Charles A. Rosen, an engineer who was an early researcher in robotic and artificial intelligence and a founder of Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, Calif., died on Dec. 8 at his home in Atherton, Calif. Born in Montreal, Mr. Rosen came to the United States as a teenager. He studied electrical engineering at Cooper Union in New York City and earned a Ph.D. at Syracuse University. During World War II, he returned to Canada to work on Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft being sent to Britain. After the war, he worked on transistor theory at General Electric Research Laboratories in Schenectady, N.Y., and was the coauthor of an early book on the subject.

A US study ran a head-to-head comparison between doctors and a series of symptom checkers using what are known as clinical vignettes. Clinical vignettes have been used for many years to help hone trainee doctors' diagnostic skills. They are essentially diagnostic puzzles based on real-life case reports designed to test training and clinical knowledge. The researchers provided 45 clinical vignettes to more than 200 doctors. They found doctors were twice as likely to diagnose accurately first time compared with online symptom-checking applications.

IT SOUNDS like every general's dream: technology that allows a nation to fight a war with little or no loss of life on its side. It is also a peace-seeking citizen's nightmare. Without the politically embarrassing threat of soldiers returning home in flag-wrapped coffins, governments would find it far easier to commit to military action. The consequences for countries on the receiving end – and for world peace – would be immense. This is not a fantasy scenario.

This chapter from The Age of Intelligent Machines (published in 1990) addresses the history and development of AI, and where it was headed, circa 1990. Edward Feigenbaum is a Professor of Computer Science and Co-Scientific Director of the Knowledge Systems Laboratory at Stanford University. Dr. Feigenbaum served as Chief Scientist of the United States Air Force from 1994 to 1997. It has been said that when people make forecasts, they overestimate what can be done in the short run and underestimate what can be achieved in the long run. I have worked in the science and technology of artificial intelligence for twenty years and confess to being chronically optimistic about its progress. The gains have been substantial, even impressive. But we have hardly begun, and we must not lose sight of the point to which we are heading, however distant it may seem.

This is an updated version of Usability Issues in Description Logic Systems'' published in Proceedings of International Workshop on Description Logics, Gif sur Yvette, (Paris), France, September, 1997.

When we work harder, our hearts beat faster. When we're hot, we sweat. But in the 54 years since British mathematician Alan Turing introduced the notion of artificial intelligence, computer scientists haven't delivered anything close to a self-aware and self-healing computer. That may change soon enough. Researchers in business and government labs are building systems that will challenge what it means to be an IT worker by automating many of the monitoring and maintenance tasks done today by hand.

The American scientist Joshua Lederberg, who has died aged 82, won the 1958 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for showing that bacteria can conjugate and exchange small strips of genetic material. Among the consequences of this was the realisation that antibiotic resistance can be passed around between bacteria, rather than emerging from selective breeding of resistant strains. This opened new paths in genetic research. He went on to a distinguished career in science policy, advising government committees and presidents, heading Rockefeller University and writing a Washington Post column on science and society. Lederberg's father was an orthodox rabbi - the family had come to New York from Palestine - who wanted Joshua to follow in his footsteps.

Originating as a BBC radio series in 1978, Douglas Adams's inspired melding of hippy-trail guidebook and sci-fi comedy turned its novelisations into a publishing phenomenon. Douglas wrote five parts from 1979 onwards (the first sold 250,000 in three months), introducing the world to Marvin the Paranoid Android, the computer Deep Thought, space guitarist Hotblack Desiato (named after Adams's local estate agent) and the Guide itself, a remarkably prescient forerunner to the internet. Aldiss's first novel is a tour-de-force of adventure, wonder and conceptual breakthrough. Set aboard a vast generation starship millennia after blast-off, the novel follows Roy Complain on a voyage of discovery from ignorance of his surroundings to some understanding of his small place in the universe. Complain is spiteful and small-minded but grows in humanity as his trek through the ship brings him into contact with giant humans, mutated rats and, ultimately, a wondrous view of space beyond the ship. One of the first attempts to write a comprehensive "future history", the trilogy - which also includes Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953) - is Asimov's version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, set on a galactic scale. Hari Seldon invents the science of psychohistory with which to combat the fall into barbarianism of the Human Empire, and sets up the Foundation to foster art, science and technology.

Major repairs can take a long time to complete. To tackle these problems, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) has partnered with the Georgia Tech Research Institute to develop robotic technology that automatically detects and then seals cracks in the road. When prototype testing is completed the resulting'Roadbot' will be fully automated and require only a single operator reports Government Computer News. The technology could also save highway departments across the country money due to the pro-active approach of sealing smaller cracks before they become larger scale repaving projects. The prototype can be mounted on a trailer and then using LED lights, cameras and an advanced set of algoriths to locate cracks.

WHO would have thought that a Frisbee-shaped contraption that extracts dust from carpets would be the state of the art in household robots at the dawn of the 21st century? In the past year, Roomba, a circular automatic vacuum cleaner made by a firm called iRobot, has swept up millions of dollars from over 200,000 buyers--and was a must-have at Christmas, among geeks at least. Rival firms such as Electrolux and Karcher sell similar but pricier sweepers. Robot vacuum cleaners, it seems, are catching on. Are these mere playthings, or the beginning of a new trend?