Hiroshige Seko, the new head of the Minister of Economy, Trade And Industry, says the government needs to implement policies that will help the Japanese automotive industry keep its lead in the global arena by developing advanced autonomous driving technologies ahead of overseas competitors. "The internet of things, artificial intelligence and self-driving technologies are very important for Japan," Seko said in a recent interview. Asked if the government can achieve its targets for nuclear power and renewable energy included in the country's best energy mix for fiscal 2030, which was adopted by METI in July 2015, Seko offered assurances that nuclear plant safety measures tightened under the new standards introduced in July 2013 are sufficient, and that the Nuclear Regulation Authority conducts rigorous safety screenings regardless of government policy. It is important for the government to fully explain that detailed disaster management and evacuation plans have been laid out, said Seko, who took up his ministerial post in the Aug. 3 Cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The energy mix sets Japan's reliance on nuclear power in the year to March 2031 at 20 to 22 percent and that on solar, wind and other renewable energy at 22 to 24 percent. The nuclear safety standards were drawn up based on lessons from the March 2011 crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

PyMVPA is a Python package intended to ease statistical learning analyses of large datasets. It offers an extensible framework with a high-level interface to a broad range of algorithms for classification, regression, feature selection, data import and export. It is designed to integrate well with related software packages, such as scikit-learn, shogun, MDP, etc. While it is not limited to the neuroimaging domain, it is eminently suited for such datasets. PyMVPA is free software and requires nothing but free-software to run. PyMVPA stands for MultiVariate Pattern Analysis (MVPA) in Python.

The U.S. healthcare system is well on its way in the transition to value-based payment models that reward providers for delivering quality outcomes and keeping patients healthy. In fact, as of March 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that an estimated 30 percent of Medicare payments were already tied to these new alternative payment systems. Value-based programs are replacing traditional fee-for-service models that pay providers based on the number of services delivered. The newer models are designed to encourage care that is well-coordinated, cost-effective and lead to quality patient outcomes. In order to achieve new payment objectives, providers are seeking opportunities to engage patients in their own care, improve patient satisfaction and keep patients healthier.

Our VP of Business Development, Markus Zirn, discusses two of the biggest trends in tech – Slack and AI – and how Workato brings them together to create the future of work. According to the latest okta survey, Slack is the #1 fastest cloud application in enterprises with a 77% growth rate. Slack enables team communication by providing chat rooms, organized by themes, as well as offer private messaging and private group messages. In May 2016, it counted 3M daily active users. There's no question that Slack has become nothing short of a movement to bring team communication to the 21st century.

The digital universe is expanding at a staggering rate. Right now, there are about 4.4 zettabytes of data on the internet. For reference, a zettabyte is equivalent to 1000? bytes. According to the IDC, by 2020 there will be approximately 44 zettabytes of data. The increase is not only staggering but is scheduled to take place in a relatively short amount of time.

This group is for those interested in the various types of Machine Learning from theory to application. Including but not limited to Hierarchical Temporal Memory, Artificial Neural Networks, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and their theorems, techniques and algorithms. We will have guest speakers, discuss books and explore which machines (programs), ML Libraries and systems are best suited for particular jobs. Sharing new ideas, best practices, and resources so we can all design, develop and deploy solutions for a better tomorrow.

Have you noticed how computers have gotten smaller while getting smarter? They've also gotten cheaper: now there's a computer inside anything with an on/off switch. All of these newly intelligent devices -- toasters to toothbrushes, thermostats and lightbulbs and cars -- are now being networked, talking to each other, and businesses, and consumers. Why shouldn't your car tell your house that you're nearly home so that the house can tell the oven to preheat to the proper temperature for that fish it knows you just bought, because you made the purchase with your phone and your phone told it so? So, behind every device is a customer, and the next generation of customers expect a connected, smart experience.

It takes years, decades even, for physicians to refine the expertise required to notice details that remain invisible to the untrained. This aptitude, depending on a doctor's specialty, might mark the difference between an oncologist knowing a malignant tumor from a benign cyst. It can help a cardiologist determine the velocity of blood as it flows through a hole in the heart. Or it may tell a reconstructive plastic surgeon whether a severe burn is healing nicely or at risk of infection. None of this is easy unless you know how to see in a certain way.

Your speech-recognizing friends at Nuance are back with a major update to their flagship app, Dragon. The popular productivity software is now in its 15th version, an update that promises some substantial improvements in accuracy courtesy of the company's own deep learning tech, which forms the basis of its speech engine. According to Nuance, this latest upgrade brings better accuracy "upwards of 24 percent," with improved ability to recognize and learn accents and voice patterns, while adapting to the acoustics of the speaker's environment. Here's a quote from the company's CTO, "Training such Deep Neural Net models typically requires large amounts of training data and a high-performance computing environment. However, our new Dragon portfolio includes our latest breakthrough that allows Dragon's Deep Neural Nets to continuously learn from the user's speech during use on a standard personal computer, and drive accuracy rates in some instances up to 24 percent higher." Version 15 also brings a simplified UI, formatting improvements, more support for audio transcription and optimization for a number of touchscreen Windows PCs.

With the trends in personal computing favoring software that gets to know its users, the newest version of Nuance's Dragon voice dictation suite of software--Dragon 15, announced Tuesday--is right on track. Dragon 15--including Dragon Professional Individual ( 300), Dragon Professional Individual for Mac ( 300), Dragon Legal ( 500), and Nuance Dragon Anywhere (free to install; subscriptions run 15/month or 150/year)--is based on Nuance's new machine-learning technology. The company claims that this technology has improved recognition accuracy by at least 24 percent, thanks to its algorithm that learns your distinctive speech patterns over time combined with an improved capability to pick out speech from a noisy room. Lawyers may buy the expanded Legal version, which is trained using a legal vocabulary of more than 400 million words, according to the company. But the majority of Nuance's customers will probably invest in the Dragon Professional Individual version, which is designed for a more general vocabulary.