Question: I recently had surgery on my hand and am quite certain that the handprint will no longer match that on the Global Entry database. I have two international trips coming up and I'd really like my Global Entry to be up to date. Answer: Brown doesn't have to do anything to use his Global Entry privileges, which include expedited re-entry into the United States and screening at domestic airport security, all for 100 for five years. Customs and Border Protection, which administers Global Entry, said it is fingerprints, not handprints, that are used for identification. The re-entry kiosks at immigration, a spokesman said, use four fingerprints from one hand to validate who you are.

LONDON – Reliable economic statistics are a vital public good. They are essential to effective policymaking, business planning, and the electorate's ability to hold decision-makers to account. And yet the methods we use to measure our economies are becoming increasingly out of date. The statistical conventions on which we base our estimates were adopted a half-century ago, at a time when the economy was producing relatively similar physical goods. Today's economy is radically different and changing rapidly – the result of technological innovation, the rising value of intangible, knowledge-based assets, and the internationalization of economic activity.

Ed Boyden is a professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute. He leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems such as the brain, and applies them systematically to reveal ground truth principles of biological function as well as to repair these systems. These technologies, created often in interdisciplinary collaborations, include expansion microscopy, which enables complex biological systems to be imaged with nanoscale precision, and optogenetic tools, which enable the activation and silencing of neural activity with light. Amongst other recognitions, he has received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2016), the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences (2015), the Schuetze Prize (2014), the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award (2013), the Grete Lundbeck Brain Prize (2013), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2013), and the Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize (2011). Ed received his Ph.D. in neurosciences from Stanford University as a Hertz Fellow, where he discovered that the molecular mechanisms used to store a memory are determined by the content to be learned.

This year would seem to be the year of'Cognitive Computing'. The word'cognitive' relates to conscious mental activities, such as thinking, understanding, learning, and remembering. At a deeper level it comprises of such things as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning(ML), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Natural Language Processing(NLP) and a host of other things. If this is related back to the previous definition of cognitive (thinking, understanding, learning, and remembering) you can see that you can tick most of those boxes, with a big question mark over'thinking'. Why is Cognitive Computing important?

As a masters student exploring artificial intelligence at Stanford University almost 30 years ago, Reed Hastings no doubt had an eye on where the future might take him. But of all the scenarios he imagined for his career, it's highly unlikely that any of them included the one that unfolded this past week: strolling the red carpet in the south of France, rubbing shoulders with some of the country's most glamorous actors and actresses, and fielding questions about his role as a global media kingpin. It's a future the CEO of Netflix says he couldn't even have predicted five years ago, when the company was still primarily shipping DVDs to customers in the U.S. while grappling with its emerging video streaming service. Even now, the Internet continues to scramble the game so fast that Hastings said his company is racing to keep up with all the changes. When asked, he didn't even want to hazard a guess as to where Netflix might be five years from now. "We don't really know," Hastings said.

In the latest sign that the use of artificial intelligence may eventually become common in Big Law, Baker & Hostetler has emerged as the first law firm to make public that it has licensed the artificial intelligence product developed by ROSS Intelligence for bankruptcy matters. Marketed as "the world's first artificially intelligent attorney," ROSS Intelligence uses International Business Machine's Watson technology to allow users to ask natural language questions and get answers. The process not only constantly monitors the law, but more importantly uses "machine learning" capabilities to continuously improve its search results. ROSS Intelligence CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda said that a few other firms have also signed licenses, and those announcements will come shortly. Arruda first mentioned that Baker & Hostetler had signed on as a client at Vanderbilt Law School's Watson, Esq.

"AI and machine learning will undoubtedly alter both the headcount and the nature of skills required in the industry. A significant minority of survey respondents fear the effects on the workforce will be negative within the next few years. But wholesale displacement of humans is for the longer term – nearly seven in ten believe AI will bring complete or substantial change to their own jobs over the next 15 years…" A while ago, I wrote that AI and machine learning was more and more used in our daily lives – but that finance had so far failed to embrace these techniques. Euromoney Thought Leadership just published a very interesting report, where they surveyed 400 senior managers in finance and analysed their views about AI. I was actually slightly suprised by the results: the majority of participants thought that the main impact would be on 1) trading strategies, 2) credit scoring and 3) compliance.

The first 1,000-robot flash mob has assembled at Harvard University. "Form a sea-star shape," directs a computer scientist, sending the command to 1,024 little'bots simultaneously via an infrared light. The robots begin to blink at one another, and then gradually arrange themselves into a five-pointed star. The "K" stands for Kilobots, the name given to these extremely simple robots, each just a few centimeters across, standing on three pinlike legs. Instead of one highly complex robot, a "kilo" of robots collaborate, providing a simple platform for the enactment of complex behaviors.

Insurers are increasingly under pressure to cut costs and offer better digital services to their customers. While core systems replacement and modernization activities close the gap to a degree, carriers are looking to a range of automation technologies to improve service, reduce costs and increase profits. One type of technology insurers are examining is artificial intelligence. This is a broad and decades-old discipline covering a range of technologies where machines demonstrate "intelligence." A challenge in artificial intelligence and psychology disciplines has been defining intelligence.

"I don't just want them to catch up," she says of her students. "I want them to see mathematics as relevant and beautiful. I want them to be able to imagine a (successful) life for themselves." At 35, Nickels has earned a doctoral degree in mathematics education and is usingrobotics to help kids with cancer, sickle-cell disease and HIV-AIDS. She wants to both develop their intellect under the most challenging of circumstances – including, often, in the hospital between surgery and chemotherapy – and to give them back a sense of control over their destinies.