During its wheeled treks on the Red Planet, NASA's Spirit rover may have encountered a potential signature of past life on Mars, report scientists at Arizona State University (ASU). To help make their case, the researchers have contrasted Spirit's study of "Home Plate" -- a plateau of layered rocks that the robot explored during the early part of its third year on Mars -- with features found within active hot spring/geyser discharge channels at a site in northern Chile called El Tatio. The work has resulted in a provocative paper: "Silica deposits on Mars with features resembling hot spring biosignatures at El Tatio in Chile." As reported online last week in the journal Nature Communications, field work in Chile by the ASU team -- Steven Ruff and Jack Farmer of the university's School of Earth and Space Exploration -- shows that the nodular and digitate silica structures at El Tatio that most closely resemble those on Mars include complex sedimentary structures produced by a combination of biotic and abiotic processes. "Although fully abiotic processes are not ruled out for the Martian silica structures, they satisfy an a priori definition of potential biosignatures," the researchers wrote in the study.

He studied English Literature and History at Sussex University before gaining a Masters in Newspaper Journalism from City University. Businesses are often data-rich but information-poor. Machine learning (ML) is changing that. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to let computers learn independently through algorithms without being explicitly programmed can help companies process vast quantities of complex data to improve analytics, predictive accuracy and decision-making. Machine learning is already being used in everything from fraud detection to self-driving cars, and in sectors from marketing to government.

Robots have become commonplace in many aspects of life including health care, military and security work. Yet until recently little thought has been given outside of academic circles to the ethics of robots. Silicon Valley Robotics recently launched a Good Robot Design Council -- which has launched "5 Laws of Robotics" guidelines for roboticists and academics -- on the ethical creation, marketing and use of robots in everyday life. The laws have been adapted from the EPSRC 2010 "Principles of Robotics". In Britain a few months ago we saw a similar document, "BS8611 Robots and robotic devices" by the British Standards Institute (BSI) presented at the Social Robotics and AI conference in Oxford as an approach to embedding ethical risk assessment in robots.

The world of big data analytics is incredibly diverse, and people are coming up with new analytic tools and techniques every day. But one particularly productive combination that should not be overlooked involves the use of text analytics and machine learning. Tom Sabo, principal solutions architect at analytics giant SAS, says the one-two punch of predictive modeling on structured data, and text mining with unstructured data, can deliver insights that are more than the sum of their analytic parts. "They really run side by side," Sabo tells Datanami. "Let's say somebody has predictive models in place against whether customer will churn or to maximize profit, for instance. If they have text, like notes, in the rest of that structured data…we can incorporate that additional free form information for actionable insight."

The UK government just announced a slew of investment in startups and R&D in a move that's guaranteed to benefit the country's increasingly important technology sector. News of the funding was unveiled during Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip Hammond's Autumn Statement. Your questions answered by founders, experts and thought leaders in business, design and tech. Over £400 million of government finance will make its way to startups as venture capital via the British Business Bank. The explicit purpose of this is to stop the flow of UK startups being purchased by foreign buyers.

As Apple extends its reach into healthcare, the tech giant will be competing with its onetime chief executive. John Sculley, who served as CEO of Apple from 1983 to 1993 and before that as president of PepsiCo, is now trying to upend the healthcare industry with RxAdvance, a cloud-based pharmacy benefits platform. "This is the most important thing I've done since I was involved at Apple," Sculley told Mashable. Sculley, founding partner of RxAdvance, called Mashable to talk about the future of healthcare, why health tech startups aren't tackling the big picture and what entry into healthcare means for Apple. Why was healthcare the next industry you wanted to tackle?

Facebook has developed a special tool to keep countries from seeing stories criticial of their government. The site has been secretly working on a feature that allows it to geographically censor specific posts from people in the country. It appears to have been done as a way of getting back into China, an important market for the company but one with an intense censorship regime. The apparent tool was revealed at a time when Facebook was facing increased scrutiny of how it picks what appears in news feed. It has received special criticism for the way that it allows fake news to flourish on the service, and many have claimed that it helped Donald Trump win the Presidential election.

The U.K. government has distributed a number of gifts to the country's technology sector. In his first Autumn Statement Wednesday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond confirmed the U.K. government would invest an additional 2 billion pounds ($2.48 billion) into technology research and development by the end of the current Parliament in 2020. Some of this money will be allocated to a new Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund that will direct it to priority technologies, including robotics and artificial intelligence. Hammond also flagged further investment into the development of autonomous vehicles, and announced plans to invest 400 million pounds into venture capital via the British Business Bank, in order to stem the sale of promising U.K. startups to foreign buyers. "I am taking a first step to tackle the longstanding problem of our fastest growing technology firms being snapped up by bigger companies, rather than growing to scale," said Hammond.

Following recent reports from the Government Office for Science and the House of Commons Select Committee, Digital Catapult comments on how access to data can open opportunities to the UK's AI entrepreneurs. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the centre of two recent government reports. Yesterday, the Government Office for Science published an overview of AI that focuses on several significant areas: the effect of AI on productivity and economic value, advantages to government, effects on the labour market, ethical challenges and public trust. Earlier in October the House of Commons Select Committee published their report on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence that recommends that the government is to invest in education and training infrastructures, ensure digital inclusion and governance mechanisms, and provide leadership for future growth in robotics and AI. When considering where the government can provide a significant boost to UK AI and machine learning entrepreneurs, Digital Catapult believes there is a major opportunity in access to data.

After the US election, many people feel we're on the verge of an apocalypse. What might not be obvious is that it's an artificial intelligence apocalypse, like the ones in The Terminator and The Matrix. The fact is the machines have taken over, enslaved us, and may now destroy us. Here's what an AI apocalypse looks like in broad brushstrokes: Unfortunately, the unintended consequence is the downfall of humanity. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard reports that nearly half of all Americans get their news from Facebook.