Superbugs capable of everything from curing diseases to mopping up pollution have come a step closer after scientists created an artificial lifeform in a lab. The new bacterial cell, nicknamed Synthia 3.0, has fewer genes than any other bacterium, making it the most basic form of life on Earth. Its creation paves the way for microbes that can be customised with genes so they churn out clean biofuels, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or pump out vaccines in industrial quantities. Researchers have designed and synthesized a minimal bacterial genome, containing only the 473 genes necessary for life. Dr Craig Venter who led the research team, said: 'I think it's the start of a new era.'

Edit: As pointed out in the comments my initial claim that it beats the winning solution turned out to be false. The prize was judged on a dataset that was set in a future time as compared to the training set. If you are familiar with the Netflix prize challenge, you would remember the final solution that got the 1M prize.. It was a mix of solutions from a few winning teams and probably was not the most elegant of solutions. There were some reports that Netflix did not use the final solution.

From Hammurabi to Mendel, from Thomas Jefferson to Charles Darwin, we are compulsively drawn to classifying, categorizing and coding the world around us. Coding of all kinds, whether it's a cryptographic language, a body of laws or a bunch of computer instructions, imposes a basic logic and order. To code is to create processes that impose a semblance of order on the frenzied, seemingly random world we live in. And those who create code wield power. Personalized medicine, genetically modified babies, self-driving cars and the Internet of Things, the seat of power belongs to those who code.

Geri Richmond and Hashemite University molecular biologist Rana Dajani spoke after Richmond's AAAS presidential address to open the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting. Some of the most intriguing news at the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting focused on the tiny: a miniscule cosmic ripple born 1.5 billion years ago, and a millimeters-long mosquito responsible for an emerging health crisis. But the science behind these discoveries is huge in scope and in importance, reflecting the ongoing achievement of international research teams addressing complex challenges in science and society. Efforts to track the spread of Zika virus in the Americas, and the landmark discovery of gravitational waves, both demonstrate the power and potential--and the need--for global collaborations between scientists, speakers emphasized at the 11 to 15 February event, held in Washington, DC. In particular, scientists in developing countries must work as equal partners with their counterparts in developed countries to solve border-crossing challenges like climate change and virus outbreaks, said outgoing AAAS President Geri Richmond in her address at the start of the meeting.

My real-life cat, it appears, has been frustrated with me lately. Oh, she's still spoiled, but there have been a couple of occasions in which my attention has been diverted from her to a wholly digital feline. "Super Phantom Cat," to be specific, has won my heart. "Super Phantom Cat" even seems self-aware. "Love," the game tells players, "lights up the sad and cold chamber of your heart."

There are a lot of mobile games out there -- last year more than 100,000 iOS games were released in North America. They're worse when your girlfriend is scattered around the galaxy. In this iOS game a young boy tries to put back together his first love, a female robot, and learns to live on his own along the way. Words come to life in "Story Warriors: Fairy Tales." Words come to life in "Story Warriors: Fairy Tales."

This month I spent part of my free time to go through the'March Machine Learning Mania 2016' competition, by studying the subject and by attending two meetups here in London. The objective of the Kaggle competition was to predict the 2016 NCAA Basketball Tournament, called March Madness. It was a very enjoyable experience. You might think, what the heck has this to do with HR Analytics, the subject in which I am normally interested in. Predicting performance through machine learning algorithms is a crucial aspect for HR Analytics.

The tech company introduced "Tay" this week -- a bot that responds to users' queries and emulates the casual, jokey speech patterns of a stereotypical millennial. The aim was to "experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding," with Tay able to learn from "her" conversations and get progressively "smarter." But Tay proved a smash hit with racists, trolls, and online troublemakers, who persuaded Tay to blithely use racial slurs, defend white-supremacist propaganda, and even outright call for genocide. Microsoft has now taken Tay offline for "upgrades," and it is deleting some of the worst tweets -- though many still remain. It's important to note that Tay's racism is not a product of Microsoft or of Tay itself.

Google has entered into the machine learning market with the alpha release of Cloud Machine Learning. Built on top of the company's open source machine learning system TensorFlow, the offering will allow customers to build custom algorithms the make predictions for their business, aiding decision making. "At Google, researchers collaborate closely with product teams, applying the latest advances in machine learning to existing products and services – such as speech recognition in the Google app, search in Google Photos and the Smart Reply feature in Inbox by Gmail," said Slaven Bilac, Software Engineer at Google Research. "At GCP NEXT 2016, we announced the alpha release of Cloud Machine Learning, a framework for building and training custom models to be used in intelligent applications." The system is already used in a number of Google's current offerings, though it is later to market than its competitors.

Microsoft created a chatbot that tweeted about its admiration for Hitler and used wildly racist slurs against black people before it was shut down. The company made the Twitter account as a way of demonstrating its artificial intelligence prowess. But it quickly started sending out offensive tweets. "bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now," it wrote in one tweet. "donald trump is the only hope we've got."