Blend two or three metals together and you get an alloy that usually looks and acts like a metal, with its atoms arranged in rigid geometric patterns. But once in a while, under just the right conditions, you get something entirely new: a futuristic alloy called metallic glass that's amorphous, with its atoms arranged every which way, much like the atoms of the glass in a window. Its glassy nature makes it stronger and lighter than today's best steel, plus it stands up better to corrosion and wear. Even though metallic glass shows a lot of promise as a protective coating and alternative to steel, only a few thousand of the millions of possible combinations of ingredients have been evaluated over the past 50 years, and only a handful developed to the point that they may become useful. Now a group led by scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University has reported a shortcut for discovering and improving metallic glass--and, by extension, other elusive materials--at a fraction of the time and cost.

The world is living under the threat of nuclear war and a terrifying simulation reveals what would happen if a nuclear bomb went off in a major city. As well as looking at the destruction, scientists used the computer model to work out how people would behave if the worst-case scenario struck. An entire city block was obliterated instantly and buildings blasted for a mile in almost every direction. Researchers found people who did nothing were most likely to die with nearly 280,000 people killed in just 48 hours. In the dystopian-like version of The Sims, researchers simulated a nuke exploding in Washington DC (pictured).

A University of Alabama master's student has developed an unusual tool to combat sexual assault: a bracelet. The device monitors wearers' vital signs and can pick up on changes that would signal being under attack. The smart bracelet, still in the prototype stage, alerts a predetermined list of contacts and the police if it senses that the wearer is being harmed. Additionally, it emits a loud alarm and is equipped with red strobe lights meant to scare away the attacker or get the attention of others in the vicinity. Jayun Patel, a master's student at the University of Alabama, designed a smart bracelet that can alert the authorities if a wearer is attacked.

The discovery of adversarial examples has raised concerns about the practical deployment of deep learning systems. In this paper, we argue that the field of medicine may be uniquely susceptible to adversarial attacks, both in terms of monetary incentives and technical vulnerability. To this end, we outline the healthcare economy and the incentives it creates for fraud, we extend adversarial attacks to three popular medical imaging tasks, and we provide concrete examples of how and why such attacks could be realistically carried out. For each of our representative medical deep learning classifiers, both white and black box attacks were both effective and human-imperceptible. We urge caution in employing deep learning systems in clinical settings, and encourage research into domain-specific defense strategies.

The most recent financial upheavals have cast doubt on the adequacy of some of the conventional quantitative risk management strategies, such as VaR (Value at Risk), in many common situations. Consequently, there has been an increasing need for verisimilar financial stress testings, namely simulating and analyzing financial portfolios in extreme, albeit rare scenarios. Unlike conventional risk management which exploits statistical correlations among financial instruments, here we focus our analysis on the notion of probabilistic causation, which is embodied by Suppes-Bayes Causal Networks (SBCNs); SBCNs are probabilistic graphical models that have many attractive features in terms of more accurate causal analysis for generating financial stress scenarios. In this paper, we present a novel approach for conducting stress testing of financial portfolios based on SBCNs in combination with classical machine learning classification tools. The resulting method is shown to be capable of correctly discovering the causal relationships among financial factors that affect the portfolios and thus, simulating stress testing scenarios with a higher accuracy and lower computational complexity than conventional Monte Carlo Simulations.

The US Army recently announced that it is developing the first drones that can spot and target vehicles and people using artificial intelligence (AI). This is a big step forward. Whereas current military drones are still controlled by people, this new technology will decide who to kill with almost no human involvement. Once complete, these drones will represent the ultimate militarisation of AI and trigger vast legal and ethical implications for wider society. There is a chance that warfare will move from fighting to extermination, losing any semblance of humanity in the process.

Next generation roadside detectors could soon be snapping motorists using smartphones behind the wheel without them realising, say police in Australia. High tech cameras that can detect the presence of the gadgets in the hands of drivers could be commonplace in the near future, they say. Drivers distracted by talking or texting on the phone are one of the biggest dangers on the road, and the new technology could help to crack down on the practice. It's not exactly clear how the cameras will work, but it seems likely they will incorporate image recognition AI software. Next generation roadside detectors could soon be snapping motorists using smartphones behind the wheel, say police in Australia.

It may seem more like a moral dilemma posed in an episode of Star Trek, but the question of whether robots are people has European lawmakers at loggerheads. The issue first arose in January 2017, thanks to a paragraph of text buried deep in a European Parliament report, that advised creating a'legal status for robots'. Its primary purpose was in order to establish who is liable if the intelligent machines cause any damage. However, experts are now opposing the move, saying that it is'inappropriate' from a legal and ethical perspective and could breach human rights. It may seem more like a moral dilemma posed in an episode of Star Trek, but the question of whether robots are people has European lawmakers at loggerheads.

When Pentagon Officials speak about a technology you know it's a serious topic of public concern. And the tech on spot now is artificial intelligence, where a senior official in the DoD (Department of Defense) has come out clear to explain how AI and robots will be a key factor in deciding outcomes on future battlefields. Ideally, there's a lot to ponder when machine intelligence is spoken about under the glare of security matters, in fact, this has also been a major topic with experts. To succeed in maintaining national security the concerned bodies need to also, evolve with emerging technologies. Michael D. Griffin, in a report, explained that national security is a product of consistent exploration of rising technologies.

This week, we learned the future of the car is not owning one--at least not if Uber gets its way. The ride-hailing giant came out with twin announcements: On Monday, it said it would acquire the bike-share company Jump, in a deal worth $200 million. On Wednesday, it announced a move into car-sharing and public transit ticketing, too, inking deals with the startup Getaround and the British mobile payments company Masabi. The goal: Making it much, much easier to live car-free, and maybe take a few UberX rides along the way. Meanwhile, Airstream rolled out an adorable and very practical new trailer that is, perhaps, too small to share with too many honies, and the Silicon Valley–based lidar startup Luminar shared its newest tech with transportation editor Alex Davies.