Inspired by the matching of supply to demand in logistical problems, the optimal transport (or Monge--Kantorovich) problem involves the matching of probability distributions defined over a geometric domain such as a surface or manifold. In its most obvious discretization, optimal transport becomes a large-scale linear program, which typically is infeasible to solve efficiently on triangle meshes, graphs, point clouds, and other domains encountered in graphics and machine learning. Recent breakthroughs in numerical optimal transport, however, enable scalability to orders-of-magnitude larger problems, solvable in a fraction of a second. Here, we discuss advances in numerical optimal transport that leverage understanding of both discrete and smooth aspects of the problem. State-of-the-art techniques in discrete optimal transport combine insight from partial differential equations (PDE) with convex analysis to reformulate, discretize, and optimize transportation problems. The end result is a set of theoretically-justified models suitable for domains with thousands or millions of vertices. Since numerical optimal transport is a relatively new discipline, special emphasis is placed on identifying and explaining open problems in need of mathematical insight and additional research.

Semi-supervised bootstrapping techniques for relationship extraction from text iteratively expand a set of initial seed instances. Due to the lack of labeled data, a key challenge in bootstrapping is semantic drift: if a false positive instance is added during an iteration, then all following iterations are contaminated. We introduce BREX, a new bootstrapping method that protects against such contamination by highly effective confidence assessment. This is achieved by using entity and template seeds jointly (as opposed to just one as in previous work), by expanding entities and templates in parallel and in a mutually constraining fashion in each iteration and by introducing higherquality similarity measures for templates. Experimental results show that BREX achieves an F1 that is 0.13 (0.87 vs. 0.74) better than the state of the art for four relationships.

NASA is set to make history when it launches its InSight Mars lander on May 5. InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will be the first spacecraft to launch to another planet from the West Coast when it blasts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California. The launch at Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex-3 is scheduled for 7:05 a.m. EDT on May 5. A United Launch Alliance Atlas v 401 rocket will send InSight on its 7-month journey to Mars. The unmanned spacecraft, which is built by Lockheed Martin, is expected to land on the Red Planet on Nov. 26, 2018. The mission, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will provide scientists with a wealth of data. "InSight will be the first mission to peer deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listening for marsquakes, which are seismic events similar to earthquakes on Earth," explained NASA, in a statement.

JERUSALEM – Israel's prime minister on Monday unveiled what he said was a "half ton" of Iranian nuclear documents collected by Israeli intelligence, claiming the trove of information proved that Iranian leaders covered up a nuclear weapons program before signing a deal with the international community in 2015. In a speech delivered in English and relying on his trademark use of visual aids, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the material showed that Iran cannot be trusted, and encouraged President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal next month. "Iran lied big time," Netanyahu declared. Netanyahu's presentation, delivered on live TV from Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, was his latest attempt to sway international opinion on the nuclear deal. The agreement offered Iran relief from crippling sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

It has been an incredible few years watching artificial intelligence (AI) emerge from the world of academia to become a mainstream business practice, and even being mentioned in Teen Vogue. AI is arguably the biggest technology opportunity for the UK economy today, so it's good to see the government taking this seriously by making it a core part of its modern industrial strategy. Last Thursday, the government agreed its AI sector deal with international tech firms, which will see £1bn of investment put into the industry. The step-changes in the capacity to collect and process massive amounts of data, combined with unprecedented accessibility of scalable cloud computing power and a wave of global entrepreneurship, has unlocked the AI technology developed in the 1950s, leading to massive innovation. AI already enables me to plan traffic-free journeys, play the perfect next music track, unlock my iPhone using my face, set a timer using my voice – and soon, hopefully, drive better. It is being used to reduce energy consumption, to improve teaching in schools, and to help detect disease.

Edward Geist is an associate policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND... Andrew J. Lohn is an engineer at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Artificial intelligence and nuclear war have been fiction clichés for decades. Today's AI is impressive to be sure, but specialized, and remains a far cry from computers that become self-aware and turn against their creators. At the same time, popular culture does not do justice to the threats that modern AI indeed presents, such as its potential to make nuclear war more likely even if it never exerts direct control over nuclear weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the military significance of AI when he declared in September that the country that leads in artificial intelligence will eventually rule the world.

Europe's secret weapon in the race against the U.S. and China on artificial intelligence is … ethics. That was the message at the core of the EU's AI strategy unveiled Wednesday and developed by a team of European Commissioners under the supervision of Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip. In its "Charter on AI Ethics," the Commission wants to spell out how to preserve fundamental rights along with the rise of AI. This, the bloc believes, will boost consumer trust in European AI applications and help the Continent -- which lags far behind the U.S. and China in building a state-of-the-art AI industry -- catch up with competitors. The strategy includes a boost to the bloc's annual spending on AI research and development of about 70 percent, to around €500 million, effective immediately.

Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has introduced information technology initiatives under the agency's data science incubator program during the Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, D.C., MedCityNews reported Thursday. Gottlieb highlighted the FDA's Information Exchange and Data Transformation program that seeks to standardize methods to examine potential applications of artificial intelligence in the clinical setting and the use of digital health tools in the premarket drug safety review process. FDA created the INFORMED program with the Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship and Action laboratory at the Department of Health and Human Services in a move to encourage collaborative scientific research and big data analytics efforts initially related to oncology. The agency partnered with Project Data Sphere to develop algorithms to classify tumor dynamics with the use of medical imaging data and teamed up with the National Cancer Institute to create a fellowship program that aims to produce digital biomarkers. Harvard University and FDA also collaborate on a fellowship program that explores machine learning and AI tools for potential use in the agency's regulatory process.

The NHS to look at options for how "tens of thousands" of staff could best be trained on robotics and artificial intelligence technologies. A review, which is to be led by US cardiologist Dr Eric Topol, will look to identify where the NHS should look to invest in AI and robotics-focused training initiatives. The process will also examine how technology is likely to affect what skills will be required in for healthcare professionals in the coming years. Topol will begin his work by visiting Moorfields Eye Hospital in east London, which is currently examining how machine-learning technology could be used to help analyse eye scans. "While it's hard to predict the future, we know artificial intelligence, digital medicine, and genomics will have an enormous impact for improving the efficiency and precision in healthcare," he said.

That was the message one young officer gave Lt. General John "Jack" Shanahan -- the Pentagon's director for defense for warfighter support -- who is hustling to put artificial intelligence and machine learning to work for the U.S. Defense Department. Highlighting the growing role AI is playing in security, intelligence and defense, Shanahan spoke Wednesday during a keynote address about his team's use of GPU-driven deep learning at our GPU Technology Conference in Washington. Shanahan leads Project Maven, an effort launched in April to put machine learning and AI to work, starting with efforts to turn the countless hours of aerial video surveillance collected by the U.S. military into actionable intelligence. "We have analysts looking at full-motion video, staring at screens 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 hours at a time. They're doing the same thing photographic interpreters were doing in World War II," Shanahan said.