Recent work in distance metric learning has focused on learning transformations of data that best align with specified pairwise similarity and dissimilarity constraints, often supplied by a human observer. The learned transformations lead to improved retrieval, classification, and clustering algorithms due to the better adapted distance or similarity measures. Here, we address the problem of learning these transformations when the underlying constraint generation process is nonstationary. This nonstationarity can be due to changes in either the ground-truth clustering used to generate constraints or changes in the feature subspaces in which the class structure is apparent. We propose Online Convex Ensemble StrongLy Adaptive Dynamic Learning (OCELAD), a general adaptive, online approach for learning and tracking optimal metrics as they change over time that is highly robust to a variety of nonstationary behaviors in the changing metric. We apply the OCELAD framework to an ensemble of online learners. Specifically, we create a retro-initialized composite objective mirror descent (COMID) ensemble (RICE) consisting of a set of parallel COMID learners with different learning rates, and demonstrate parameter-free RICE-OCELAD metric learning on both synthetic data and a highly nonstationary Twitter dataset. We show significant performance improvements and increased robustness to nonstationary effects relative to previously proposed batch and online distance metric learning algorithms.

The United Nations is a vast organization with a diverse set of technology needs. The organization is an umbrella under which numerous sub-organizations--UNHCR and UNICEF, for example--operate somewhat autonomously. The UN is charged with providing global humanitarian relief, resolving multinational disputes, and tracking global crime. Tech innovation--particularly big data--aids the UN's mission by making operations more efficient and providing critical operational insight. The UN generates and tracks information on a global scale but has trouble managing large piles of data and is staffed with policy makers who are not inherently tech-savvy.

Essential Politics: Details emerge on Legislature hiring Holder, new report on California's housing crisis This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program . The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program .

Amazon's workforce has exploded in recent years, more than doubling since the end of 2014, when it employed 154,000 people. As of the latest count, there were 306,000 employees working worldwide for the Seattle tech giant. But another group is growing just as quickly as the company's human workforce: the number of robots working alongside people in Amazon fulfillment centers. The company said this week that it has 45,000 "robotic units" operating in 20 distribution centers working with people to fill and ship customer orders. The number is up 50 percent from the 30,000 bots that Amazon reported across 13 fulfillment centers in the third quarter of 2015.

Essential Politics: Details emerge on Legislature hiring Holder, new report on California's housing crisis This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program . The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program .

There'll be a to-do list from the IT department in the president's "in" tray when Donald Trump enters the White House later this month. In a cabinet exit memo published Thursday, the Office of Science and Technology Director John P Holdren and U.S. CTO Megan Smith review President Barack Obama's technology achievements, and set 10 technology priorities for his successor. At the top of Holdren's and Smith's list is to invest in fundamental research, and to publish the results. Such work may one day lead to profitable products, but the pay-off is too far in the future to motivate most businesses to contribute -- and were they to do so, they would probably keep the results to themselves. Building a team of scientists and technologists to lead the government's activities is next.

Developed by UK tech company Babylon, the initiative follows widespread criticism of the much-maligned hotline, which has been beset by problems. The app, initially available to people in Camden, Islington, Enfield and Barnet, will address urgent but non-life-threatening conditions. Users will be able to type details of their ailments and the artificial intelligence will ask further questions to assess their condition, while matching the responses with medical databases. According to the Financial Times, the process requires 12 messages and an average of ninety seconds to make a provisional diagnosis. In comparison, the average call time for a 111 user spanned from 10 to 12 minutes.

Companies are investing more money in emerging technologies that can help anticipate and detect a variety of threats, including phishing scams and advanced persistent threats, both of which are weighing heavily on the minds' of corporate board members. For 2017 CIOs are eyeing tools that use anomaly-detecting analytics and machine learning algorithms to protect their companies' data. "Our level of investments is increasing because of the increasing capabilities of the threat actors," says Bob Worrall, CIO of Juniper Networks, who spent 12 percent more on cybersecurity tools in 2016 that he spent in 2015. His budget will increase more in 2017 as he purchases tools to shield Juniper's corporate data and intellectual property. "As the bad guys get smarter we have to as well."

The military has for the first time fired a high-powered electromagnetic projectile from a ground artillery piece, raising Pentagon hopes for arming both the U.S. Army and Navy with advanced technological weaponry, Popular Mechanics reported Tuesday. The tungsten projectile, known as the Hypervelocity Projectile, can reach Mach 3 or over 2,300 miles per hour when fired, faster than any round in service. It potentially could even reach supersonic speeds. Already a historic piece of firepower when fired from an Army howitzer, the projectile was developed for an even more powerful, high-tech piece of Navy weaponry that previously existed only in science-fiction - the railgun. The railgun abandons traditional gunpowder-based firearms for what's essentially a large, overpowered electrical circuit.

"If you think this election is insane, wait until 2020. Thus spake the irrepressible Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University amongst other organizations, in a blog published the day before the U.S. election. He pointed to exponential advances in five areas of technology that describe and enable something I consider to be far removed from true democracy. First, the exploding social media environment will contain so much personal information that political campaigns will continuously mine its every video, photo, and comment to the last byte in order to understand your wants and needs, thoughts and feelings, friends and foes in the most intimate detail. Supported by extensive artificial intelligence (AI) models, they will "know you" better that you know yourself. With the addition of almost endless data from the trillion-sensor-strong Internet of Things, campaigns will know where you are ...