A significant part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was the 25 billion invested in health information technology (IT) to improve quality, safety, efficiency in health care while also reducing health disparities. However, nursing homes did not receive the same level of investment in technology as hospitals, leading to little understanding of how IT sophistication is impacting patient care in nursing homes. Now, research from the University of Missouri shows increases in IT sophistication can lead to potential improvements in health care quality measures.

When Randy Bilyeu disappeared, he was hunting for the Fenn Treasure, a chest allegedly filled with gold, precious stones, and jewelry, supposedly hidden in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2010, millionaire art dealer (and Former Vietnam fighter pilot) 79-year-old Forrest Fenn filled a bronze chest with rare metals, jewels, and artifacts, and then hid it in the mountains. Later that year, he published his autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase, which included a 24-line poem that he says contains the clues necessary to track down the treasure chest. Since then, he's become something of a global celebrity; in 2013, he appeared on NBC's Today Show to issue some new clues about the place where the chest had been hidden. Bilyeu happened to catch the episode on TV and became obsessed with finding the Fenn treasure--against all odds and his friends and family's better judgement.

This is a story about the future. Not the unhappy future, the one where climate change turns the planet into a cinder or we all die in a global nuclear war. This is the happy version. It's the one where computers keep getting smarter and smarter, and clever engineers keep building better and better robots. Plus they're computers: They never get tired, they're never ill-tempered, they never make mistakes, and they have instant access to all of human knowledge. Global warming is a problem of the past because computers have figured out how to generate limitless amounts of green energy and intelligent robots have tirelessly built the infrastructure to deliver it to our homes. No one needs to work anymore. Robots can do everything humans can do, and they do it uncomplainingly, 24 hours a day. Some things remain scarce--beachfront property in Malibu, original Rembrandts--but thanks to super-efficient use of natural resources and massive recycling, scarcity of ordinary consumer goods is a thing of the past. Our days are spent however we please, perhaps in study, perhaps playing video games. Maybe you think I'm pulling your leg here.

Attracting the best talent is the ultimate motive for recruiting professionals. In discussion with Mr. Adhiraj, Vice President (HR), ITC, we at CareerBuilder were acquainted with some innovative thoughts on how technology and recruiting would take place in 2015. "As technology continues to develop, can we assume that businesses will still be using recruiters 10 years from now? There are grounds for doubt, but it seems on the contrary that recruiters will have a highly strategic role to play in attracting and motivating the best talents for the projects, management and operations of the organizations they serve. One thing is certain, however: the digital transformation that began in 1995 with the advent of the Internet compels us to rethink everything.

As the market for apps is maturing and artificial intelligence advancing, text-based services, or chatbots, are poised to take off. Chatbots are essentially software programs that use messaging as the interface to carry out various tasks. Venture Beat estimates that the bots landscape currently consists of over 170 companies that have attracted some US 4 billion in funding. One particular area where entrepreneurs and market observers are optimistic about, is their use to deliver financial services. Already, a number of banks have dived into this emerging trend, building and delivering solutions on instant messaging and popular social networks (think Facebook Messenger and Twitter) to deliver basic banking needs such as checking your banking account balance, finding nearby ATMs, and even make payments, have launched this year.

I've no doubt you'll be familiar with all of the talk regarding Artificial Intelligence's accelerating capabilities, impending arrival, and possible widespread disruption to life as we currently now know it. While some leaders are voicing their concerns on this new Artificial Intelligence era, claiming we're doomed for a'rise of the robots' type scenario where human existence is threatened. Other, more rational thought leaders – while recognising the threats AI poses, by advocating the measures required to safe guard against them – are however focussing on the positives of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the huge benefits it can offer. No area is perhaps more prime for an AI overhaul than the workplace. So much so, that AI along with other key ingredients such as The Internet of Things has led to the generally accepted arrival of the'Fourth Industrial Revolution'.

Intel intc is to buy the Irish chip firm Movidius to boost its ambitions of giving "human-like sight" to connected devices. Movidius makes system-on-a-chip (SoC) platforms that are designed to aid computer vision applications, and also has algorithms for things like deep learning, navigation and depth processing. The idea is to be able to do on a mobile device the kind of heavy image interpretation that currently requires remote processing power somewhere off in the cloud. This should allow for quicker reactions and ultimately more autonomous machines. Movidius's technology will be integrated with Intel's RealSense depth-sensing camera tech, which is already found in a few webcams out there and is also being built into augmented reality headsets and drones.

The next president will have a range of issues on their plate, from how to deal with growing tensions with China and Russia, to an ongoing war against ISIS. But perhaps the most important decision they will make for overall human history is what to do about autonomous weapons systems (AWS), aka "killer robots." The new president will literally have no choice. It is not just that the technology is rapidly advancing, but because of a ticking time bomb buried in US policy on the issue. In 2012, the Obama administration created Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, which sets policy on how the Pentagon handles the questions of this new technology.

Sure, the feds finally made it reasonably easy to get a drone pilot's certificate, but it's clear they still see unmanned aviation as a dodgy proposition. Among the many questions that come with any new tech is a basic limitation: The radio links and Wi-Fi that control the aircraft limit range to a few thousand feet, and aren't robust enough for reliable drone control over long distances. So the new rules, which took effect last month, limit drone use to visual line-of-sight operation, hamstringing operators interested in delivery, search-and-rescue, and remote-inspection operations. The solution may lurk in your own line-of-sight--on top of water towers and rooftops, or shrouded by poorly faked roadside "trees." Qualcomm Technologies and AT&T announced today they're collaborating to make wide-ranging drone operations reliable and safe, using current 4G LTE and future 5G networks.

Intel's RealSense computer vision platform has been lacking a low-powered way of recognizing what its depth-sensing cameras are seeing -- until now. The chip giant is buying Movidius, the designer of a range of system-on-chip products for accelerating computer vision processing. Movidius supplies chips to drone makers such as DJI and to thermal imaging company FLIR Systems, itself a supplier of DJI. Its chips help computers figure out what they are seeing through cameras like Intel's RealSense by breaking down the processing into a set of smaller tasks that they can execute in parallel. There are systems that already do this using GPUs, but those are relatively power-hungry, often consuming tens of watts. That's not a problem in fixed applications with access to mains electricity, or in cars, which have huge batteries and a way to recharge them.