Artificial intelligence has increasingly been integrated into the weapons systems of the world's leading militaries, and at least one expert has said the futuristic technology may soon be the subject of a new Cold War. In a piece published Tuesday by The Conversation, North Dakota State University assistant professor Jeremy Straub argued that unlike the nuclear weapons that dominated much of the 21st century arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the use of cyberweapons and artificial intelligence largely remained "fair game," even as tensions again flared between the rivals. Both countries have invested heavily in developing new tools to wage war on this new front, but Russia particularly has sought to use it as an opportunity to upstage the more conventionally powerful U.S. Related: U.S. is losing to Russia and China in war for artificial intelligence, report says "Now, more than 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia have decommissioned tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Any modern-day cold war would include cyberattacks and nuclear powers' involvement in allies' conflicts," wrote Straub, who was also associate director of the university's Institute for Cyber Security Education and Research, in his article. "It's already happening," he added.

The Defense Department is looking for suggestions for its drone program. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is welcoming ideas for new technologies that can enhance drones and allow them to operate more smoothly. The theme for the innovation drive is autonomy, a statement from Federal Business Opportunities explained. The project is called OFFSET, an acronym for OFFensive Swarm Enabled Tactics, and it is the second drive for such technologies, according to Tech Crunch. DARPA's goal is to collect a variety of ideas on new technologies that inform the development of sensors, propeller blades, software, etc.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – SpaceX has launched a used supply ship on a used rocket to the International Space Station. The Falcon rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday, bearing a Dragon capsule full of food, experiments and other station goods for NASA. The Dragon and its 2,700-kilogram shipment should reach the space station Wednesday. The station astronauts will use a robot arm to grab it. It's the second trip to the orbiting lab for this particular Dragon, recycled following a visit two years ago. The Falcon's first-stage booster also flew before -- last summer.

An Associated Press investigation finds that Russian cyber spies exploiting a national vulnerability in cybersecurity are trying to break into the emails of scores of people working on military drone technology. An accused Russian hacker blamed for attacking LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring is finally facing American prosecutors after a lengthy extradition fight in the Czech Republic. Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin is due to appear in U.S. federal court in California on Thursday for a detention hearing. It's unclear whether Nikulin has any connection to the Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency, which is widely blamed by American authorities for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. But only two days after Nikulin's arrest, American officials for the first time publicly warned that the Russian government was directing efforts to influence the election by hacking and releasing private information.

I recently had the pleasure of being invited to speak at The Item Conference http://www.item.nu/cgi-oic/pagedb.exe/show?no 1 in London for educators, policy-makers and head-teachers visiting our amazing City for inspiration and knowledge about how to foster creativity in children with I. T. They were particularly interested in the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. So, with thinking cap on, and just a few short hours to prepare, I was thrilled to find out that A.I in education is not the work of science fiction, but is with us right now -- in action, and starting to build impact. For hundreds of years, humans have pondered the idea of building intelligent machines. Over this time, artificial intelligence has had highs and lows, demonstrated successes and unfulfilled potential. Today, the news is filled with the application of AI and machine learning to new problems.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced his intention to make France an AI leader and avoid "dystopia", supported by €1.5bn in investment. France is not the first country to surge ambitiously towards establishing itself as a "leader" in AI. Putin famously stated that "whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world". China has a three-year action plan to establish itself at the top. Canada's Trudeau discussed on multiple occasions the consequences of automation, and the opportunities of artificial intelligence.

Hospital readmissions have become one of the key measures of healthcare quality. Preventable readmissions have been identified as one of the primary targets for reducing costs and improving healthcare delivery. However, most data driven studies for understanding readmissions have produced black box classification and predictive models with moderate performance, which precludes them from being used effectively within the decision support systems in the hospitals. In this paper we present an application of structured sparsity-inducing norms for predicting readmission risk for patients based on their disease history and demographics. Most existing studies have focused on hospital utilization, test results, etc., to assign a readmission label to each episode of hospitalization. However, we focus on assigning a readmission risk label to a patient based on their disease history. Our emphasis is on interpreting the models to improve the understanding of the readmission problem. To achieve this, we exploit the domain induced hierarchical structure available for the disease codes which are the features for the classification algorithm. We use a tree based sparsity-inducing regularization strategy that explicitly uses the domain hierarchy. The resulting model not only outperforms standard regularization procedures but is also highly sparse and interpretable. We analyze the model and identify several significant factors that have an effect on readmission risk. Some of these factors conform to existing beliefs, e.g., impact of surgical complications and infections during hospital stay. Other factors, such as the impact of mental disorder and substance abuse on readmission, provide empirical evidence for several pre-existing but unverified hypotheses. The analysis also reveals previously undiscovered connections such as the influence of socioeconomic factors like lack of housing and malnutrition.

The proliferation of fake news and filter bubbles makes it increasingly difficult to form an unbiased, balanced opinion towards a topic. To ameliorate this, we propose 360{\deg} Stance Detection, a tool that aggregates news with multiple perspectives on a topic. It presents them on a spectrum ranging from support to opposition, enabling the user to base their opinion on multiple pieces of diverse evidence.

A UK-led experiment to tackle space junk has been sent into orbit. It takes the form of a small satellite that will practise techniques for tracking debris and capturing it. The RemoveDebris system is heading to the International Space Station where astronauts are expected to set the experiment running in late May. Space junk is an ever-growing problem with more than 7,500 tonnes of redundant hardware now thought to be circling the Earth. Ranging from old rocket bodies and defunct spacecraft through to screws and even flecks of paint - this material poses a collision hazard to operational missions.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it's "unhappy" that Tesla made public information about a deadly crash involving a Model X vehicle. This file photo taken in 2017 shows billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of the Tesla electric car company and the SpaceX aerospace exploration firm, speaking at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress 2017 in Australia. Tech billionaire Elon Musk's bad spell is continuing into a second month, amid a spat with a federal safety agency, an auto recall and production issues, an adverse court ruling, and a debt rating downgrade. Shares of the Musk-led electric car company Tesla (TSLA) were down 2.4% at $259.65 in Monday afternoon trading, recovering from a more than 6% drop earlier in the day amid National Transportation Safety Board displeasure with the firm's disclosure of preliminary details about a fatal Tesla crash. Christopher O'Neil, an NTSB spokesman over the weekend said the safety agency was unhappy with Tesla's announcement that its Autopilot partial self-driving system was engaged when one of its Model X electric crossover SUVs crashed on March 23 in Mountain View, Cal., killing the driver.