Scientists have harnessed the power of'the Beast' to answer some of the most baffling questions about religion. The custom-built computer has developed a simulated virtual human mind capable of creating the impacts of terror on behavior - with the hopes of uncovering the truth behind why people become radicalized. The model had revealed that religious ritual observance would increase after terror-inspiring events drove people beyond a certain threshold of fear. Researches at Boston University first designed a computer simulation that predicts how many people would stay in a religion based on its strictness. It was then compared with defection rates from 18 Christian denominations.

Robin Bylenga, 52, the founder and owner of Pedal Chic in Greenville, S.C., is the epitome of a smart, successful female entrepreneur. Before opening her women's cycling and athletic boutique in 2010, she worked for a bike shop to understand prospective customers. She invested $500 for a tiny inventory of women's biking apparel that she spun into $1,500 in sales at an area bike race. Bylenga also asked the Clemson Regional Small Business Development Center for advice, connected with a retired retail exec through the U.S. Small Business Administration's SCORE program and tapped her own network to find mentors. "I've had to push through at every stage, and there have been setbacks, but the demand is there and growing," says Bylenga, whose shop is profitable today.

Fearing the appropriation of technologies that are said to affect US national security, a federal agency in Washington is considering limiting Beijing's ability to invest in Silicon Valley companies and startups, as China seeks to modernize its military forces. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a secretive group that documents the purchase of US companies by foreign entities, is poised to strengthen its regulatory role, particularly regarding China, based on a call from US lawmakers to improve national security. New technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence currently in development in the high-tech Silicon Valley corridor in California are increasingly fertile ground for Chinese investment, and CFIUS wants to make sure the US isn't giving away the farm. According to the unreleased Pentagon report, which was viewed by Reuters, China seeks to use new US tech to upgrade its military, and CFIUS has been tasked with stepping up its oversight, as lawmakers demand greater security. "We're examining CFIUS to look at the long-term health and security of the US economy, given China's predatory practices," said an official with the Trump administration who was not authorized to speak publicly, according to Reuters.

Many modern data sets are sampled with error from complex high-dimensional surfaces. Methods such as tensor product splines or Gaussian processes are effective/well suited for characterizing a surface in two or three dimensions but may suffer from difficulties when representing higher dimensional surfaces. Motivated by high throughput toxicity testing where observed dose-response curves are cross sections of a surface defined by a chemical's structural properties, a model is developed to characterize this surface to predict untested chemicals' dose-responses. This manuscript proposes a novel approach that models the multidimensional surface as a sum of learned basis functions formed as the tensor product of lower dimensional functions, which are themselves representable by a basis expansion learned from the data. The model is described, a Gibbs sampling algorithm proposed, and is investigated in a simulation study as well as data taken from the US EPA's ToxCast high throughput toxicity testing platform.

U.S. officials reportedly are rethinking the advisability of allowing the Chinese to invest in sensitive technologies seen as vital to national security. Reuters reported Wednesday U.S. officials are concerned such cutting-edge technologies as artificial intelligence and machine learning could be used by the Chinese to augment their military capabilities and achieve greater advancements in strategic industries. Technology is the fastest growing industry in the United States, and China has funneled $45.6 billion into U.S. acquisitions and Greenfield investments in the last year, Rhodium Group found. That investment is expected to double this year. Read: What Is Artificial Intelligence?

Reuters – The United States appears poised to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley to better shield sensitive technologies seen as vital to U.S. national security, current and former U.S. officials tell Reuters. Of particular concern is China's interest in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have increasingly attracted Chinese capital in recent years. The worry is that cutting-edge technologies developed in the United States could be used by China to bolster its military capabilities and perhaps even push it ahead in strategic industries. The U.S. government is now looking to strengthen the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies on national security grounds.

More than a third of U.S. jobs could be at "high risk" of automation by the early 2030s, a percentage that's greater than in Britain, Germany and Japan, according to a report released Friday. The analysis, by accounting and consulting firm PwC, emphasized that its estimates are based on the anticipated capabilities of robotics and artificial intelligence, and that the pace and direction of technological progress are "uncertain." It said that in the U.S., 38% of jobs could be at risk of automation, compared with 30% in Britain, 35% in Germany and 21% in Japan. The main reason is not that the U.S. has more jobs in sectors that are universally ripe for automation, the report says; rather, it's that more U.S. jobs in certain sectors are potentially vulnerable than, say, British jobs in the same sectors. For example, the report says the financial and insurance sector has much higher possibility of automation in the U.S. than in Britain.

The annual C2 Montreal conference every May is widely considered to be the benchmark for corporate event design in North America, but it's actually much more than that. Inside Montreal's sprawling Arsenal contemporary art gallery this year, as reported last week in Skift, the show floor was filled with dozens of creative activations, such as networking experiences in trapeze chairs suspended from the ceiling. In a high point for the event, attendees booked more than 3,000 face-to-face meetings with each other to discuss topics of common interest via E-180's Braindate platform. Outside, a pop-up big top circus tent with 360-degree ceiling projection hosted the keynote sessions. Surrounding the tent, stacks of brightly painted shipping containers served as outdoor corporate VIP suites overlooking the dock and restaurant floating on a channel connected to the St. Lawrence River.

Political speeches are among the most powerful tools leaders use to influence entire populations. Throughout history, political speeches have been used to start wars, end empires, fuel movements & inspire the masses. Political speeches apply many of the tricks found in the field of Social engineering: Congruent communication, intentional body language, Neuro-linguistic programming, HumanBuffer Overflows and more. In recent years, Barack Obama has emerged as one of the most memorable and effective political speakers on the world stage. Messages like Hope and Yes we can have clearly left a mark on our collective consciousness.

The belief that there is a link between talent and left-handedness has a long history. Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed. So were Mark Twain, Mozart, Marie Curie, Nicola Tesla and Aristotle. It's no different today – former US president Barack Obama is a left-hander, as is business leader Bill Gates and footballer Lionel Messi. But is it really true that left-handers are more likely to be geniuses?