Tokyo stocks snapped their four-session losing streak on Tuesday as the yen weakened against the dollar. The Nikkei gained 323.74 points, or 1.94 percent, to close at 17,048.55. On Friday, it gave up 211.57 The market was closed on Monday for a national holiday. The Topix ended up 24.88 points, or 1.85 percent, at 1,369.93, after slumping 13.92 points the previous trading day.

Technology showcased in the movie Minority Report, which enabled Tom Cruise to swipe through midair images in the 2002 film, could soon become a staple of hospital operating rooms. A new gesture-controlled computer interface aims to give surgeons easier access to medical images during marathon surgical operations. The experimental medical system takes advantage of Leap Motion controllers that can sense and track people's hand gestures. South Korean researchers developed their own "GestureHook" software that can translate the gestures captured by a Leap Motion device into commands for several different types of medical software. "We thought that using gestures as a new interface for controlling software in hospitals would provide access to computers for surgeons during procedures," says Ben Joonyeon Park, a software developer on the Medical Information Development Team at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea.

The ubiquity of using technology for technology's sake to resolve problems that don't even exist is well documented and the cause of lots of frustration among both consumers and businesses. Thankfully this naive behavior is being replaced with a new refreshing outlook that concentrates on how high-tech computing or automation can deliver real value or make a difference to our lives. Rather than jumping headfirst into solution mode, it increasingly feels that our digital maturity has helped us realize that we need to understand a particular problem fully before even thinking about moving forward in implementing a fix. Recently we had seen clear evidence of this when health workers approached technical experts for help from Google's London-based company DeepMind. The significant challenge faced by hospitals was detecting and communicating problems with patients quickly and efficiently.

"I wish I could touch you," Theodore says, laying in bed. Until she speaks up, tentatively. "How would you touch me?" It's a famously poignant scene from the movie Her, as the character Theodore is about to make vocal love to an artificial intelligence living in his ear. But according to half a dozen experts I interviewed, ranging from industrial designer Gadi Amit to the usability guru Don Norman, in-ear assistants aren't science fiction. In fact, a notable pile of discreet, wireless earbuds enabling just this idea are coming to market now. Sony recently released its first in-ear assistant, the Xperia Ear. Intel showed off a similar proof-of-concept last year. The talking, bio-monitoring Bragi Dash will be reaching early Kickstarters soon, while fellow startup Here has raised 17 million to compete in the smart earbud space.

Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword these days. It has become the most popular component of many innovative software startups that are seeking to redefine their markets. But whenever we hear this word, a plethora of voices can be heard in the background raising concerns about long-term consequences of AI uses. Among these skeptics is one Elon Musk, Co-founder, Tesla Motors, who sees AI "more dangerous than nukes". Stephen Hawking has also echoed similar fears, predicting that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." Though these concerns carry weight and need to be addressed responsibly, the changes and the advancement that the world is witnessing due to AI and machine learning techniques suggest that technology is in safe hands.

Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO of Innovate Finance, expects to see more innovators trying to tap into the unbanked and unrepresented consumer market. He said: "The firm Pockit, for example, gives customers an account and card that they can use to manage their money and make payments. Users can deposit money into their account at thousands of locations across the UK or have their salaries or benefits paid into their account. Pockit users also get cash back deals on the high street and online." So-called "challenger banks" are popping up and Monese is the latest to make waves.

Allow me to join you, if I may, on your morning commute sometime in the indeterminate future. Here we are, stepping off the curb and into the backseat of a vehicle. As you close the car door behind you, the address of your office--our destination--automatically appears on a screen embedded in the back of a leather panel in front of you. "Good morning," says the car's humanoid voice, greeting you by name before turning on NPR for you like it does each day. You decide you'd like a cup of coffee, and you tell the vehicle so.

In an unassuming two-storey Victorian town house in Bristol, the occupants are being filmed, monitored, and tracked by invisible sensors as they go about their business, 24 hours a day. What they lose in privacy could be our gain in life expectancy, if the long-term data bears out. Pivotal to the 15-million Sensor Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment (SPHERE) project, the house has been invisibly fitted with dozens of cameras and sensors while its occupants are asked to don wearable devices. The aim is to reveal how health is related to everyday lifestyle and living conditions over time. The smart home observes how long the occupants slouch in front of the TV as opposed to sitting or walking or exercising.

When we first began to explore the idea of building a step classifier, we knew we would be constrained to a very limited population of individuals (Jawbone employees) available to us for early development and testing. It seemed certain that the development of the classifier would be very iterative in that, as we tested larger and more varied sets of individuals and behaviors, we would undoubtedly find issues that we needed to quickly correct. So we would need a technical approach that was suited to rapid updates and that those updates would need to be essentially risk free. We could not afford the risk and development time of actually writing new code as we iterated. In short, we needed a step classifier that learned.

At San Francisco's first fully automated restaurant, meals appear in little glass cubbies, just 90 seconds after customers order and pay on wall-mounted iPads. It's a human-less experience – no waitstaff, no cashier, no one to get your order wrong and no one to tip. The moment before the meal appears, the see-through display screen that fronts the cubbies goes black for the few seconds when you might catch sight of the hand that feeds you. Eatsa has not yet achieved total automation. The company admits it employs a small kitchen staff, and one employee is present in the front of the house, answering questions about how to order and dodging questions about what's going on behind the wall of magic cubbies.