So many people are registering drones and applying for drone pilot licenses that federal aviation officials say they are contemplating the possibility of millions of unmanned aircraft crowding the nation's skies in the not-too-distant future. In the nine months since the Federal Aviation Administration created a drone registration system, more than 550,000 unmanned aircraft have been registered with the agency, said Earl Lawrence, director of the FAA's drone office. Speaking at the first meeting of a new government-industry drone advisory committee, Lawrence said new registrations are coming in at a rate of 2,000 a day. The FAA began issuing drone pilot licenses to commercial operators less than a month ago. Already, 13,710 people have applied to take the pilot exam, and 5,080 have passed it, Lawrence said.

He Zhigang's eyes pleaded with the elevator dial as he stood waiting on the ground floor. The red numbers wouldn't budge. He glanced at his phone. He pushed back his helmet, lifted the delivery bag of steamed buns and prepared to run up 20 flights of stairs. The hungry office worker probably won't remember who brought him lunch on a Friday afternoon, or that it was 11 minutes and 20 seconds before the allotted time.

After decades of stagnation in research and development of artificial intelligence solutions, machine learning has blossomed again – and its seeds are spreading to financial services. Sofia Lotto Persio reports on how AI is improving the field. Almost 20 years later, in March 2016, Google's AlphaGo programme beat South Korean champion Lee Sedol at four matches of Go, a strategy game, in what represents another historic breakthrough for artificial intelligence (AI). In the two-decade span between these achievements, AI has progressed tremendously. Go is a much more complex game than chess, as there are more possible positions on the board than there are atoms in the universe.

NOTE: Part 1 of 2: The following is an excerpt from Thomas International's white paper on Cognitive Fit. It can be found here: http://campaigns.thomasus.com/cognitive/ Employees with strong cognitive ability are a competitive advantage to an organization-- particularly when they are in roles that require quick learning, first-time problem solving, thinking "on your feet" and dealing with ambiguity. People who score well on cognitive ability tests are more likely to develop a greater knowledge of the job more quickly, make effective decisions and successfully reason and strategize to solve problems. In fact, a landmark study from 1998 reviewed 85 years of research and found that higher cognitive ability is linked with higher productivity and performance.

With great power comes the responsibility to discern when and how to use such power. As we enter an age where the stuff of speculative science fiction--specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI)--becomes reality, climbing the mountain "because it's there" is no longer a sufficient motivational and ethical framework for our future. In order to create a future where essential human values such as autonomy and personal privacy remain vital, we must act with awareness and forethought. Fortunately, the same tech giants who are dedicated to developing sophisticated AI recognize the potential for profound societal shifts the technology will produce. A recent article in The New York Times highlights how thought leaders from Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft want "to ensure that A.I. research is focused on benefiting people, not hurting them."

Attention everyone who's smugly proclaimed that they "just don't need a full night's sleep." You might have fooled us coffee-chuggers before, but now there's evidence that you're not quite superhuman. According to a new paper published in the journal Brain and Behavior (via Medical Xpress), University of Utah researchers studied patterns in the 839 people, dividing them into two groups: those who slept six hours or fewer per night, and those who got more. They then divided the short sleepers into two more groups: those who felt fine during the day, and those who reported feeling drowsy. When they put them in the MRI scanner -- a dark, boring tube of white noise (perfect for a little nap) -- both sets of short sleepers showed signs of sleep in their brain patterns while getting scanned.

US consumers are getting more comfortable using mobile devices to manage their health, a new study finds. Even in the face of privacy concerns, Americans are increasingly sharing medical information, sending photos to their doctors, using fitness or activity trackers, and using AI to become active players in their healthcare. Ketchum, a global research and analytics firm, conducted an online survey of 2,000 smartphone-owning Americans earlier this year, and found close to 58 percent of this group uses their phone to communicate with a medical professional. Almost half of respondents have a fitness, health or medication-tracking app, and 83 percent of people who use fitness or workout apps do so at least once per week. Of course, not everyone loves health apps – about a quarter of survey respondents said health and fitness tracking apps have made them feel bad, with 21 percent ending use of the apps.

Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka promised during the Republican National Convention that her father would offer more help to working families, and this week the elder Trump laid out more of the specifics: six weeks of paid maternity leave for new mothers and a new approach to tax breaks for child-care expenses. Perhaps the best that can be said is that it's refreshing to see a Republican presidential candidate advocate for federal paid family leave policies and financial assistance to help working parents afford the tremendous costs of raising children. Like so much of what Trump has said during the campaign, the proposal falls short on details, including how to pay for these new benefits, and it's woefully out of touch with the needs of many families. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's plan is similarly lacking in key details, but at least her plan is more attuned to the challenges faced by the growing proportion of families with no stay-at-home parents. And yet, the nation is probably better off with Trump offering a flawed, half-baked plan, rather than no plan, because it suggests a bipartisan consensus that maternity leave and child care are critical national issues that the federal government can do much more to address.

UBS is testing out artificial intelligence (AI) to see if it can assist clients in how best to invest their money – just by looking at their facial expressions. UBS chief investment officer Mark Haefele says the Swiss bank is running several pilot programmes – with one tool able to interpret clients' facial expressions while they watch a video on financial planning. "This helps uncover biases," Haefele says. "You can say, 'Look, you said your biggest interest is planning for the long term but this artificial intelligence is showing us what you're really excited about are short-term trading ideas.'" This may not get down well with customers – who wants to be contradicted about what they're thinking?

Is HBO's new show "Westworld" considered a Western series or a sci-fi series? If lead star Evan Rachel Wood, who plays robotic host Dolores Abernathy, were to be asked, it's a little bit of both. "It's science fiction, it's a Western, it's an existential drama and an intellectual nightmare," Wood told the Rolling Stone, adding, "and I've never really read or seen anything quite like this -- including the movie. And for those of us playing the hosts, it was also like the Acting Olympics: 'I need you to have a panic attack, and then I need you to be in character, and then I need you to go into computer mode, and then I need you to breathe, and then I need you to be downloading…'" Show creators Jonathan Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy really wanted to deliver something new to television. In most sci-fi movies, humans are always the protagonists, while robots or machines are trying to bring them down.