Two self-sailing ships have been travelling across the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska. The boats are operated by Saildrone, a company that is creating robotic sailboats that can travel without sailors for up to eight months. These autonomous vessels can collect details on water temperature, salinity and ecosystem information that would be difficult and expensive to collect by person. Saildrone is a company creating robotic self-driving sailboats that can travel without sailors for up to eight months. The Saildrone boats have been used by scientists and engineers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to collect valuable information about the Alaskan coast.

Al-Qaida and the extremist Islamic State group have taken advantage of the chaos and lawlessness brought about by Yemen's ongoing civil war to expand their reach in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

NEW YORK: Tech giant Microsoft and large equipment manufacturer Liebherr are collaborating on a new generation of smart refrigerators that would help in shopping and planning meals with intelligent food management. "As part of the Liebherr household appliances division's digital initiative, the duo would develop'SmartDeviceBox' -- a communication module which fits into refrigerators and freezers -- connecting them to the internet," T.J Hazen, Principal Data Scientist Manager at Microsoft, wrote. The system, which would utilise the same machine learning technology used in Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Cortana, is designed to have a long lifecycle. Microsoft gets big support in its fight for digital privacy with US Technology, media, pharmaceutical and other companies, along with major corporate lobbying groups, filed legal briefs on Friday in support of a Microsoft Corp lawsuit that aims to strike down a law preventing companies from telling customers the government is seeking their data. With this technology, modular units can be integrated and upgraded at any time in existing SmartDevice-ready appliances to create value and comfort for customers through new digital features and solutions, the post on Microsoft blog said.

Mark Palmer is senior vice president and general manager of engineering at TIBCO. Much has been made about the business implications of recent, rapid advancements in cognitive computing -- that is, the possibility of advanced analytics tools to help human knowledge workers glean actionable insight from vast and deep lakes of historical, transactional and machine-generated information. When utilized well, cognitive tools help humans identify patterns and surface previously undetected cyberattack patterns on your company, customer buying behavior or predictive signals of catastrophic equipment failure based on readings from sensor-enabled devices. But as your business inevitably becomes more algorithmic, you're faced with the next problem: Many algorithms, once discovered, have a remarkably short shelf-life. Algorithmic excellence in analytics requires more than just great math; you must also become as agile at killing off weak or vanquished algorithms as a NASCAR pit crew changing worn tires -- you need to be replacing them with promising new ones.

You are sat in a café thinking about a last minute birthday present for a friend or relative who you will be meeting later that day. Using your smartphone, you find something suitable via Amazon or similar web-based retailer. You place the order, paying a slight premium for instant delivery. Twenty minutes later you receive a notification that a drone will be arriving shortly at a delivery-port close to the café. You make the five minutes' walk to the designated meeting point.

Work on a new project by Deakin University and Melbourne-based software company Ytek has begun, aimed to develop skills of those training in the emergency response, defence, and aerospace sectors using machine learning algorithms. Dr James Zhang, a researcher from Deakin University's Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation, is working with Ytek to develop simulation solutions used to train surgeons, emergency workers, soldiers, and pilots. As part of the project, Zhang and Ytek will research how machine learning algorithms can help monitor and evaluate a trainee's conduct in mission-critical simulations by using sensors on training tools, such as manikins, to evaluate how trainers can assess students in practical training. Ytek CEO Richard Yanieri said the desired outcome of the project is to improve the practical training for students. "We've been working with Deakin's School of Medicine to understand their needs so that we can tailor a solution that works for this industry," he said.

What can software designers and ICT specialists learn from maggots? Quite a lot, it would appear. Through understanding how complex learning processes in simple organisms work, EU-funded scientists hope to usher in an era of self-learning robots and predictive computing. Even with limited brain power, an organism can choose the right thing to do in response to external stimuli, which is something that current computational learning theory cannot fully account for. Learning from maggots The EU-funded MINIMAL project, launched in 2014, has focused on the learning processes in a relatively simple animal, the fruit fly larva (maggots).

Auto accidents kill more than 33,000 Americans each year, more than homicide or prescription drug overdoses. Companies working on self-driving cars, such as Alphabet and Ford, say their technology can slash that number by removing human liabilities such as texting, drunkenness, and fatigue. But Christopher Hart, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, says his agency's experience investigating accidents involving autopilot systems used in trains and planes suggests that humans can't be fully removed from control. He told MIT Technology Review that future autos will be much safer, but that they will still need humans as copilots. What follows is a condensed transcript.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display