The ability to reliably amplify subtle motions in a video is a wonderful tool for investigating a wide range of phenomena we see in the natural world. Such techniques enable us to visualize the subtle blood flow in a person's face, the rise and fall of a sleeping infant's chest, the vibrations of a bridge swaying in the wind, and even the almost imperceptible trembling of leaves due to musical notes. The development of image processing techniques to amplify such small motions is one of the recent breakthroughs in the computational photography field, which applies algorithmic enhancement techniques to photos and videos in order to create images that could not be captured with regular photography. Some of the earlier work on this topic (originating from the same research group at MIT) used motion estimation (optical flow) techniques to recover small motions, amplify them, and then digitally warp the images. Unfortunately, optical flow techniques are very sensitive to noise, lack of texture, and discontinuities, which make this approach very brittle.

Big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing are all the rage as we near the end of 2016 and whilst they might not be something you'll find gift-wrapped under your tree, the presents, the tree itself and even your Christmas dinner may well be a by-product of these technology trends. Could AI top the charts this Christmas? Researchers at The University of Toronto have created a programme that can automatically generate a song, based on any digital image. Whilst it's unlikely to top the charts this festive season (or indeed at any time), this particular masterpiece – inspired by a photo of a Christmas tree – will almost certainly put a smile on your face! "We are used to thinking about AI for robotics and things like that. The question now is what can AI do for us?" said Raquel Urtasun, an associate professor in machine learning and computer vision at Toronto's computer science lab.

The research follows similar work published by a separate group at the University of Oxford earlier this month. Using related techniques, these scientists were able to create a lip-reading program called LipNet that achieved 93.4 percent accuracy in tests, compared to 52.3 percent human accuracy. However, LipNet was only tested on specially-recorded footage that used volunteers speaking formulaic sentences. By comparison, DeepMind's software -- known as "Watch, Listen, Attend, and Spell" -- was tested on far more challenging footage; transcribing natural, unscripted conversations from BBC politics shows.DeepMind's AI program was trained on 5,000 hours of TV More than 5,000 hours of footage from TV shows including Newsnight, Question Time, and the World Today, was used to train DeepMind's "Watch, Listen, Attend, and Spell" program. The videos included 118,000 difference sentences and some 17,500 unique words, compared to LipNet's test database of video of just 51 unique words.

It will replace you (unless you redefine who you are). It will replace you (unless you redefine who you are). I'll examine each one - it'll be interesting to see what you think. Artificial intelligence, as a concept, has been around for a long time. From Hephaestus building the "fighting machines of the gods" to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, humans have thought about and created stories around our desire to replace the mighty gods with ourselves for several thousand years.

Much as they are today, people were enthralled by artificial intelligence in 1973 -- the year Michael Crichton released the film Westworld. The film became MGM's biggest box office hit of the year, yet launched the same year as the first AI winter: a massive event of depleted AI resources, dashed expectations, and dwindling interest over the ensuing decades. In 2016, Westworld is back, and the immense changes in deep learning, open source, and computing power are fundamentally shifting AI's future. Compute capacity and the technology's capabilities have now advanced far enough that AI can complement and accelerate society, versus the trough of disillusionment realized in 1973. HBO's new version of Westworld, produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, is one of the most popular shows on TV today.

AI has been described as "Thor's Hammer" and "the new electricity." But it's also a bit of a mystery – even to those who know it best. We'll connect with some of the world's leading AI experts to explain how it works, how it's evolving, and how it intersects with every facet of human endeavor. This podcast is produced by NVIDIA, the AI computing company. Multiple episodes are released every month.

We present a novel method for hierarchical topic detection where topics are obtained by clustering documents in multiple ways. Specifically, we model document collections using a class of graphical models called hierarchical latent tree models (HLTMs). The variables at the bottom level of an HLTM are observed binary variables that represent the presence/absence of words in a document. The variables at other levels are binary latent variables, with those at the lowest latent level representing word co-occurrence patterns and those at higher levels representing co-occurrence of patterns at the level below. Each latent variable gives a soft partition of the documents, and document clusters in the partitions are interpreted as topics. Latent variables at high levels of the hierarchy capture long-range word co-occurrence patterns and hence give thematically more general topics, while those at low levels of the hierarchy capture short-range word co-occurrence patterns and give thematically more specific topics. Unlike LDA-based topic models, HLTMs do not refer to a document generation process and use word variables instead of token variables. They use a tree structure to model the relationships between topics and words, which is conducive to the discovery of meaningful topics and topic hierarchies.

Sparks of electricity emanating from a Tesla coil at the Mendeleyevskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, January 24, 2016. Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from John Wasik's new book, "Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla" (Sterling, 2016), slightly edited for this column. World-changing inventions made Nikola Tesla a celebrity in his own time, but something otherworldly makes him transcend his era and remain a perpetual beacon for our civilization 70 years after his death. He's now an immortal rock star, an icon for billionaires, cyberpunks, artists and "maker" inventors who are still fiddling with everyday machines in their basements and garages. Search engine designers, energy czars, musicians, artists and creators everywhere feel his influence.

In 2015, director Justin Kurzel and actors Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard teamed for a prestigious cinematic adaptation, a bloody, mad take on "Macbeth." Taking on the popular video game "Assassin's Creed" seems like quite the left turn, and while the results aren't as striking as the previous outing -- it's pretty uneven -- the film is thoroughly stamped with Kurzel's unique visual style, which makes for an exciting, if strange ride. There is a complicated and deep mythology behind the game, and the film follows it mostly faithfully. Callum Lynch (Fassbender) is a death row inmate with a violent childhood. He is put to death by lethal injection, but wakes up in a clinic at the shadowy Abstergo corporation.

"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" is expected to rule the box office during the long Christmas weekend, despite a glut of new films jostling for moviegoers' dollars. The second weekend for the Lucasfilm prequel is expected to easily top newcomers, including the new animated musical "Sing," the romance-in-space drama "Passengers" and the video-game action flick "Assassin's Creed." "Rogue One," released by the Walt Disney Co., dominated last weekend with $155 million in U.S.-Canada box office, making it the third-highest opening of the year. Driven by strong reviews and high anticipation among the Jedi fanbase, the space saga could add $130 million or more in domestic receipts during the six-day weekend that starts Wednesday, according to analysts. Internationally, "Rogue One" has already earned $151 million for a global total of $323.5 million so far.