The U.S. Department of Energy will explore whether artificial intelligence could help electric grids handle power fluctuations, avoid failures, resist damage, and recover faster from major storms, cyberattacks, solar flares and other disruptions. A new project, called GRIP, for Grid Resilience and Intelligence Project, was awarded up to $6 million over three years on September 12 by the U.S. Department of Energy. GRIP is the first project to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help power grids deal with disturbances, says Sila Kiliccote, GRIP's principal investigator and director of the Grid Integration, Systems and Mobility lab at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. GRIP will develop algorithms to learn how power grids work by analyzing smart meter data, utility-scale SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) data, electric vehicle charging data, and even satellite and street-view imagery. "By looking at satellite and street-view imagery, we can see where vegetation is growing with respect to power lines, how long it takes to grow, and anticipate what the effects of high winds might have on that vegetation, such as pulling trees onto power lines during storms," Kiliccote says.

Facebook has conceded that technology companies could do more to counter online extremism after Theresa May and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, proposed fining firms that move too slowly to remove extremist content being shared by terrorist groups. The social media giant told a meeting between political leaders and its own executives as well as others from Google and Microsoft at the United Nations general assembly in New York that it is now employing thousands of content reviewers around the globe and a staff of 150 people dedicated to countering terrorism on its platform in a bid to remove more extremist content. But, along with Google, it warned that using emerging artificial intelligence technologies to spot dangerous material was not yet foolproof. Facebook sources said the company accepted the industry could do more and said it was committed to building more technology to help address these issues. But it said it was already accelerating its efforts, in particular by using artificial intelligence to flag up extremist content and sharing this data with rival firms.

If you're worried about hacks and security incidents at your company, your top concern shouldn't necessarily be the ever-growing sophistication of hacking technology. You might be surprised to learn that hackers aren't the sole reason for security breaches. Instead, the people behind your computers may be the real threat to your business. According to the 2016 Data Incident Response Report, human error is still to blame for most security breaches. An employee who doesn't detect a phishing email as containing malware may inadvertently download a virus to their computer and expose their machine or the network to ransomware. Employees may also use the same easy-to-guess password for all of their systems, use public WiFi to read sensitive documents, or fail to update their computer's software systems even when prompted.

Not everyone sees artificial intelligence as the destroyer of worlds, or in milder cases – destroyer of jobs. Many people, particularly Millennials, are confident AI will instead create new jobs in the future. That's is according to a new report by analyst firm CCS Insight, which found that many workers believe AI will automate mundane work tasks and boost productivity and collaboration applications. The report, which polled more than 650 employees, found that more than half believed this profound change will happen within three years. A larger portion, however (70 per cent), believe this will happen within the next decade.

DALIAN: Several Indian and Chinese IT companies on Wednesday got together in China's port city of Dalian for cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence. On the first India-China Dalian IoT (Internet of Things) Conference, the government officials and company representatives from both sides agreed that a lot can be done if India's excellence in software technology and China's expertise in hardware are brought together. The event is being attended by 30 delegates representing the Indian government and companies, while 50 delegates from the Chinese industry are participating in the event. Representatives of Indian companies like Wipro, HCL, Infosys, Cognizant and CBSI Technologies were present. "Chinese hardware needs to be given soul that can come from India's software technology," said Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint Secretary, Department of Commerce (India).

Earlier this year, Kaggle ran a $1 million contest to build algorithms capable of identifying signs of lung cancer in CT scans, helping to fuel a larger effort to apply neural networks to health care.

Military drone pilots fighting so-called Islamic State could be awarded medals, the defence secretary has said. Sir Michael Fallon confirmed there would be a review of how servicemen and women were recognised for their contribution to UK operations. Medals are currently awarded on the basis of rigour and risk, and being physically exposed to danger. Sir Michael said a rethink may be needed as the UK increasingly deploys unmanned aircraft on operations. Speaking on a visit to British troops in Iraq, he said: "The changing character of warfare provides new challenges; not just about how we fight but also how we recognise and support those who serve. "As fighting has evolved we have adapted, ensuring our troops have cutting-edge equipment including unmanned systems operated from outside the battle space.

Mexico City was struck by a 7.1 earthquake Tuesday afternoon, leaving at least 116 dead and impacting an estimated 28 million others. The quake left widespread damage, power outages, cracked roads and toppled buildings throughout the city. Drone video captured in the aftermath of the quake revealed some of the damage. Footage showed at least one building virtually fully collapsed as people stood atop it and surveyed the devastation. The earthquake's epicenter was near the town of Raboso, approximately 76 miles southeast of Mexico City, the United States Geological Survey reported Tuesday.

In evolving complex systems such as air traffic and social organizations, collective effects emerge from their many components' dynamic interactions. While the dynamic interactions can be represented by temporal networks with nodes and links that change over time, they remain highly complex. It is therefore often necessary to use methods that extract the temporal networks' large-scale dynamic community structure. However, such methods are subject to overfitting or suffer from effects of arbitrary, a priori imposed timescales, which should instead be extracted from data. Here we simultaneously address both problems and develop a principled data-driven method that determines relevant timescales and identifies patterns of dynamics that take place on networks as well as shape the networks themselves. We base our method on an arbitrary-order Markov chain model with community structure, and develop a nonparametric Bayesian inference framework that identifies the simplest such model that can explain temporal interaction data.

Among the many startups on display at the TechCrunch Disrupt hall in San Francisco this week are companies focused on health and biotech. The products ranged from smart exercise bikes to breast pumps that look like they're from a science-fiction film. One of them, however, stood out from the rest with a large sign that simply read "Take the piss," with the last word in big bold letters. The company is called Testcard, and it claims to tell you if you have a urinary tract infection just by peeing on a postcard. It's just one of many medtech startups vying for legitimacy in an increasingly crowded field.