Corn yield prediction is beneficial as it provides valuable information about production and prices prior the harvest. Publicly available high-quality corn yield prediction can help address emergent information asymmetry problems and in doing so improve price efficiency in futures markets. This paper is the first to employ Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), a special form of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) method to predict corn yields. A cross sectional time series of county-level corn yield and hourly weather data made the sample space large enough to use deep learning technics. LSTM is efficient in time series prediction with complex inner relations, which makes it suitable for this task. The empirical results from county level data in Iowa show promising predictive power relative to existing survey based methods.

Businesses need to better fund AI cybersecurity to combat the growing threat of artificially intelligent (AI) cyberattacks, according to the CTO of the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University, Dudu Mimran. Speaking at the OECD Forum, Mimran predicted that AI would become a more common weapon in the arsenal of hackers. The senior telecommunications and cybersecurity expert argued that this is partly because using AI would be "cheaper, faster and smarter" for hackers. AI-driven cyberattacks could take many forms, including phishing, identity theft and denial-of-service attacks. According to Natan Bandler, CEO and co-founder of Cy-oT, the two main areas in which AI is being used to carry out attacks are as a "tool to find exploits" and for auto hacking to "map existing exploits and weaknesses."

A team of researchers from Maryland say they've invented a general artificial intelligence way for machines to identify and process 3-D images that doesn't require humans to go through the tedium of inputting specific information that accounts for each and every instance, scenario, difference, change and category that could crop up. But stay with me, layperson. This is actually a huge deal for the technology sector -- a massive step for the case of general AI versus specific AI. And once fine-tuned, this development will have the power to shape and change how everyone from police and intelligence officials to retail marketers and medical professionals go about their daily business. Currently, neural networks, defined as those computing systems that are aimed at mimicking how humans think and make decisions, are only as good as the information that's inputted.

Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) started with a very simple plan. That is, to make surgery less invasive with surgical robots. For laypeople in 1995, the concept was science fiction. At the time, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute had been kicking around the idea for years. That's because the U.S. Army had hired them in the late '80s to make remote battlefield surgery feasible.

A police drone operator was forced to steer the device away from the path of an F-15 fighter jet travelling at nearly 520mph, a report has revealed. The Devon and Cornwall officer was convinced there would be a collision as the military jet came into view and then banked right above Throwleigh, Devon, on January 16. The Airprox board, which looks into near-misses, reported the 13lbs device was flying at an altitude of around 300ft when the pilot heard a fast jet approaching. 'He descended the drone as quickly as possible,' the report said. 'The jet came into view from right-to-left and seemed to pass by the drone at the same altitude; it looked like the jet was within 200m laterally of the drone.

"Loot boxes are like scratch-off cards: you open one out of curiosity, get a little prize, think'darn, maybe next time,' and then it just turns into a habit," says Brian. "I got a big prize with my first $20 and thought, 'Hey, maybe I'll get something good again,' and spent another $5 next week, and then $5 more. It's a disturbingly easy trap to fall into." Brian (not his real name), a 25-year-old American Reddit user who responded to a Guardian call-out, is one of millions of players who buy "loot boxes", lucky-dip boxes that cost real money and yield random virtual rewards. Loot boxes have attracted controversy and comparisons to gambling in recent months, prompting countries including Belgium and the Netherlands to determine that their inclusion in popular games such as Fifa, Overwatch and Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius contravenes local gambling legislation. Now, politicians and gambling-awareness organisations in the UK are calling for regulation, too.

At Google's campus in Mountain View, California, executives are trying to assuage thousands of employees protesting a contract with the Pentagon's flagship artificial-intelligence initiative, Project Maven. Thousands of miles away, algorithms trained under Project Maven--which includes companies other than Google--are helping war fighters identify potential ISIS targets in video from drones. The controversy around Silicon Valley's cooperation with the military may intensify in coming months as Project Maven expands into new areas, including developing tools to more efficiently search captured hard drives. Funding for the project roughly doubled this year, to $131 million. Now the Pentagon is planning a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to serve all US military and intelligence agencies that may be modeled on Project Maven.

Ned Sharpless has been in cancer research for decades, most recently as the director of the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Cancer Center. But when he took the helm of the National Cancer Institute in October, he realized it would take time to get to know the $5.5 billion federal agency. So he embarked on a listening tour that ended up lasting six months, talking to investigators, patients, research advocates, and agency administrators. Seven months into his tenure at NCI, Sharpless sat down with STAT on Wednesday to talk about his new role, using artificial intelligence in cancer care, and how the NIH's "All of Us" precision medicine project could play into the NCI's big data aspirations. Try it FREE for 30 days and cancel anytime!

A cross-party group of lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a draft version of what would become Japan's first-ever law defining the government's responsibility to systematically promote Japanese language education both at home and abroad. The drafting of the bill comes as Japan experiences a continued increase in non-Japanese residents, including under categories such as technical intern trainees, students, and highly skilled professionals, but at the same time lacks a unified policy as to how to teach them Japanese. The group hopes to submit the bill to the fall session of the Diet for possible enactment, Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Hiroshi Hase, secretary-general of the group, told The Japan Times. Whether the bill will be passed through the Diet and how big of an impact it will create remains to be seen, with its effectiveness likely hinging on how much funding it receives from the government. The draft bill does not specify any numerical targets for fiscal spending nor set a deadline for the government to meet the ultimate goal advocated in the legislation.

China may have ambitious plans for space exploration and research, but it wants to take the route of cooperation. The country's ambassador to the United Nations said Monday the future China Space Station (CSS) would be open to cooperation and utilization by all U.N. member-countries. "CSS belongs not only to China, but also to the world. All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate in the cooperation on an equal footing," Shi Zhongjun said, according to a report by China's official Xinhua news agency. "Through the vehicle of CSS, we would like to build up a model of sincere mutual beneficial cooperation among countries in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space," he added.