Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computer programs to learn when exposed to new data without being programmed. Now, researchers in The Netherlands have coupled machine learning methods with a special MRI technique that measures the perfusion, or tissue absorption rate, of blood throughout the brain to detect early forms of dementia, such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. "MRI can help with the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease," said principal investigator Alle Meije Wink, Ph.D., from the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. "However, the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is problematic." Scientists have long known that Alzheimer's disease is a gradual process and that the brain undergoes functional changes before the structural changes associated with the disease show up on imaging results.

Under Armour was founded on a simple idea: Make athletes better. To do that, it's turning human performance into a big data problem. The company is betting on the notion that the right hardware, the biggest dataset, a lot of machine learning, and powerful motivational tools can make everyone better, faster, and stronger. It's betting that technology doesn't exist solely to make us lazy, to bring everything to our door with the push of a button. The centerpiece of that bet is a 400 kit, announced today, called Healthbox, that provides a scale, an activity tracker wearable, and a chest strap for measuring your heart rate. The company also is updating Record, its mobile app, making it a 24/7 real-time barometer of your fitness and health. These tools, combined with three apps Under Armour has purchased in recent years, provide the most comprehensive ecosystem of fitness products yet made.

The classifiers can be represented as discrimination maps, where a red color indicates that the intensity at that location contributes to the likelihood of the images belonging to the more advanced stage, and a blue color to the likelihood of belonging to the less advanced stage. Weights are shown inside the mask that resulted in the highest accuracies for each classification: A: Alzheimer's disease (AD) vs. subjective cognitive decline (SCD); B: AD vs. mild cognitive impairment (MCI); C: MCI vs. SCD. Figure 2. Discrimination maps for classifying MCI subgroups, inside the masks that resulted in the highest accuracies. A: between patients with MCI that converted to AD (MCIc) and subjects with SCD; B: between MCIc and patients with MCI that remained stable (MCIs).

Google DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence research arm of Google, will collaborate with Britain's National Health Service (NHS) to tackle sight loss in humans. A retina-scanning system that will be able to detect the early signs of eye disease will be developed in partnership with with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. About a million anonymized scans taken from patients who attended Moorfields between January 1, 2007 and February 29 this year will be used for analysis by Google's Artifical Intelligence (Al) computer. Scientists are hopeful that they will be able to recognize conditions such as macular degeneration, a gradual deterioration of the light-sensitive tissue lining at the back of the eye, and diabetic retinopathy, when high blood sugar levels damage the retina over time. Early treatment can be critical in both conditions.

Combining machine learning method -- a type of artificial intelligence -- with a special MRI technique may help physicians predict who is more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, a study says. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computer programs to learn when exposed to new data without being programmed. "With standard diagnostic MRI, we can see advanced Alzheimer's disease, such as atrophy of the hippocampus," said principal investigator Alle Meije Wink from VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. "But at that point, the brain tissue is gone and there's no way to restore it. It would be helpful to detect and diagnose the disease before it's too late," Meije Wink explained.

Many people think that the healthcare sector will greatly benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, describes this revolution as "a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres." Many of the discussions around technology and healthcare have, in broad terms, focused on the internet of things, telemedicine, personalized medicine, and robotics. But how exactly are these technologies going to be transformative? As the Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, I've been part of many discussions on the impacts of these technologies, both good and bad.

In a recent project, we found which of 700000 property parcels in Adelaide, Australia, contain swimming pools. We used a combination of crowdsourcing and supervised machine learning in order to harness the inherent ability of humans to identify objects in imagery and the speed of machines, which can perform this task much faster than humans, once trained sufficiently. Our initial approach consisted of training a random forest classifier with a set of crowdsourced labels, then using the machine classifications to present to the crowd only the parcels that were likely to contain swimming pools. Since only a small percentage of the parcels actually contain pools, the efficiency gain of this approach is huge compared to a pure crowdsourcing campaign. At first glance, identifying a pool in a high-resolution satellite image might appear to be a simple task for a human and a machine alike.

In the back kitchen of Mountain View's newest pizzeria, Marta works tirelessly, spreading marinara sauce on uncooked pies. She doesn't complain, takes no breaks, and has never needed a sick day. Marta is one of two robots working at Zume Pizza, a secretive food delivery startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through machines. It's also created special delivery trucks that will finish cooking pizzas during the journey to hungry customers if approved by the Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health. Right now Zume is only feeding people in Mountain View, California, but it has ambitions to dominate the 9.7 billion pizza delivery industry.

Cannes Lions this year saw the ad industry expanding its creative capabilities. Over 13,500 delegates from about 90 countries descended on Cannes again this year hoping for a Lion in one of 17 categories. With awards honoring work from design to creative data to radio, the ceremonies reflected a complex industry drawing on a broader range of creative disciplines than in the past, but also facing unprecedented challenges in making campaigns work across channels. "There's never been so many channels or points of interactions, or agencies working on various parts of that," said Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever. "It's important to make sure the brand experience does not get fragmented."

As the automation of physical and knowledge work advances, many jobs will be redefined rather than eliminated--at least in the short term. The potential of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics to perform tasks once reserved for humans is no longer reserved for spectacular demonstrations by the likes of IBM's Watson, Rethink Robotics' Baxter, DeepMind, or Google's driverless car. Just head to an airport: automated check-in kiosks now dominate many airlines' ticketing areas. Pilots actively steer aircraft for just three to seven minutes of many flights, with autopilot guiding the rest of the journey. Passport-control processes at some airports can place more emphasis on scanning document bar codes than on observing incoming passengers.