric used to analyze these networks is Betweenness Centrality (BC), which has applications in community detection, power grid contingency analysis, and the study of the human brain. However, these analyses come with a high computational cost that prevents the examination of large graphs of interest. Recently, the use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) has been promising for efficient processing of unstructured data sets. Prior GPU implementations of BC suffer from large local data structures and inefficient graph traversals that limit scalability and performance. Here we present a hybrid GPU implementation that provides good performance on graphs of arbitrary structure rather than just scale-free graphs as was done previously. Our methods achieve up to 13 speedup on high-diameter graphs and an average of 2.71 speedup overall compared to the best existing GPU algorithm. We also observe near linear speedup when running BC on 192 GPUs. Network analysis is a fundamental tool for domains as diverse as compilers,17 social networks,14 and computational biology.5 Real world applications of these analyses involve tremendously large networks that cannot be inspected manually. An example of a graph analytic that has found significant attention in recent literature is BC.

There are lots of reasons why colonizing space seems compelling. The popular astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that it would stimulate the economy and inspire the next generation of scientists. Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, argues that "there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multiplanetary…to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen." And the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has conjectured that if humanity fails to colonize space within 100 years, we could face extinction. To be sure, humanity will eventually need to escape Earth to survive, since the sun will make the planet uninhabitable in about 1 billion years.

IBM Watson Health will continue to collaborate with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on the development of treatment regimens for veterans with cancer through next June. IBM Watson Health has announced an extension through June 2019 of its collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to help treat veterans with cancer using artificial intelligence (AI). The partners use the Watson cognitive computing platform to inform the delivery of personalized treatment plans by the VA's oncologists. This requires researchers and clinicians to sequence patients' DNA to locate likely cancer-causing mutations and determine strategies to target those mutations. AI can help oncologists interpret genomic data faster and with less difficulty.

A UK government backed drone innovation project that's exploring how unmanned aerial vehicles could benefit cities -- including for use-cases such as medical delivery, traffic incident response, fire response and construction and regeneration -- has reported early learnings from the first phase of the project. Five city regions are being used as drone test-beds as part of Nesta's Flying High Challenge -- namely London, the West Midlands, Southampton, Preston and Bradford. While five socially beneficial use-cases for drone technology have been analyzed as part of the project so far, including considering technical, social and economic implications of the tech. The project has been ongoing since December. Nesta, the innovation-focused charity behind the project and the report, wants the UK to become a global leader in shaping drone systems that place people's needs first, and writes in the report that: "Cities must shape the future of drones: Drones must not shape the future of cities."

Leveraging robotics to undertake dangerous missions has obvious benefits for mankind, and space travel is no exception. In 2011, NASA sent its dexterous assistant'Robonaut 2' on a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) with the objective of working alongside presiding astronauts. Now a "source in the rocket and space industry" tells RIA Novosti that a Russian android duo could be following suit as early as next year. According to Defense One, the FEDOR androids will, in an unprecedented move, fly on the unmanned Soyuz spacecraft not as cargo, but as crew members. The Roscosmos space agency has reportedly given the flight its preliminary approval.

An ethics committee says creating GM babies is "morally permissible" AI experts vow they won't help create lethal autonomous weapons

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have been the talk of the town for the past few years--and the hype isn't slowing down anytime soon. I believe 2019 is going to be the year for businesses who have waited to finally jump on board to witness a goldmine of advancements for their industry. What could we potentially see next year? Let's dig deeper into AI and machine learning predictions for the coming months. When dealing with a technology as advanced as machine learning, there simply isn't an industry that would not benefit. I mean how could a business not take advantage of a technology that would make them more successful?

The Chinese military is developing a fleet of new submarines that will navigate the ocean without a human crew, according to scientists involved in the project. The submarines will be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), allowing them to navigate independently and work alongside existing fleets. The crew-less submersibles will be relatively large and low-cost compared to other military watercrafts, according to scientists working on the project. The AI submarines are rumoured to be fitted with diesel-electric engines to enable them to stay at sea for several months without returning to dock. China will use these unmanned subs for intelligence gathering missions, planting sea mines, and'kamikaze'-style attacks on high-value targets, the scientists said.

Astronaut Tim Peake has launched a competition to name the British-made Mars rover set to search for life on the red planet -- and'Rover McRoverface' is already in the running. The rover is scheduled to land on the red planet in August 2021 and will be part of a mission to investigate how Mars evolved and whether it has conditions for life. People with suggestions can submit them on a designated website set-up by the European Space Agency (ESA). However, it is not a popularity poll, with an expert panel scheduled to make the final decision. As a result, 'Rover McRoverface' is unlikely to be the winning entry.