BERLIN – Eight years late and billions over budget, European officials flipped the switch Thursday on a satellite navigation system meant to rival the U.S.-made GPS service that's become a staple feature of smartphones and cars worldwide. The Galileo system, named after the Italian engineer and astronomer, is designed to provide commercial and government customers with more precise location data than GPS. Being able to pinpoint a position is critical to a growing range of products and systems, including real-time logistics, self-driving cars and drone delivery services. Satellite systems such as GPS also play an important role in providing precision timing for financial transactions and energy grids. The launch of the first 18 Galileo satellites was hit by delays and several failures.

SAN FRANCISCO – The dwarf planet Ceres, an enigmatic rocky body inhabiting the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is rich with ice just beneath its dark surface, scientists said on Thursday in research that may shed light on the early history of the solar system. The discovery, reported in a pair of studies published in the journals Science and Nature Astronomy, could bolster fledgling commercial endeavors to mine asteroids for water and other resources for robotic and eventual human expeditions beyond the moon. NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Ceres, the largest of thousands of rocky bodies located in the main asteroid belt, since March 2015 following 14-month study of Vesta, the second-largest object in the asteroid belt. The studies show that Ceres is about 10 percent water, now frozen into ice, according to physicist Thomas Prettyman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, one of the researchers. Examining the makeup of solar system objects like Ceres provides insight into how the solar system formed.

When I was a scrawny little chap, shortest in my high school class, I always wanted a super power. Wanted doesn't capture the feeling. I would have given a limb for a super power. I read a lot of books back then (and now) and landed on a super power that had something to do with the brain. I eventually landed on Prof. Xavier of the X-Men.

Directed graphs occur throughout statistical modeling of networks, and exchangeability is a natural assumption when the ordering of vertices does not matter. There is a deep structural theory for exchangeable undirected graphs, which extends to the directed case via measurable objects known as digraphons. Using digraphons, we first show how to construct models for exchangeable directed graphs, including special cases such as tournaments, linear orderings, directed acyclic graphs, and partial orderings. We then show how to construct priors on digraphons via the infinite relational digraphon model (di-IRM), a new Bayesian nonparametric block model for exchangeable directed graphs, and demonstrate inference on synthetic data.

Loom.ai is a software designed to transform 2D selfies into 3D avatars Machine learning calculates the details of a person's face And artificial intelligence fills in missing areas of the 2D image The more data it is fed, the better it is at predicting expressions and features Loom.ai is a software designed to transform 2D selfies into 3D avatars Machine learning calculates the details of a person's face Loom.ai Bizarre'Death Star' spotted over Japan: Alien hunters claim... What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean:... Revealed: 'Natural thermostat' that cools the air in Earth's... Meet Cameron, the adorable four-year-old who has created 9... Bizarre'Death Star' spotted over Japan: Alien hunters claim... What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean:... Revealed: 'Natural thermostat' that cools the air in Earth's... Meet Cameron, the adorable four-year-old who has created 9... The 3D avatar faces are complete with emotions that can be seen in their eyes mouth and the movement of their face. They can appear sad, happy (like Rihanna's avatar), interested or even angry - however, there is only a small set of emotions available at the moment. Users just have to upload a font facing image, such as this image of Elon Musk (left) of themselves or someone else to the Loom.ai

Cyberspace is an increasingly hostile environment. In 2015, a PwC study of U.S. organizations found that 79 percent of respondents had detected a security incident during the year. Today, malicious hackers continue to wage on business networks and systems. Their aim - to extract data to sell on the black market. Making use of the latest technology, these criminals exert huge pressure on businesses to defend its assets.

Earlier today, in San Francisco, we provided an update on how Microsoft is helping to democratize Artificial Intelligence (AI) by making it accessible to everyone and every organization. Today's focus was on conversational computing, which combines the power of natural language with advanced machine intelligence to help people engage with technology in more natural and personal ways. As we talk to businesses and governments who are looking to take advantage of these new capabilities, we see significant value being created when leading organizations start using intelligent bots to transform business processes such as customer services, helpdesks, and even factory floor operations. One example is at Rockwell Automation, which provides industrial automation and information solutions to customers in more than 80 countries. Their customers wanted access to information in their production lines in faster and more innovative ways, and so, with that objective in mind, Rockwell Automation used the Bot Framework and Cognitive Services in Cortana Intelligence to build Shelby, a bot that monitors production more efficiently and lets managers know the status of their operations through more natural forms of interaction.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Going Public Is'A Possibility' When we examine and value companies, we use a lens that is more than five hundred years old. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which dates back to a Venetian Friar who lived in 1500 AD, has long been the determinant of what we how society measures value. According to this now global standard, things and money are valuable assets. People and ideas, and their development, are expenses. This means that investments such as education, healthcare, training, and research actually eat away at value creation.

CEO Mary Barra also announced Thursday that GM will build an unspecified number of fully autonomous Bolts on the assembly line where regular Bolts are made, in order to gain expertise in building autonomous vehicles. The Bolt, which went on sale in California and Oregon this week, can go 238 miles on a single charge and costs about $30,000 when a $7,500 federal tax credit is factored in. Autonomous Bolts, which have distinctive spinning laser towers on their roofs, will come off the assembly line in Orion Township north of Detroit starting next year.

Amazon announced their latest innovation, Go. Think of Go as a futuristic grocery store. Using sensors, artificial intelligence and computer vision, Amazon is reinventing the shopping experience that we've all grown accustomed to for the last seventy years. If you want to buy an item, just grab it from the shelf, and then Amazon will automatically add the item to your virtual shopping cart. When you walk out of the store, Amazon will magically charge you for that item.