Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

At Google's official launch in San Francisco at 9:00 PST (17:00 BST), the firm is expected to launch a personal-assistant for the home, alongside the new Pixel phone. The device, called'Home', is an internet-connected device, similar to Amazon's Echo speaker and was first unveiled in May. While Google has declined to confirm any specifics, analysts and industry blogs have suggested that a new virtual reality headset and a home router could also be unveiled. The device, called'Home', is an internet-connected speaker, similar to Amazon's Echo, and was first unveiled in May It is clear that Google is working on virtual reality and augmented reality, but whether a standalone high-end device will be released, remains unclear. Earlier this year, the Mountain View-based firm announced its plans for Daydream, which will be a more advanced version of Cardboard.

Talking to computers was once for the likes of Captain Kirk, but a new product due to be announced by Google on Tuesday demonstrates that it believes devices that can speak to humans are ready for the living room. The search engine giant is expected to launch its Google Home "personal assistant" speaker system – a squat cylinder that will be able to process search requests and other everyday tasks when instructed to by the sound of a human voice. For many, conversations with computers consist of frustrating attempts to provide credit card numbers to a bank or talking to a bemused mobile phone, but Amazon has transformed the market, with the help of Alexa, its digital assistant, which lives inside its multimillion-selling Echo. A week ago Amazon said it would start selling the Echo in the UK at 149.99, two years after its introduction in the US, where it had become a sleeper hit. Despite a low-key launch the Echo sold 3.5m units in the time it took Amazon to adapt the device to recognise the full gamut of British English accents and voices.

FILE - In this May 18, 2016 file photo, Google vice president Mario Queiroz gestures while introducing the new Google Home device during the keynote address of the Google I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif. On Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, the search giant will ramp up its consumer electronics strategy with expected announcements of new gadgets including new smartphones and an internet-connected personal-assistant for the home similar to Amazon's Echo speaker. All are intended to showcase Google's software and online services.

FILE - In this May 18, 2016 file photo, Google vice president Mario Queiroz gestures while introducing the new Google Home device during the keynote address of the Google I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif. On Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, the search giant will ramp up its consumer electronics strategy with expected announcements of new gadgets including new smartphones and an internet-connected personal-assistant for the home similar to Amazon's Echo speaker. All are intended to showcase Google's software and online services. FILE - In this May 18, 2016 file photo, Google vice president Mario Queiroz gestures while introducing the new Google Home device during the keynote address of the Google I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif. On Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, the search giant will ramp up its consumer electronics strategy with expected announcements of new gadgets including new smartphones and an internet-connected personal-assistant for the home similar to Amazon's Echo speaker.

Customer interactions with brands will soon become managed by AI via messaging platforms -- and companies need to be ready. We live in the age of mobile applications. There are currently several million apps available. This profusion of choices means it can be difficult for users not only to choose which apps to download, but to manage them all -- a phenomenon we call "app fatigue." This situation creates both a need and an opportunity to engage users on a single platform.

What if you and your wearable could have a conversation? Not a conversation involving command prompts or specific phrases, but a natural, fluid discussion about the weather, or what kind of run you should go on today. That's the idea behind Asteria: claiming to be'True AI', which learns everything about you but doesn't just crunch numbers to throw them back at your face. Rather, it turns the data into personalized pieces of information relevant to you - through a conversation. It sounds like a film or novel, something romanticized and created to whet our appetites for genuine AI, but Asteria co-founders CEO Dan Gailey and COO Nathan Ross believe it's possible - and that they're well on their way to making it real.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) recently created a new AI and Research Group, staffed by 5,000 engineers and computer scientists, as its fourth engineering group alongside Windows, Office, and Azure. The new division merges its Microsoft Research and Information Platform Groups with the teams working on Bing, Cortana, robotics, and "ambient computing" environments, which are responsive to the presence of people. The group will be led by Harry Shum, a 20-year Microsoft veteran who previously served as the company's Executive VP of Technology and Research. Microsoft stated that the group will use a "four-pronged approach" to "democratize AI": by offering intelligent services in "agents" like Cortana, infusing applications with features like Skype translate, adding services with facial recognition and machine analytics, and expanding its cloud infrastructure to "build the world's most powerful supercomputer with Azure." At Microsoft's Ignite conference in late September, CEO Satya Nadella declared that "AI is at the intersection of our ambitions."

Software giant Google is beginning an aggressive foray into hardware production with the launch Tuesday of a smartphone and other devices that will bring the company into direct competition with other leading tech firms, including its longtime partner Samsung. The launch signals a major shift for one of the world's most profitable companies as it seeks to adapt to a technology landscape increasingly dominated by mobile and other connected hardware. Google must find a way, analysts say, to keep acquiring user data for targeting ads as Web search -- traditionally done from laptop or desktop computers -- is supplanted by newer technologies. Google's new smartphone, the Pixel, will employ artificial-intelligence technology that users can converse with, allowing them to sidestep keyboards as they access online information and make purchases such as movie tickets, say people familiar with the company's plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal information ahead of its official release. The company also plans to release other new hardware, including a voice-based assistant for the home to rival Amazon's Echo and a virtual-reality headset to rival Facebook's Oculus.

We construct a large scale of causal knowledge in term of Fabula elements by extracting causal links from existing common sense ontology ConceptNet5. We design a Constrained Monte Carlo Tree Search (cMCTS) algorithm that allows users to specify positive and negative concepts to appear in the generated stories. cMCTS can find a believable causal story plot. We show the merits by experiments and discuss the remedy strategies in cMCTS that may generate incoherent causal plots.