"Advanced cyberlearning environments that involve Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence innovations are becoming powerful tools that can facilitate the explorations and conversations needed to solve society's "wicked challenges," said Winslow Burleson, PhD, MSE, an engineer by training and currently associate professor, New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing. The researchers posit that the use of technology, specifically a bundled and ever-evolving fluid set of integrated cyber tools, will connect disparate groups and individuals, converging them in both a real and an imagined cyber-social-physical environment, called the Holodeck, that Burleson's NYU-X Lab is currently advancing in prototype form, in close collaboration with colleagues at NYU Courant, Tandon, Steinhardt, and Tisch, "The "Holodeck" will support a broad range of transdisciplinary collaborations, integrated education, research, and innovation by providing a networked software/hardware infrastructure that can synthesize visual, audio, physical, social, and societal components," said Burleson. NYU-X Lab's Holodeck prototype harnesses the collective power of shared computation, integrated distributed data, immersive visualization, and social interaction to make possible large-scale synthesis of learning, research, and innovation, that will dramatically accelerate the Rittel and Webber iterative mode of problem solving. The goal is to create a networked infrastructure and communication environment where "wicked challenges" can be iteratively explored and re-solved, utilizing visual, acoustic, and physical sensory feedback, human dynamics with and social collaboration.

In the late 1960s, urban planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber began formulating the concept of "wicked problems" or "wicked challenges" --problems so vexing in the realm of social and organizational planning that they could not be successfully ameliorated with traditional linear, analytical, systems-engineering types of approaches. These "wicked challenges" are poorly defined, abstruse, and connected to strong moral, political and professional issues. Some examples might include: "How should we deal with crime and violence in our schools? "How should we wage the'War on Terror'? or "What is good national immigration policy?" "Wicked problems," by their very nature, are strongly stakeholder dependent; there is often little consensus even about what the problem is, let alone how to deal with it.

The question of robotic ethics is making everyone tense. We worry about the machine's lack of empathy, how calculating machines are going to know how to do the right thing, and even how we are going to judge and punish beings of steel and silicon. I am less concerned about robots doing wrong, and far more concerned about the moment they look at us and are appalled at how often we fail to do right. I am convinced that they will not only be smarter than we are, but have truer moral compasses, as well. Let's be clear about what is and is not at issue here.

The US military apparently never tires of thinking up capability gaps, and that means we may soon see fleets of small drones dropping out of bombers, then later being yanked out of the sky by cargo planes. Cartoonish as it may sound--as is the case with so many deadly-serious but still far-out military concepts--it makes a lot of sense. And Darpa, the Pentagon's weapon of choice for making crazy things happen, just chose four companies to push the idea forward. Called Gremlins (because you weren't already freaked out) the project calls for a new type of reusable unmanned aerial vehicle that can be air-launched on intelligence-gathering missions from cargo airplanes, bombers, or other military aircraft over "denied" (i.e., hostile) airspace. Once their missions are complete, up to three hours later, the drones will fly back to retrieval area where a C-130 cargo airplane will collect them.

According to OECD predictions, exceeding budgets on health spending remains an issue for OECD countries. Maintaining today's healthcare systems and funding future medical advances will be difficult without major reforms. Public expenditure on health and long-term care in OECD countries is set to increase from around 6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) today to almost 9% of GDP in 2030 and to 14% by 2060. This will be the harsh reality unless governments and private companies change the structure of how healthcare is funded. In countries with private health insurance, certain treatments such as cancer care are so expensive that only the privileged with good insurance plans can afford them.

You are probably familiar with films such as Armageddon, telling stories of the human race nearly being wiped out by impacts from asteroids. But a project funded by Nasa is developing a way to turn such asteroids from a threat into something useful, namely spaceships that can help defend the planet. The project, named Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata (RAMA), aims at working out a way to turn the rocks into basic spacecraft using robots. A new project, named Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata (RAMA), aims to develop a way to turn the rocks into basic spacecraft using robots. The idea is that a set of technically simple robotic processes will be developed that can convert asteroid elements into very basic versions of spacecraft subsystems.

U.S. bank regulators struck a major blow against some of the largest banks in the country Wednesday, rejecting the so-called living wills of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Street and Bank of New York Mellon. The banks' resolution plans, which outline how systemically important financial institutions would navigate a bankruptcy without splintering the financial system or costing taxpayers, have become a central focus of bank reformers since the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act authorized regulators to judge the submissions. The failing grades at five of the nation's eight largest banks reveal newfound consensus between the two regulators responsible for the assessments, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, which had diverged in previous rounds of analysis. The stricter judgments released Wednesday are likely to add momentum to advocates of big-bank breakups, such as presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. "No firm yet shows itself capable of being resolved in an orderly fashion through bankruptcy," said FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig in a statement.

An iPhone is connected to a 2016 Chevrolet Malibu equipped with Apple CarPlay apps, displayed on the car's MyLink screen. With 220 million Internet connected cars expected to be on the roads within five years, a national security expert on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, urged automakers to be mindful of the growing cyber-security threats posed by terrorists, information crooks and spies who could potentially try to hack into wired vehicles. DETROIT -- In its quest to build connected and self-driving cars, the automotive industry is facing a daunting task that national security experts say is a must: Design a car that's terrorist-proof -- or at least try. With 220 million Internet connected cars expected to be on the roads within five years, a national security expert visited Detroit on Tuesday and urged automakers to be mindful of the growing cyber-security threats posed by terrorists, information crooks and spies who could potentially try to hack into wired vehicles and cause mayhem of all sorts. " 'What are the bad buys thinking?' We've seen them be creative before," said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security, who met with auto executives and law enforcement personnel at Cobo Center at a presentation titled, "Emerging National Security Cyber Threats and Their Implications for the C-Suite."

In the background, a few pedestrians are looking warily at a strange new contraption barely visible behind the crowds of equine transport. Imagine the same street, just 13 years later. To the right of the frame is a cart pulled by a single, perplexed-looking horse. The street--and the world--has changed forever. Anders Hjælmsø Svennesen, CIO at the DKK 327 billion ( 50 billion) Danica Pension in Denmark, uses these images in presentations to illustrate the speed at which technology can fundamentally change the way we live.

Society is reaching an automation inflection point as robotic surgery is set to introduce cost reductions and quality improvement to a sector where a highly skilled and educated workforce is the largest expense. The move comes as a demographic retirement bubble approaches. Robotics hit an inflection point in 2015, growing 43% year-over-year, a Goldman Sachs report noted. The market for robotics, however, "remain(s) in its infancy" and is set to grow from 200 million to 930 million by 2020. That growth is likely to introduce robots into surgery, and in so doing revolutionizing medical field automation.