The wire, which is threaded into a vein, attracts special magnetic nanoparticles engineered to glom onto tumor cells that may be roaming the bloodstream if you have a tumor somewhere in your body. With these tumor cells essentially magnetized, the wire can lure the cells out of the free-flowing bloodstream using the same force that holds family photos to your refrigerator. The technique, which has only been used in pigs so far, attracts from 10-80 times more tumor cells than current blood-based cancer-detection methods, making it a potent tool to catch the disease earlier. The technique could even help doctors evaluate a patient's response to particular cancer treatments: If the therapy is working, tumor-cell levels in the blood should rise as the cells die and break away from the tumor, and then fall as the tumor shrinks. For now, Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, professor and chair of radiology and director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection, is focused on the wire as a cancer-detection method, but its reach could be much broader.

Thousands of scientists who specialise in artificial intelligence (AI) have declared that they will not participate in the development or manufacture of robots that can identify and attack people without human oversight. Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind and Elon Musk at the US rocket company SpaceX are among more than 2,400 signatories to the pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems, also known as Laws. The move is the latest from concerned scientists and organisations to highlight the dangers of handing over life and death decisions to AI-enhanced machines. It follows calls for a preemptive ban on technology that campaigners believe could usher in a new generation of weapons of mass destruction. Orchestrated by the Boston-based organisation, The Future of Life Institute, the pledge calls on governments to agree norms, laws and regulations that stigmatise and effectively outlaw the development of killer robots.

Today during the Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Future of Life Institute announced that more than 2,400 individuals and 160 companies and organizations have signed a pledge, declaring that they will "neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade or use of lethal autonomous weapons." The signatories, representing 90 countries, also call on governments to pass laws against such weapons. Google DeepMind and the Xprize Foundation are among the groups who've signed on while Elon Musk and DeepMind co-founders Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman have made the pledge as well. The pledge comes as a handful of companies are facing backlash over their technologies and how they're providing them to government agencies and law enforcement groups. Google has come under fire for its Project Maven Pentagon contract, which is providing AI technology to the military in order to help them flag drone images that require additional human review. Similarly, Amazon is facing criticism for sharing its facial recognition technology with law enforcement agencies while Microsoft has been called out for providing services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths, metalworking and carpenters, was said to have fashioned artificial beings in the form of golden robots. Myth finally moved toward truth in the 20th century, as AI developed in series of fits and starts, finally gaining major momentum--and reaching a tipping point--by the turn of the millennium. Here's how the modern history of AI and ML unfolded, starting in the years just following World War II. In 1950, while working at the University of Manchester, legendary code breaker Alan Turing (subject of the 2014 movie The Imitation Game) released a paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." It became famous for positing what became known as the "Turing test."

HealthTech presents a huge opportunity, but how can businesses leverage these advantages, and how can Data Science help? The healthcare industry is huge and in turn, the size of the Health Tech industry is significantly larger than in other fields. In the USA alone, the healthcare market is more than 17% of GDP. A recent article published by TechCrunch highlights the vulnerabilities in the industry based on its consistent and rapid expansion: "the healthcare market represents $3 trillion, almost 20 percent, of the U.S. economy. This market also is plagued by a level of gross inefficiency and under-performance largely unseen in any other industries in our post-internet world".

Google Cloud Platform is down (cloud.google.com) Credit card thieves using free-to-play apps to launder their ill-gotten gains (kromtech.com) How SSH port became 22 (www.ssh.com) Federal Reserve chair says decline in workers' share of profits'very troubling' (www.latimes.com) Trump's sycophants sink to new lows after (back.ly) U.S. To Make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Docs Play (www.bloombergquint.com) Iron Ox is hiring a Project Manager to help build the robotic farm (jobs.lever.co) Facebook's algorithm change leads to plummeting traffic and layoffs (thelogic.co)

The Pentagon's research arm is moving forward with a project that intends to bridge the gap between humans and machines. DARPA will select teams today to develop a neural interface as part of its new N3 program, with a goal of developing systems that would allow troops to send and receive information using their brainwaves, according to Nextgov. This means troops could one day control drones, cyber defense systems, and other technology with their mind. It might sound like science fiction, but the agency is looking to see this done in one of two ways: a non-invasive device outside of the body, or a non-surgical system that could be swallowed, injected, or delivered up the nose. The Pentagon's research arm is moving forward with a project that intends to bridge the gap between humans and machines.

Running a background check for a sensitive job in an investment bank, government office or large corporation traditionally takes 10 to 15 days. In today's fast-moving world, where a tweet can change everything in a matter of seconds, that's too long. Shlomo Mirvis had been conducting background checks the old fashioned way for Israeli intelligence firm Kela. Mirvis had to do his work manually. "The world of background checks hardly changed in the last 40 years," he tells ISRAEL21c.

This is new territory for families. For the first time, children who are too young to distinguish fantasy from reality are engaging with devices powered by artificial intelligence. Many see smart speakers as magical, imbue them with human traits and boss them around like a Marine drill instructor, according to several new studies in the past year. Hunter Walk, a San Francisco venture capitalist, worried that his family's Amazon Echo "is turning our daughter into a raging asshole," he wrote in a blog post in 2016, because of the 4-year-old's tendency to boss it around. He has since set rules around how to talk to the device and said he hasn't noticed any rude behavior by his daughter, who is now 6. "I still have concerns," Mr. Walk says.

On May 27, a deluge dumped more than 6 inches of rain in less than three hours on Ellicott City, Maryland, killing one person and transforming Main Street into what looked like Class V river rapids, with cars tossed about like rubber ducks. The National Weather Service put the probability of such a storm at once in 1,000 years. Yet, "it's the second time it's happened in the last three years," says Jeff Allenby, director of conservation technology for Chesapeake Conservancy, an environmental group. Floods are nothing new in Ellicott City, located where two tributaries join the Patapsco River. But Allenby says the floods are getting worse, as development covers what used to be the "natural sponge of a forest" with paved surfaces, rooftops, and lawns.