Objects made with 3-D printing can be lighter, stronger, and more complex than those produced through traditional manufacturing methods. But several technical challenges must be overcome before 3-D printing transforms the production of most devices. Commercially available printers generally offer only high speed, high precision, or high-quality materials. Rarely do they offer all three, limiting their usefulness as a manufacturing tool. Today, 3-D printing is used mainly for prototyping and low-volume production of specialized parts.

Power system emergency control is generally regarded as the last safety net for grid security and resiliency. Existing emergency control schemes are usually designed off-line based on either the conceived "worst" case scenario or a few typical operation scenarios. These schemes are facing significant adaptiveness and robustness issues as increasing uncertainties and variations occur in modern electrical grids. To address these challenges, for the first time, this paper developed novel adaptive emergency control schemes using deep reinforcement learning (DRL), by leveraging the high-dimensional feature extraction and non-linear generalization capabilities of DRL for complex power systems. Furthermore, an open-source platform named RLGC has been designed for the first time to assist the development and benchmarking of DRL algorithms for power system control. Details of the platform and DRL-based emergency control schemes for generator dynamic braking and under-voltage load shedding are presented. Extensive case studies performed in both two-area four-machine system and IEEE 39-Bus system have demonstrated the excellent performance and robustness of the proposed schemes.

Coffee cups are being grown from fruit by a design company in a bid to cut down on plastic waste. They are made from gourds, a large fruit with a hard skin in the pumpkin family, using custom-designed 3D-printed moulds. The company claims that these biodegradable cups can be manufactured on a mass scale – offering a more environmentally friendly alternative to paper coffee cups. Gourds are fast-growing plants that bear strong fruit each season. Once dried, the gourds' strong outer skin and fibrous inner flesh becomes watertight.

Machine learning embodies the principles of data mining, but can also make automatic correlations and learn from them to apply to new algorithms. It's the technology behind self-driving cars that can quickly adjust to new conditions while driving. Machine learning also provides instant recommendations when a buyer purchases a product from Amazon. These algorithms and analytics are constantly meant to be improving, so the result will only get more accurate over time. Machine learning isn't artificial intelligence, but the ability to learn and improve is still an impressive feat.

Most jobs in the future don't exist yet beyond a spark of the imagination – that's what nearly half of young people believe. The future will be full of outlandish problems no one has even thought of – but there will be more need than ever for people with the critical and creative-thinking skills to tackle them. "We already know centennials are well aware that industries are undergoing exponential change," says Professor Nick Colosimo, principal technologist at BAE Systems. Some 47 per cent of young people expect to work in industries that don't yet exist, research by BAE Systems shows, while nearly two thirds (63 per cent) think that job roles will be more exciting than those of their parents' era. Advances in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing and nanofabrication, automation and robotics will inevitably reshape the job market.

Morgan Stanley was another customer that showcased its work with IBM Power Systems at the event. Morgan Stanley executive director Marcelo Labre speaking with IBM's Sumit Gupta says that IBM Power Systems' computing power and AI-readiness is enabling the organization to explore new AI/ML use cases in finance, with the overall goal of increased efficiency and alignment with customer needs. For example, Morgan Stanley's Labre elaborated at THINK 2019 on how his organization is utilizing AI to challenge outdated risk models. Using AI to improve risk models is a common theme I hear over and over in the industry. You truly need big data to do this well and Power fits the bill.

Innovation is pivotal for businesses to remain globally competitive. Naturally then it has been a key talking point throughout the year. From the commercial opportunities of graphene to clear 3D printing and flat wine bottles, here are the top 10 innovation stories of 2018! Whether manufacturing personalised surgical guides, eye-catching consumer packaging, cutting-edge prototypes or anything in between, there are numerous advantages to 3D printing in transparent plastics. The new materials being designed, manufactured and supported have pushed clear printing to the boundaries of what's possible, offering ultra-high transparency, moisture and temperature resistance, biocompatibility, robustness and performance.

As artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities mature, enterprise leaders are continuously evaluating use cases that can transform their business. A key challenge that slows down AI adoption is the abundant but untamed data that is not ready for AI. There is a strong correlation between companies outperforming in AI adoption and the ones that have a robust data infrastructure aligned with their business architecture. According to the 2018 IBM Business Value survey, Shifting Toward Enterprise-grade AI, 65 percent of outperformers surveyed capture, manage and access business, technology and operational information on key corporate data with a high degree of consistency across the organization versus 52 percent of all others surveyed. IBM recently introduced IBM Cloud Private for Data (ICP4D), a data and analytics platform, to help make your data estate ready for AI.

Munich-based industrial equipment usage analytics startup Corrux has raised $3.1 million in a seed funding round led by German venture capital firm Target Partners, with participation from Josef Brunner, who is the CEO of Relayr and US venture investor Sean Dalton. This seed funding has taken place to implement artificial intelligence in the arena of industrial equipment and scale up its operations. Corrux is an industrial equipment usage analytics startup, which develops simple, powerful applications that let users understand heavy machinery ranging from excavators to track laying machines. The company provides construction managers and OEMs with software to monitor on-site operations and gain insights from data. Moreover, the company's analytics layer lets construction companies and OEMs understand their heavy machinery – ranging from excavators to track laying machines.

On the Starship Enterprise, replicators were devices that were used "to dematerialize matter and then reconstitute it in another form," according to Startrek.com. For Captain Picard's hungry crew, in particular, that usually meant nostalgically reconstituting meals on demand to appease a sudden craving. Though we remain a long way away from being able to transmogrify matter into a chocolate sundae on command, a team of real-life researchers has created a 3-D printer that can create entire objects simultaneously instead of creating them one painstaking layer at a time like most printing techniques. The new approach ---- known as Computer Axial Lithography (CAL) ---- carves an object out of a synthetic resin that solidifies when it comes into contact with particular patterns and intensities of light. Using a device dubbed "the replicator," researchers from University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used the technique to create tiny airplanes and bridges, copies of the human jaw, a screwdriver handle and minuscule copies of Rodin's Thinker.