Following news of the event, the U.S. military is dispatched to an area where residents speak a little-known language with multiple dialects. En route to the site, the emergency team feeds the location and the region's primary linguistics into a database that deciphers enough conversation to enable military commanders to communicate with local leaders. Such a capability would offer U.S. officials a chance at triage before a humanitarian aid effort begins and, in the process, improve recovery efforts, says John Launchbury, the former director of the Information Innovation Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Pentagon leaders now say this kind of machine learning and data analysis is critical to maintaining military effectiveness. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows technology to evolve as it absorbs new information.

You'll start with an introduction to Spark and its ecosystem, and then dive into patterns that apply common techniques--including classification, clustering, collaborative filtering, and anomaly detection--to fields such as genomics, security, and finance. If you have an entry-level understanding of machine learning and statistics, and you program in Java, Python, or Scala, you'll find the book's patterns useful for working on your own data applications."

IBM is ready to start shipping the first commercial server systems built around its recently released Power9 processor. Dubbed the AC922 Power Systems, these servers will ship by the end of December, and are specifically designed for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology's sister publication). The AC922 is the commercial version of the same severs that IBM, along with Nvidia and Mellanox Technologies is using to build two new supercomputers for the US Department of Energy. The "Summit" and "Sierra" supercomputers are expected to go online in 2018, and could reinvigorate the US's standing in the world of high-performance computing. At the heart of the AC922 is IBM's recently released Power9 processor.

As drones and their components get smaller, more efficient, and more capable, we've seen an increasing amount of research towards getting these things flying by themselves in semi-structured environments without relying on external localization. The University of Pennsylvania has done some amazing work in this area, as has DARPA's Fast Lightweight Autonomy program. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they've been working on small drone autonomy for the past few years as part of a Google-funded project. The focus is on high-speed dynamic maneuvering, in the context of flying a drone as fast as possible around an indoor race course using only on-board hardware. For the project's final demo, JPL raced their autonomous drones through an obstacle course against a professional human racing drone pilot.

Shares of AeroVironment Inc., a drone manufacturer based in Monrovia, soared Wednesday after the company reported strong second-quarter earnings, boosted by a growth in sales of unmanned aircraft systems. AeroVironment stock was up as much as 34% on Wednesday morning before losing some of its gains. It was up 26% at $54.49 around noon Pacific time. The company held its second-quarter earnings call with analysts Tuesday afternoon and reported revenue of $73.8 million, a 47% increase compared with the same period last year. AeroVironment attributed the gain to increased sales of unmanned aircraft systems, which includes drones, on-board cameras and sensors and ground control stations.

A leading provider of data science education, Springboard was just named one of the best data science bootcamps in the world by SwitchUp for the second year in a row! Springboard recently overhauled the course to give students an even better learning experience via their online, mentor-led curriculum. They took feedback from students, alumni, and mentors, and combined it with deep industry research to make their courses better--here's how: The curriculum now includes cutting edge teachings in deep learning and machine learning. Dig deep into artificial intelligence with new course modules, and learn one of today's most in-demand skills. They partnered with leaders at Datacamp--experts in teaching R and Python--to update the rest of the curriculum too.

A large majority of federal IT decisions makers (90 percent) think artificial intelligence could help prepare agencies to defend against real-world cyber attacks, according to a new report from MeriTalk, a public-private partnership focused on improving the outcomes of government IT. The study, underwritten by IBM, is based on an online survey of 150 federal IT managers familiar with their agency's AI plans and policies, conducted in September and October 2017. A majority of the respondents (87 percent) also think AI will improve the efficiency of the cyber security workforce and 91 percent note their agency could use AI to monitor human activity and deter insider threats. Federal agencies view cyber security as the best place for government to harness AI today, with 59 percent of the decision makers selecting it as the first AI application, followed by data analytics (45 percent), fraud detection (31 percent), and risk management (26 percent). On the other hand, just 21 percent of the respondents said they are "very comfortable" with their agency enlisting AI for cyber security today.

South Korea planned to introduce a new counter to North Korea's burgeoning nuclear weapons program: drones. South Korean news wire agency Yonhap reported Tuesday that the nation planned to roll out a new weaponized drone unit next year. "The Army plans to set up a special organization to lead the development of dronebots, establish a standard platform and expand the dronebot program by function," an Army official told Yonhap, asking not be named because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter. "To begin with, we will launch a dronebot combat unit next year and use it as a'game changer' in warfare." The drones primary function will be for surveillance -- North Korea has launched a number of ballistic missile tests this year and many of them came without warning.

Margaret Thatcher's remarkable success at the ballot box may have been partially due to her distinctive voice, according to a new study. Experts looked at whether voters could be swayed by the way politicians speak. They found that politicians whose voices were hoarse, flat or slow received a better response from the public than those who had a different speech pattern. They believe this is because they are perceived as wiser and more competent than those who have a high-pitched voice. Margaret Thatcher's remarkable success at the ballot box may have been partially due to her distinctive voice, according to a new study.

If you're scared of heights, you may want to look away now. A jaw-dropping video has been posted on Twitter, showing astronauts diving head first into space from the International Space Station. The incredible first-hand footage was filmed in October by Randy Bresnik while the space station was 250 miles above Earth. Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly has revealed the ISS smells like jail, citing the similarities in their'combinations of antiseptic, garbage, and body odor.' While touring Harris County Jail in Texas, Kelly said he got a whiff in one room that transported him right back to his days on the ISS. He explained that people in the ISS use deodorant, rinse off, shower, and that the smell isn't that bad, 'but there's a little body odor going on for sure.' 'Mostly it's just exercise clothes people wear for a couple weeks without washing.'