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

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

Once a year, when Slava Epstein was growing up in Moscow, his mother took him to the Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy, a showcase for the wonders of Soviet life. The expo featured many things--from industrial harvesters to Uzbek wine--but Epstein, who began going in the nineteen-sixties, when he was eight or nine, was interested primarily in one: the Cosmos Pavilion, a building the size of a hangar, with a ceiling shaped like a giant inverted parabola. Space fever was running high in the city. Since 1961, when Yuri Gagarin orbited the globe, unmanned vessels had been launched toward Mars and Venus. Beside the expo's entrance, the towering Monument to the Conquerors of Space depicted a probe swooping up to the heavens. The Pavilion displayed futuristic technology--Vostok rockets and Soyuz orbiters--but Epstein was less interested in the glories of advanced thruster design than in the glories of space. He wanted to devote himself to astronomy. When a textbook that he found on the topic began with algebraic formulas, he prodded his older brother to explain them. During high school, he enrolled in classes in physics and math at Moscow State University. His parents disapproved of his desired career: because he is half Jewish, Epstein would face harsh Soviet quotas limiting Jews in the study of physics, a field deemed relevant to national security. But after his first lecture the professor invited him for a walk, and affirmed what they had been saying all along. "Don't do it," he warned. Soviet Russia may have been a fatalist's paradise, but from a young age Epstein felt that he was hardwired for optimism. He convinced himself that what is truly important in science is the ability to connect ideas, no matter the field, and so he took up biology. Rather than telescopes, he would use microscopes, which he began taking with him on trips to the White Sea, near the Arctic Circle, to study protozoa along the shore--research that could be conducted with minimal state interference. Over time, he grew interested in even smaller, more ancient forms of life: bacteria. Studying microbes inevitably causes a reordering of one's perceptions: for more than two billion years, they were the only life on this planet, and they remain in many ways its dominant life form. To a remarkable extent, the microbial cosmos was less explored than the actual cosmos: precisely how the organisms evolve, replicate, fight, and communicate remains unclear. Nearly all of microbiology, Epstein eventually learned, was built on the study of a tiny fraction of microbial life, perhaps less than one per cent, because most bacteria could not be grown in a laboratory culture, the primary means of analyzing them. By the time he matured as a scientist, many researchers had given up trying to cultivate new species, writing off the majority as "dark matter"--a term used in astronomy for an inscrutable substance that may make up most of the universe but cannot be seen.

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

Matt Krisiloff is in a small, glass-walled conference room off the lobby of Y Combinator's office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, shouting distance from some of the country's wealthiest startups, many of which Y Combinator has nurtured and helped fund. Krisiloff, who manages the operations of the tech incubator's program for very early-stage companies, is explaining why it is committed to investing an amount said to be in the tens of millions of dollars in a venture that is guaranteed never to make a penny. It's the simplest business model conceivable: hand thousands of dollars over to individuals in return for nothing, no strings attached. Krisiloff insists he and his Y Combinator colleagues can't wait to get started giving away the money. "This could be really transformative," he says. "It may help change how humans, society, and technology all operate together in the future."

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

Science fiction author Isaac Asimov came up with the three'laws' of robotics in a story he published in 1942. The first of these laws says a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Now artist and roboticist Alexander Reben has developed the first robot that breaks this rule, by hurting humans in an unpredictable way. Artist and roboticist Alexander Reben claims he has developed the first robot (pictured) that hurts humans autonomously and in an unpredictable way. It is a'near certainty' that a major technological disaster will threaten humanity in the next 1,000 to 10,000 years.

With the appearance of robotic financial advisors, self-driving cars and personal digital assistants come many unresolved problems. We have already experienced market crashes caused by intelligent trading software, accidents caused by self-driving cars and hate speech from chat-bots that turned racist. Today's narrowly focused artificial intelligence (AI) systems are good only at specific assigned tasks. Their failures are just a warning: Once humans develop general AI capable of accomplishing a much wider range of tasks, expressions of prejudice will be the least of our concerns. It is not easy to make a machine that can perceive, learn and synthesize information to accomplish a set of tasks.

SANAA, YEMEN – Yemeni security officials say a suspected U.S. drone has killed three alleged al-Qaida fighters in an airstrike in the central Shabwa province. The officials said Monday that the overnight attack hit the men's vehicle as they were traveling near the town of Haban. The officials also say that in the onetime al-Qaida stronghold of Mukalla, on Yemen's southern coast, Emirati and other troops from the Saudi-led coalition who are primarily fighting Yemen's anti-government Shiite rebels conducted raids on homes seeking al-Qaida operatives. They say some 150 were detained. Activists close to al-Qaida say the men were being tortured in prisons run by Emirati forces.