Posted by A'ndrea Elyse Messer-Penn State on March 8, 2016 You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Identifying an isolated leaf, especially if preserved as a fossil, can be a painstaking process for botanists. A new computer program that learns to categorize leaves into large evolutionary categories could help. Researchers "trained" a machine-learning algorithm to identify leaves based on a set of nearly 7,600 digital images of leaves that had been chemically treated to emphasize their shape and venation. The software discerned relevant patterns so well from that set of examples that it went on to identify the family of novel leaf images with greater than 70 percent accuracy (a rate 13 times better than chance) and the order with about 60 percent accuracy.

As a high-value professional, you know that information overload is becoming worse. You're continuously bombarded by more information from ever more apps. Perhaps you have three thousand unread emails, or thirty thousand, or even three hundred thousand. And you expect your information overload to intensify in the future, because it's the price you pay for your professional success. You cannot afford to miss out on new tools for communicating with colleagues, new media for expanding your professional network, and new information sources providing updates relevant to your priorities.

In a paper published in Nature on 28th January 2016, we describe a new approach to computer Go. This is the first time ever that a computer program "AlphaGo" has defeated a human professional player. The game of Go is widely viewed as an unsolved "grand challenge" for artificial intelligence. Games are a great testing ground for inventing smarter, more flexible algorithms that have the ability to tackle problems in ways similar to humans. The first classic game mastered by a computer was noughts and crosses (also known as tic-tac-toe) in 1952. But until now, one game has thwarted A.I. researchers: the ancient game of Go.

Economic experts are trying to figure out a question that just two decades ago seemed ridiculous: If 90 percent of human jobs are replaced by robots in the next 50 years -- something now considered plausible -- is capitalism still the ideal economic system to champion? No one is certain about the answer, but the question is making everyone nervous -- and forcing people to dig deep inside themselves to discover the kind of future they want. After America beat Russia in the Cold War, most of the world generally considered capitalism to be the hands-down best system on which to base economies and democracies. For decades, few doubted capitalism's merit, which was made stronger by thriving globalization and a skyrocketing world net worth. In 1989 -- when the Berlin Wall fell -- the world had only 198 billionaires.

Jimmy and Jason get together and discuss the biggest news stories of the last week. This episode's topics: Easter, Microsoft's AI Chatbot Tay, AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol in Go, Domino's new autonomous delivery robot, our idea of a robot-filled future, and lastly we discuss the initial mixed reviews of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

One of the huge drawbacks of modern technology is that it fills the air around us with radio signals. From your kitchen radio to your LTE-enabled smartphone, all of these devices use radio waves to communicate. Unfortunately, there is only a certain amount of radio frequencies that can be used. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is looking for a way around this problem, and wants teams to develop an artificially intelligent system that will control what devices use what radio waves and when. Basically, instead of forcing devices to make use of narrow frequency bands when the spectrum gets congested, DARPA wants devices to negotiate sharing frequencies when they need them.

Economic experts are trying to figure out a question that just two decades ago seemed ridiculous: If 90 percent of human jobs are replaced by robots in the next 50 years -- something now considered plausible -- is capitalism still the ideal economic system to champion? No one is certain about the answer, but the question is making everyone nervous -- and forcing people to dig deep inside themselves to discover the kind of future they want. After America beat Russia in the Cold War, most of the world generally considered capitalism to be the hands-down best system on which to base economies and democracies. For decades, few doubted capitalism's merit, which was made stronger by thriving globalization and a skyrocketing world net worth. In 1989 -- when the Berlin Wall fell -- the world had only 198 billionaires.

Marvel is a Pakistani-American superhero from New Jersey. She became Marvel's first lead Muslim superhero when she took over the Ms. Marvel comic book series in February 2014. Tim Smyth, a social studies teacher at Wissahickon High School in Ambler, Pennsylvania, has read comic books since he was a young boy. While he has taught for 15 years, it was only in the last two years that Smyth decided to integrate his passion for comic books into his classes. But now he says comic books and graphic novels are powerful vehicles to engage students in both history and current events.

To make Twitter more accessible, the company has rolled out an update today that lets users add descriptions to their images. Once the feature has been enabled -- you'll find it under Settings and Accessibility -- you'll get the option to write a caption with each new photo. They can be up to 420 characters and will be available to users who are visually impaired, through assistive technology such as text-to-speech screen readers and braille displays. Twitter's platform has also been updated so the feature can be supported in specialized clients such as Chicken Nugget.

Bipedal walking has worked out pretty well for humans. We're kind of stuck with it until someone comes up with something better. And the really frustrating part is that all kinds of animals have already come up with better ways of getting around: specifically, birds and insects, who use wings to fly as well as legs and feet to walk. This multimodality makes birds and insects inherently versatile and adaptable, which is why you can find them doing quite well just about everywhere. Some of the most versatile and adaptable robots also exhibit multimodal characteristics: they can fly and climb, or jump and glide, or even fly and swim. But flying and walking seems to be by far the most useful combination, as evidenced by the variety of animals that can do it, and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Laboratory have designed a new robot called Picobug that can fly, walk, and even (soon) grab on to stuff.