That split makes the target list symbolic as well as practical, a shot across the bow for China's ambitions to develop high-technology sectors outlined in the country's "Made in China 2025" industrial plan. "The list targets the China of the future, not of the past," said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia at Natixis . "It is really the way to go if the U.S. administration worries about China surpassing it as a technological power." In one example, the list generated by the United States Trade Representative takes aim at China's ambitions to become a world power in electric vehicles with tariffs on cars with electric motors as well as the lithium-ion batteries used to power them. Chinese auto makers don't yet sell electric cars in the U.S., but Beijing is investing heavily in the sector--including by funding its own manufacturers--to secure future global sales.

It looks more like an aerospace plane than a rocket. The 50-passenger liner carries you from earth to an orbiting space station 200 miles up. Orion, which looks like a far-out hypersonic jet, is similar in idea to NASA's Dyna Soar project. You can get a good idea of its capability by imagining it to be a much bigger X-15. The X-15, a supersonic, high-altitude experimental plane, could be modified to boost itself beyond the earth's atmosphere, the way Orion does.

In the future, if not already, the Silicon Valleys of artificial intelligence (AI) will be in China. Alibaba, China's e-commerce giant, is based in Hangzhou. And Tencent, a multinational conglomerate that is investing heavily in AI, is in Shenzhen. Tencent already has a market capitalization higher than General Electric, and Baidu is larger than General Motors. China has a chance to lead in AI because it has managed to adopt new technologies very quickly.

Be careful which words you feed into that machine-learning software you're building, and how. A study of news articles and books written during the 20th and 21st century has shown that not only are gender and ethnic stereotypes woven into our language, but that algorithms commonly used to train code can end up unexpectedly baking these biases into AI models. Basically, no one wants to see tomorrow's software picking up yesterday's racism and sexism. A paper published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday describes how word embeddings, a common set of techniques used by machine-leaning applications to develop associations between words, can pick up social attitudes towards men and women, and people of different ethnicities, from old articles and novels. In word-embedding models, an algorithm converts each word into a mathematical vector and maps it to a latent space.

The Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS), in partnership with NASA UTM, conducted multiple drone tests at the Nevada UAS test site at the Reno-Stead Airport. The technology capability level 3 (TCL 3) focused on airspace management technologies seeking to enable the safe integration of UAS into the National Airspace Systems. The research areas during the testing covered UAS ground control interfacing to locally manage operations, communication, navigation, surveillance, human factors, data exchange, network solutions and BVLOS architecture. "The state of Nevada will be known for its significant contribution in this journey through its pioneering work with the FAA, NASA and private partners like ourselves, facilitating safe and effective integration into national airspace," says Mike Richards, President and CEO of Drone America. NASA, FAA and its partners, and NIAS are working on the innovations and the industry growth while respecting aviation safety traditions.

The Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS), in partnership with NASA UTM, conducted multiple drone tests at the Nevada UAS test site at the Reno-Stead Airport. The technology capability level 3 (TCL 3) focused on airspace management technologies seeking to enable the safe integration of UAS into the National Airspace Systems. The research areas during the testing covered UAS ground control interfacing to locally manage operations, communication, navigation, surveillance, human factors, data exchange, network solutions and BVLOS architecture. "The state of Nevada will be known for its significant contribution in this journey through its pioneering work with the FAA, NASA and private partners like ourselves, facilitating safe and effective integration into national airspace," says Mike Richards, President and CEO of Drone America. NASA, FAA and its partners, and NIAS are working on the innovations and the industry growth while respecting aviation safety traditions.

While I applaud President Macron's Artificial Intelligence initiative, I don't think it goes far enough to fix the concerns that it is designed to address. It's true that France has underperformed in the development of new technology, so investing $1.5 billion in "scientific laboratories" and AI related companies is a great start. However, if the main aim is to challenge the dominance of the USA and China in the field of technology, it's not enough. There are two reasons why I say this. The first is about scale. Individual European countries don't have the firepower to compete with the world's superpowers.

IMAGE: Composite image showing an infrared view of Saturn's moon Titan, taken from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Some measures suggest that Titan has the highest habitability rating of any world other than... view more Developments in artificial intelligence may help us to predict the probability of life on other planets, according to new work by a team based at Plymouth University. The study uses artificial neural networks (ANNs) to classify planets into five types, estimating a probability of life in each case, which could be used in future interstellar exploration missions. The work is presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool on 4 April by Mr Christopher Bishop. Artificial neural networks are systems that attempt to replicate the way the human brain learns.

It might not have been the best day to release a trailer for the latest Call of Duty: WWII downloadable content, but if you're in the business of selling simulated gun violence as entertainment, there's never really a good day. So here it is, the trailer for Call of Duty: WWII's new DLC pack, The War Machine. As you'll see, it lets players experience diverse gameplay modes like: Of course, with the exception of the zombie modes, these are not just random arenas to fire guns at other human beings, but semi-accurate recreations of locations where large numbers of human beings fired guns at each other in the past. So any distaste you might feel at digital images of a soldier burning to death needs to be tempered by the fact that players can learn historical facts about a great civilizational conflict (and one that video games have barely scratched the surface of). For instance, did you know the rate of fire on the German MG 15 was carefully tuned until it could keep a perfect triplet beat to accompany "This is my World," by Esterly, a song that wouldn't even be recorded until 2016? Did you know it was a bad idea to stand in the blast trench of a V2 launch site during ignition?

The US Trade Representative has published the list of Chinese products that would be subject to its proposed tech tariffs, and there are a few clear themes. The move would hike the costs of about 1,300 products, including industrial robots, communication satellites, spacecraft and a slew of semiconductors.The aim, as before, is to punish China for allegedly goading American companies into transferring their patents and technology to Chinese firms for the sake of claiming economic superiority. The USTR claimed the proposed tariffs would stymie Chinese plans will "minimizing the impact" on the American economy. The tariffs are still subject to a 60-day notice process that would include public comments until May 11th and a public hearing on May 15th. Whether or not it plays out as claimed is another matter.