Hurricane Matthew's record rains were but the first of many obstacles faced by millions of evacuees in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas this past week. Roads were blocked by chest-high floodwaters and downed trees. Gas stations ran out of fuel. And traffic sat backed up for miles along interstate highways as floodwaters overtook what appeared to be tens of thousands of households. Most did make it to safety, thanks to evacuation orders, well-planned emergency procedures, and traffic managers switching up lanes to move a glut of vehicles (contraflow for the win).

Besides being a major player in the earthquake prediction method discussed here, the ionosphere is important because it's the layer of the atmosphere that reflects electromagnetic waves back to Earth and enables radio communication. There was increased ionization over Japan before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and a spike in radio wave emissions near Haiti before the 2010 quake there. Enough historical data linking ionospheric activity to earthquakes needs to be collected in order to generate patterns, and the patterns then need to be matched to real-time data. When the Tohoku earthquake hit, Tokyo residents received a one-minute warning via Japan's earthquake early warning system.

Ben Dickson is a software engineer and the founder of TechTalks. Insider threats are the biggest cybersecurity threats to firms, organizations and government agencies. This is something you hear a lot at security conference keynotes and read about in data breach reports, white papers and surveys -- and these insider threats are becoming increasingly more difficult to detect and prevent, as well as more frequent. This seemingly unstoppable growth accentuates the problem and shortcomings of current solutions, and warrants the need for new defensive technologies to detect and stop the digital daggers aimed at our backs. Data science -- the application of mathematics, big data analytics and machine learning to extract knowledge and detect patterns -- is an emergent, advanced technology area that is proving its effectiveness in the realm of cybersecurity, including fighting insider threats.

Artificial intelligence, and technology in general, will have a crucial role to play in society's progress, that is the view of the UK and American governments anyway. This Thursday President Obama announced at the first White House Frontier Conference that more than 300 million in funding, through partnerships, will be released for tech innovations that will improve healthcare, develop smart cities and enhance America's space ambition. "We may be in a slightly different period now, simply because of the pervasive applicability of AI and other technologies," said President Obama in a video shown at the start of the conference. President Obama believes AI, in particular, will be able to help solve the biggest crises that face the world, such as disease, famine, climate change and economic inequality. Others, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, suggest AI's rise will be the biggest threat to the survival of the human race.

To the editor: I empathize with Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck and his officers, who are reluctant to quickly release information and videos taken of police shootings. As imperfect human beings, none of us appreciates being exposed to intense public scrutiny. On the other hand, L.A.'s finest should learn from examples set by departments in cities like Las Vegas, where officers quickly post information about shootings online. First, bad things grow in the dark, and you can't set a behavioral standard without oversight. Opening up will create more support for genuine peace officers, who will then be reassured that the public has their back.

As banks look for places to save time and effort by deploying artificial intelligence software, one logical place is cybercrime and fraud investigations. One reason for this is that the amount of cybersecurity threat information keeps growing as the availability of cybersecurity skills in this country shrinks. According to the Ponemon Institute, organizations receive on average nearly 17,000 malware alerts a week, and the time spent responding to these alerts as well as to inaccurate and erroneous intelligence in general costs 1.27 million annually. The group's research has also found that 19% of all security alerts are considered reliable, but only 4% are investigated. According to IBM, 10,000 security research papers are published every year and over 60,000 security blogs are posted each month, adding to the challenge for small security teams to keep up.

When researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center blindfolded a paralyzed man whose was linked to a robotic hand, he could successfully identify which fingers were being touched 84 percent of the time. Mind-controlled robot arms can now generate feelings of touch, based on new research from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, represents a first for brain-computer interfaces and fulfills a major stage in creating robotic prosthetic arms for tetraplegics that can hold objects. "One of the reasons providing sensation is really important is when you reach out to pick something up, it's that sense of touch that allows you to hold the object properly," Robert Gaunt, the project's leader and a physical medicine and rehabilitation researcher at Pitt, told the NewsHour. That's because to touch an object like an apple, your brain requires two things: movement and feeling.

This means that programmers must account for every type of road situation a car may encounter. MIT's Technology Review spoke with Amnon Shashua, CTO and cofounder of the technology firm to learn more about the initiative. Mobileye has been in the news of late for another reason--its system was the one being used by the Tesla vehicle that was involved in a car crash in Florida recently--the incident is still under investigation by the NHTSA. Tesla publicly blamed Mobileye, and because of that, a rift developed between the companies, which are now no longer partners. Shashua does not believe that will harm the company's new initiative, though--building a system based on neural networking, which, if all goes according to plan, will allow a car or truck to learn how to drive in much the same way that humans do. First, by observing someone else doing it, and then by practicing (which the company calls reinforcement learning).

ComplyAdvantage, a new London-based startup, raked in 8.2 million in a Series A funding led by Balderton Capital. This money shall be pumped into growth across Europe and the U.S. Very quick to act, they're even opening a New York office this week! This startup claims to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help firms manage compliance obligations at reasonable prices. Not only are they going to take on your headaches for you, they're also not going to extort you for it. ComplyAdvantage was founded by Charles Delingpole, who has also previously founded Market Invoice.

One of the world's fastest-growing trading shops doesn't have any traders. XTX Markets Ltd. has emerged as a foreign-exchange powerhouse, relying on programmers and mathematicians to fuel its rise into the global top five earlier this year. Now, after becoming a formidable player in currencies, XTX has its sights set on growing in stocks, commodities and bonds markets. But in a world where the difference between profit and loss can be tiny fractions of a second, XTX says it relies more on smarts than speed. Instead of building microwave networks to ferret out prices a microsecond before anyone else, XTX uses mathematical models that are tuned with massive data sets.