Firefighters have only their wits and five senses to rely on inside a burning building. But research developed in part by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, may change that, introducing artificial intelligence (AI) that could collect data on temperatures, gases and other danger signals and guide a team of first responders safely through the flames. AUDREY, the Assistant for Understanding Data through Reasoning, Extraction, and sYnthesis, has received the Undersecretary's Award for Collaboration from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in recognition of its joint development by JPL and DHS. It's part of the Next Generation First Responder (NGFR) program, a DHS initiative to innovate new ways to keep firefighters, police, paramedics and other first responders safe in the field through increased awareness of their surroundings and communication abilities. But the big picture is even more exciting: AUDREY can track an entire team of firefighters, sending relevant signals to individuals while helping to make recommendations for how they could work together.

By Amit Nath Cyber security is a crucial challenge in today's world, as government agencies, corporations and even individuals are increasingly becoming victims of cyber-attacks. It is a well-known fact that businesses are turning more and more to the cloud and mobile applications as a way to stay competitive in the market. However, cloud storage, IoT and mobile applications escalate security risks for all enterprises. When smaller organizations invest in security measures they frequently look for the most cost-efficient options. It should be considered that cyber-attacks are not only frequent, but frequently creative and innovative.

WASHINGTON/PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN – The leader of the Islamic State group's branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan was killed in a U.S. drone strike on July 26, a Pentagon spokesman said on Friday after the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan announced the news to Reuters. The death of Hafiz Saeed Khan is a blow to efforts by the Islamic State -- also known as ISIS or Daesh -- to expand from its heartlands in Syria and Iraq into Afghanistan and Pakistan, which already are crowded with jihadi movements, including the Taliban and al-Qaida. It is the second U.S. killing of a prominent militant in the region in months. In May, a U.S. drone killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a strike in Pakistan. Despite that, Afghanistan's 15-year-old war grinds on with no clear victory in sight.

You'll have to get in the habit of stepping away from your computer to create the social capital you need. Grab lunch with a developer who may build out your next design. No need for an agenda -- just get to know each other. Spend time with researchers who have their finger on the pulse of your customers, sales people who hear frequent requests, product managers who understand schedules and scope, and customer service agents who know where users struggle the most. All have valuable context to offer you.

Self-driving cars feature heavily in Musk's master plan, but the Autopilot system is facing scrutiny as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probes two separate crashes of Tesla cars to determine if there is a defect in the vehicles. Consumer Reports has accused Tesla of releasing Autopilot with an unsafe level of self-reliance that could mislead drivers into diverting their attention from the road, despite the auto company's assertion that users must keep hands on the wheel.

This will be the definitive forum on the shape of the next economy. Be part of the discussion and understand how the technological revolution will shape the future of work and business. "Could a machine do your job?" ask Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article, "Where Machines Could Replace Humans and Where They Can't Yet." "As automation technologies such as machine learning and robotics play an increasingly great role in everyday life, their potential effect on the workplace has, unsurprisingly, become a major focus of research and public concern. The discussion tends toward a Manichean guessing game: which jobs will or won't be replaced by machines? In fact, as our research has begun to show, the story is more nuanced. While automation will eliminate very few occupations entirely in the next decade, it will affect portions of almost all jobs to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the type of work they entail."

Researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have created a rewritable data-storage device capable of storing information at the level of single atoms representing single bits of information. The technology, which is described in the current issue of Nature Nanotechnology, is capable of packing data as dense as 500 terabytes per square inch. Theoretically, the device could store the entire contents of the US Library of Congress within a 0.1-mm-wide cube--though the proof-of-concept demonstrated by the group topped out at 1 kilobyte. On Tuesday, DigitalGlobe, a satellite-imagery company, announced that it will provide high-resolution pictures of the planet's surface to Uber. DigitalGlobe is the primary provider of satellite imagery to Google, Apple, and the U.S. government.

As a Stanford student, Zeshan Hussain found many ways to take part in public service projects near and far – on campus, at a high school on the other side of San Francisco Bay and at a tropical disease hospital in India. In January 2016, along with other members of the Muslim Student Union (MSU) and other student groups, Hussain helped organize Syrian Refugee Awareness Week, which included a teach-in about the crisis, a benefit dinner to raise funds for the charity United Muslim Relief and a clothing collection drive in student residence halls. The organization brought in Sana Khatib, a Syrian-American activist whose father is a former political prisoner and whose family fled Syria and the Assad regime when she was young. Through a clothing drive the MSU also collected 500 pounds of clothing just on campus from students and faculty, an accomplishment Hussain described as "very heartening." "We wanted to raise awareness about the crisis and its history, and about the personal struggles of students who may be refugees, or students who have families that are refugees," he said.

Some of the most enthusiastic proponents of autonomous vehicles and features are worried that autopilot -- not the technology itself, but the very name, which some find misleading -- might slow down the evolution of the driverless car. They say that would be a shame, as autonomous technologies are designed to make driving safer by preventing minor fender-benders as well as reducing the number of traffic fatalities. A May 7 crash involving a Model S being driven in autopilot mode is all the buzz at the Automated Vehicle Symposium here this week, a major annual event for engineers, auto executives, software developers, policymakers and others involved in the transition of automobiles into robots. Most years, technology dominates the conference. This year, it's safety and consumer readiness for robots that take over the driving.

Google is putting DeepMind's machine learning to work on managing their sprawling data centers' energy usage, and it's is performing like a boss -- the company reports a 15% drop in consumption since the AI took over. Google is undeniably a huge part of western civilization. The company's data servers pretty much handle all of my mail at this point, along with YouTube, social media platforms and much more. But even so, it's easy to forget that the Google we know and interact with every day is just the tip of the iceberg; it relies on huge data servers to process, transfer and store information -- and all this hardware needs a lot of power. So much power, in fact, that the company decided to do something about it.