Increasing calls for changes in policing have departments across the country searching for new ways to build trust and protect citizens and officers alike. Led by the Center for Data Science and Public Policy at the Computation Institute and Harris School of Public Policy, the initiative applies machine-learning methods to police department data to identify officers and police calls at a higher risk of producing adverse events, such as the use of excessive force or a sustained citizen complaint. The predictive models can be used to guide personalized interventions for at-risk officers or adjust dispatch procedures to reduce high-stress situations. "The goal is to take historical data about these police officers--their behaviors, citations, arrests, dispatches--and use that data to assign each officer a risk score," said Rayid Ghani, the center's director. "That risk score is then used to predict which officers are at risk of one of these adverse incidents, and provide the police departments with this information so they can then work on interventions to prevent these incidents."

Innovation continues, life goes on. Old jobs are made obsolete, new jobs are created. When the greatest minds of the world decide to create something new, their engineers set out to find a way to do it. Concepts are created, wireframes are built, prototypes are designed, algorithms are written. In essence: these ideas start to take shape.

Who has not dreamed of being an artist? This dream is now within everyone's reach thanks to the Prisma application and the artificial intelligence. First released back in June in the Apple App Store, the Prisma app (developed by Russia-based company Prisma Labs) uses neural networks and AI technology to turn normal photos into instant famous painters' art styles (abstract, impressionist, Gothic and several others). It is almost like carrying Picasso in your pocket and ask him to paint for you. The art filters and photo effects create such a mind-blowing result that the app broke the Apple download records in Russia.

The Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) has made a further advance in the application of artificial intelligence by using it to create a bizarre pop track called'Daddy's Car'. Created by AI software Flow Machines, the software analysed "a huge database of songs" and then derived the styling and combinations to produce a record in the style of The Beatles. A total of 13,000 songs were entered into the machine from which a melody and harmony were created. From there, French composer Benoît Carré arranged and produced the songs, and wrote the lyrics. Sony CSL said that its music research "leads to new modes of access to music, interaction with sound, and human interaction".

Apple recently purchased Turi, a Seattle-based machine learning company. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." The tech giant's standard response to questions about recent acquisitions is frustratingly static and uninformative. But the company's latest purchase, machine learning startup Turi, is at least its fourth acquisition in the artificial intelligence space over the last several months – suggesting that whatever its "purpose or plans," Apple is certainly looking to make its devices smarter. The tech giant purchased the Seattle-based startup for around 200 million, according to GeekWire.

Networking among virtual machines in Microsoft Azure is going to get a whole lot faster thanks to some new hardware that Microsoft has rolled out across its fleet of data centers. The company announced Monday that it has deployed hundreds of thousands of FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) across servers in 15 countries and five different continents. The chips have been put to use in a variety of first-party Microsoft services, and they're now starting to accelerate networking on the company's Azure cloud platform. In addition to improving networking speeds, the FPGAs (which sit on custom, Microsoft-designed boards connected to Azure servers) can also be used to improve the speed of machine-learning tasks and other key cloud functionality. Microsoft hasn't said exactly what the contents of the boards include, other than revealing that they hold an FPGA, static RAM chips and hardened digital signal processors.

Learning to code isn't as easy as snapping a photo, but Alex Klein is betting that the two are more closely connected than you might think. Klein is the co-founder of Kano (the British company that developed the cleverly designed DIY computer kit that teaches kids to code), and on a recent fall day he's sitting in front of me with a transparent camera in his hand, showing me how to build my own photo filter. On his laptop, Klein drags and drops a block of code using the Kano operating system, chooses a color, and presses the camera's shutter button. He does it again, this time choosing a line of code that turns the frames into a kaleidoscopic image. "This generation is so used to communicating with photography, Klein says. "They're snapping a picture and they're using a pre-packaged alteration made by some genius at Instagram and Snapchat.

Adobe's badassery in image processing is nothing new. With software like Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects and the likes, Adobe is hands-down the master of post-production. Now, Adobe has pushed for further innovation by adopting the technology everybody is talking about suddenly- artificial intelligence. The company has teamed up with researchers from University of Berkeley and come up with a new editing tool that makes use of machine learning to allow realistic manipulation of photos in real-time. In a paper named Generative Visual Manipulation on the Natural Image Manifold, the researchers have outlined a new method to generate photo-realistic samples based only on a few brush strokes from the user.

Though it's an integral part of a properly functioning managerial relationship, feedback remains a sticky subject for many whose jobs require them to provide it. Some fear the backlash that may result, others worry that it may jeopardize their career, and still others fret that their feedback is getting completely ignored. In fact, a recent study by VitalSmarts found that 83% of employees have witnessed a colleague say something that has had a negative impact on their careers, something the study's authors referred to as "suicide by feedback." On the other hand, regular feedback is vital for employee engagement, which can lead to profitability and productivity increases of more than 20%, according to a 2014 Gallup Poll. So how can managers get over their fear of the repercussions while keeping their employees engaged?

Elpasolite is a glassy, transparent, shiny and soft mineral with a cubic crystal structure. First discovered in El Paso County (Colorado, USA), it can also be found in the Rocky Mountains, Virginia and the Apennines (Italy). In experimental databases, elpasolite is one of the most frequently found quaternary crystals (crystals made up of four chemical elements). Depending on its composition, it can be a metallic conductor, a semi-conductor or an insulator, and may also emit light when exposed to radiation. These characteristics make elpasolite an interesting candidate for use in scintillators (certain aspects of which can already be demonstrated) and other applications. Its chemical complexity means that, mathematically speaking, it is practically impossible to use quantum mechanics to predict every theoretically viable combination of the four elements in the structure of elpasolite.