A specialized drone could be instrumental in saving an endangered species of ferret in the United States. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced plans to test out a program that would use unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to shoot vaccine-covered candy into the black-footed ferret's habitat in Montana. The goal of this scheme is to help inoculate the animal against sylvatic plague -- a disease that can decimate black-footed ferret populations. The vaccination effort is designed to indirectly benefit the ferrets by specifically targeting prairie dog populations, which are also susceptible to the plague. Black-footed ferrets depend on prairie dogs for food and shelter.

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

In this Dec. 17, 2014 file photo, a Pakistan army soldier inspects the Army Public School that was attacked a day before by Taliban gunmen, in Peshawar, Pakistan. The Pakistani army said Wednesday, July 13, 2016 that the mastermind of the 2014 attack on an army-run school has been killed in a U.S. drone strike. A Pakistani military spokesman says that a U.S. Army general confirmed the death of Taliban leader Khalifa Umar Mansoor in a phone call to Pakistan's army chief.

Last week New York University hosted the final workshop of a series sponsored by the White House on the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence. Rather than focusing on the technical bits and bytes, the NYU-hosted schedule centered around the near-term social and economic impact of automation, mass data collection and new analytics. This leads directly into the White House's July 22nd deadline for its Request for Information on "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence." While we often fantasize about the fallout from the coming robot apocalypse, that is simply not today's challenge. Today, we need to focus on the near-term impact of smart-er automation systems on labor and social structures.

When Dallas police officers told their chief, David Brown, that they planned to attach an explosive to a remote-controlled robot and kill the man who they believed had fatally shot five officers on Thursday night, he gave his approval, and told them not to "bring the building down." That's how the chief described the situation at a press conference on Monday. The goal is always to "make sure we do everything we can to go home to our loved ones," he said. The plan worked, marking what is believed to be the first time a United States police department killed a person by attaching an explosive to a robot. Much of the resulting conversation has centered around the robot, which, as many have reported, basically amounted to a remote-controlled car with an arm and a bomb, not something sophisticated, such as a drone flying above the clouds.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Gene Lee (seated) is operating a simulator developed by Nick Ernest (standing left) for military training and research. Ernest, a University of Cincinnati graduate and Psibernetix president and CEO, is standing next to David Carroll of Psibernetix. Gene Lee has decades of experience as a fighter pilot and aerial combat instructor. The talent Lee, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, has as a pilot allowed him to easily and consistently defeat other computer programs used in research and training. That was until he began working with a system developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

There is a need for a new global platform to monitor, consider, and make recommendations about the implications of emerging technologies in general, and AI more specifically, for international security. The doomsday scenarios spun around this theme are so outlandish – like The Matrix, in which human-created artificial intelligence plugs humans into a simulated reality to harvest energy from their bodies – it's difficult to visualize them as serious threats. Meanwhile, artificially intelligent systems continue to develop apace. Self-driving cars are beginning to share our roads; pocket-sized devices respond to our queries and manage our schedules in real-time; algorithms beat us at Go; robots become better at getting up when they fall over. It's obvious how developing these technologies will benefit humanity. But, then – don't all the dystopian sci-fi stories start out this way?

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

American law firm BakerHostetler has hired ROSS, a robot lawyer, to assist in bankruptcy cases. ROSS, who is powered by IBM's Watson technology, will serve as a legal researcher for the firm. Legal researcher jobs are typically filled by fresh law school graduates embarking upon their careers. "ROSS surfaces relevant passages of law and then allows lawyers to interact with them. Lawyers can either enforce ROSS's hypothesis or get it to question its hypothesis," Andrew Arruda, chief executive of ROSS Intelligence, told The Washington Post.

OSAKA – Japanese opposition party Osaka Ishin no Kai decided Tuesday to change its name by removing "Osaka," as the party tries to gain wider support from across the country. The party, which has its base in Osaka Prefecture, made the decision at a meeting of its executives in the city of Osaka. It will formally adopt a new party name at an extraordinary party convention to be held in the city on Aug. 23. In Sunday's election for the House of Councilors, in which half of the chamber's 242 seats were contested, Osaka Ishin won only seven seats -- three in prefectural constituencies and four under the nationwide proportional representation system. The three constituency seats it won are in Osaka and neighboring Hyogo Prefecture.