This paper proposes a general adaptive procedure for budget-limited predictor design in high dimensions called two-stage Sampling, Prediction and Adaptive Regression via Correlation Screening (SPARCS). SPARCS can be applied to high dimensional prediction problems in experimental science, medicine, finance, and engineering, as illustrated by the following. Suppose one wishes to run a sequence of experiments to learn a sparse multivariate predictor of a dependent variable $Y$ (disease prognosis for instance) based on a $p$ dimensional set of independent variables $\mathbf X=[X_1,\ldots, X_p]^T$ (assayed biomarkers). Assume that the cost of acquiring the full set of variables $\mathbf X$ increases linearly in its dimension. SPARCS breaks the data collection into two stages in order to achieve an optimal tradeoff between sampling cost and predictor performance. In the first stage we collect a few ($n$) expensive samples $\{y_i,\mathbf x_i\}_{i=1}^n$, at the full dimension $p\gg n$ of $\mathbf X$, winnowing the number of variables down to a smaller dimension $l < p$ using a type of cross-correlation or regression coefficient screening. In the second stage we collect a larger number $(t-n)$ of cheaper samples of the $l$ variables that passed the screening of the first stage. At the second stage, a low dimensional predictor is constructed by solving the standard regression problem using all $t$ samples of the selected variables. SPARCS is an adaptive online algorithm that implements false positive control on the selected variables, is well suited to small sample sizes, and is scalable to high dimensions. We establish asymptotic bounds for the Familywise Error Rate (FWER), specify high dimensional convergence rates for support recovery, and establish optimal sample allocation rules to the first and second stages.

This might be one of the most dangerous yet breath-taking car journeys in the world. A new drone video has emerged showing the dangerous mountain tunnel chiselled out of a vertical cliff in Taihang Mountains. The footage, posted to Youtube by CCTV News yesterday, is believed to capture the awe-inspiring Guoliang tunnel in central China's Henan Province. The formidable Guoliang tunnel was hand-carved by 13 men from an ancient village perched on top of the cliff at an altitude of over 1,700 metres (5,500 feet). The 1,250-metre-long (4,100 feet) passage is the only way to drive to the 600-year-old Guoliang village, which perches on top of the 200-metre-tall (656 feet) cliff.

If Hillary Clinton's'homebrew' server ever got the Mary Shelley treatment, IT specialist Bryan Pagliano would make a fine Dr. Frankenstein – FBI documents reveal new details about how he painstakingly created the machine over a series of months while working in a room along Washington's storied K Street. According to files released last Friday evening, Pagliano worked to design and build the now-infamous server inside a room once used as part of Clinton's campaign headquarters. On the street known as Washington's power corridor, Pagliano even used computer remnants from Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid, where he had worked as an IT specialist. The story of how the server came into existence became clearer thanks to witness interviews known as 302s. Though they were highly redacted, the bureau files include new details Pagliano revealed in a June 24 interview with the FBI.

The Department of Defense announced on Friday that it is investing 100 million in a drone base located in Agadez, in central Niger. The base will serve as a central surveillance hub in the fight against both Boko Haram and roaming militant groups linked to al Qaeda. "At the request of, and in close coordination with, the Government of Niger, United States Africa Command is establishing a temporary, expeditionary cooperative security location in Agadez, Niger," a US Africa Command spokesperson told Reuters via email. "Agadez is an ideal, central location to enable ISR collection (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) to face the security threat across the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin region." The US already has a military presence in both Agadez and the national capital, Niamey.

New York City has created a 5-million fund for women working in the fields of film and theater, becoming the first municipality in the U.S. to finance such an initiative. The fund, announced Thursday by the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, will provide grants to support film and theater projects by and about women. New York also will hold workshops and a film-financing conference designed to connect women with money for their projects; conduct a screenwriting competition that culminates in a series to air on New York's Channel 25; broadcast an additional block of programming on Channel 25 devoted to women; and fund research about gender in the field of film directing. "We believe we're the first municipality in the country to take on this issue," MOME Commissioner Julie Menin said. "We think by creating these economic pathways of opportunity, that is one of the best ways we can contribute."

Prof Raghavan also serves as the Director of the NSF-sponsored Industry/ University Cooperative Research Center for Visual and Decision Informatics. In this role, he co-ordinates several multi-institutional, industry-driven research projects and manages a budget of over 500K/year. From 1997 to 2003, he led a 2.3M research and development project in close collaboration with the USGS National Wetlands Research Center and with the Department of Energy's Office of Science and Technical Information on creating a digital library with data mining capabilities incorporated. His research interests are in Big Data, data mining, information retrieval, machine learning and Internet computing. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed research papers --appearing in top-level journals and proceedings - that cumulatively accord him an h-index of 31, based on citations.

It was the best of times p His photographs capture the culture of rock and punk music; the beguiling moments with the Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie, Dead Boys, Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch and many more as they made New York's CBGB club their home in the late 1970s. John Thackwray, a French and South African commercial filmmaker and photographer, has traveled the globe since 2010, and photographed over 1,200 bedrooms of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s. More than a decade ago, the European Space Agency launched an orbiter named Rosetta, bound on a circuitous voyage to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In the years since, Rosetta has been drawn in and flung along by multiple gravity assist maneuvers, visiting the Earth three times and making … A few weeks ago we suggested you follow 5 topics that cover the more basic aspects of the business of blogging. Today let's focus on something equally important: the life of a blogger. This week I attended MMA SM2 Innovation Summit in New York, which took place during Advertising Week.

Could studying the locomotion of fish be the key to developing more versatile underwater vehicles and robotics systems? The U.S. Navy appears to think so -- based on the fact that its Office of Naval Research has issued a 258,008 grant to researchers at Florida Atlantic University for that purpose. Dr. Oscar Curet of the university's Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering has spent the past several years investigating fish-like robots. His latest: a 16-motored robot based on the blade-like knife fish, is one of the most promising yet. "I'm interested in the fluid dynamics of biosystems," Curet told Digital Trends.

When Kevin Oldt crashed his snowmobile in January 2001, his doctors told him that his spinal cord injury meant he'd never walk again. So it's with great satisfaction that he tells me his personal record for walking with the help of a robotic exoskeleton from Ekso Bionics: about 5000 steps in one day. He clocked those steps in a Dallas convention hall where he spent four hours on the show floor demonstrating the features of the Ekso GT, the company's current commercial model. "And I didn't feel tired," he says. Oldt recently gave IEEE Spectrum a personal demo at a New York City hotel [video below], accompanied by Ekso CEO Tom Looby and an Ekso physical therapist.