Government
Inside: Composer records game soundtrack using a human skull
Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display
Chiba drone alliance pushes for delivery service by 2019
CHIBA โ A city near Tokyo has joined hands with the central government and other partners to commercialize a drone-based delivery service it calls "the first step of an industrial revolution in the air." "We want to get a head start in the building of a future-oriented community and disseminate the idea to the rest of the world," Chiba Mayor Toshihito Kumagai said. The service, also involving private companies and research institutions, is expected to be launched by 2019. There, smaller drones will be loaded with individual packages for delivery to the balconies of high-rise condominiums in the same ward. The drones will all be programmed to fly autonomously using the GPS system.
As drones fill the skies, some work to shoot them down
A public awareness campaign last year did little to deter the growing number of rogue drones flying near wildfires and forcing firefighters to ground their own aircraft. So this year, the Department of the Interior tried something a little more direct. The agency gave real-time access to data on all active wildfires to two airspace mapping companies as part of a pilot program. One of those firms, Santa Monica-based AirMap, worked with drone manufacturer DJI, which created "geofences" around wildfires. When drones hit the virtual boundary, the geofencing software overrides the flight controller and forces them to hover in place.
Data improve hurricane forecasts, but uncertainties remain
WASHINGTON โ With modern technology, people can watch hurricanes churn in real time and forecasts are on-target up to seven days in advance -- but experts say some puzzling storm traits are harder to solve. Using hurricane hunter aircraft, converted military drones, weather balloons and satellites that examine cyclones under various angles, "our observations are really telling us what is happening now," said Frank Marks, director of the Hurricane Research Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "And also those observations are phenomenally useful to improving our ability to predict," he told AFP. All the collected data are immediately transmitted to meteorologists and entered into computer models that produce forecasts at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. Marks describes forecasts as simply "what we think might happen," saying experts' ability to make them has "improved dramatically for the last 35 years." When he began his career in 1980, forecasts could look ahead about two days.
Artificial Intelligence: Will we gain more or lose more by investing in AI?
PREDICTING HOW artificial intelligence technology will evolve in the following ten or 20 years, or even beyond, is very difficult to say the least. However, certain is the fact that there is much to be gained to go around for everyone. It is estimated that by the year 2018, robots will literally be supervising more than three million of us at work; and by 2020, smart machines will become a major investment priority amongst at least 30% of all CIOs. As we speak many different fields spanning from customer service to journalism are already being set aside by increasingly able AI that can replicate human abilities and experience. Already before our eyes is an aspect that we once thought only belonged in future technology.
New York will use facial recognition to catch terrorists
New York governor Andrew Cuomo wants to give the state's bridges and tunnels a high-tech makeover, starting with the installation of cameras, sensors and facial recognition equipment. Under his initiative, crossings, airports and other strategic locations will be equipped with facial recognition systems as an anti-terrorism measure. Facial recognition still isn't perfect and has issues recognizing people of color, but the state does have some experience with the technology. Its DMV, for instance, uses a facial recognition system that has led to over a hundred arrests since it was upgraded in January this year. Cuomo also plans to incorporate auto-tolling systems to save you hours of driving time.
Exploiting machine learning in cybersecurity
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has led one of the most notable efforts in this regard, developing a system called AI2, an adaptive cybersecurity platform that uses machine learning and the assistance of expert analysts to adapt and improve over time. The system uses near-real-time analytics to identify known security threats, stored data analytics to compare samples against historical data and big data analytics to identify evolving threats through anonymized datasets gathered from a vast number of clients. Combining this capability with the data already being gathered by IBM's threat intelligence platform, X-Force Exchange, the company wants to address the shortage of talent in the industry by raising Watson's level of efficiency to that of an expert assistant and help reduce the rate of false positives. This technique gives the cybersecurity firm the unique ability to monitor billions of results on a daily basis, identify and alert about the publication of potentially brand-damaging information and proactively detect and prevent attacks and data loss before they happen.
Why healthcare artificial intelligence isn't about creepy-looking robots
Technology is a big part of healthcare. In a 2014 McKinsey survey, more than 75% of patients polled said that they would like to use digital healthcare services, as long as those services meet their needs and provide the level of quality they expect. And yet the healthcare industry lags behind every other sector when it comes to implementing technology. HIPAA Journal writes, "In some cases, the new technology now being introduced by healthcare providers was first introduced in other industry sectors many years ago." A break in that trend has come from the surge of wearable devices. Getting beyond counting strides and counting calories, the healthcare industry has seen tremendous growth in wearable and wireless technologies that can monitor serious diseases.
Yahoo case brings back the Edward Snowden effect
Edward Snowden appears from Russia to people in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2014. SAN FRANCISCO -- The Edward Snowden effect just made an encore, thanks to a report Yahoo has been scanning incoming emails on behalf of U.S. intelligence officials. And it's likely to take a few more bows. U.S. technology companies, already in defensive mode thanks to the former NSA contractor's revelations of a mass government surveillance program in 2013, are even more data-hungry today and therefore more on edge. From big data to the cloud to artificial intelligence you can talk to in your kitchen, the tech world is busy spinning the straw of information it gathers about users into gold.
They teamed up to conquer Wall Street. Now, one is bankrolling Clinton and the other Trump
When Republican senators investigated a little-known San Francisco nonprofit steering as much as 50 million a year to climate change activists, the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News pounced on the report. Breitbart branded the organization, the Sea Change Foundation, as a vehicle for "rich liberals who are secretly funding the green movement's war on Western industrial civilization." As it turned out, though, the money to support both Sea Change and Breitbart came from the same place -- Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund based on Long Island, N.Y., churning astonishing profits with a formula of algorithms and equations that only a select group of math geniuses understand. In recent years, the masterminds behind Renaissance have put their billions to work reshaping the political landscape -- but in divergent and opposing ways. The political evolution of Renaissance founder James Simons, a mathematician who worked as a U.S. code-breaker, and his star recruit, computer scientist and poker ace Robert Mercer, reflects one of the strangest permutations of the new era of super-donors in American politics.