Robotic exoskeletons are electromechanical suits that can give paraplegic people the chance to walk again. Full body suits produce impressive results, such as teaching dormant body parts to move on their own again. But they are expensive, ranging from $40,000 to more than $100,000. Now, a Mexican robotics startup is breaking exoskeletons down into smaller pieces, with the goal of making this medical technology affordable and adaptable. Ernesto Rodriquez Leal, PhD., started WeaRobot in 2014, when a personal dilemma inspired him to turn his robotics research into action.

Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have found distinctive functional connectivity in the schizophrenia brain. However, most of the studies focused on the correlation value to define the functional connectivity for BOLD fluctuations between brain regions, which resulted in the limited understanding to the network properties of altered functional connectivity in the schizophrenia brain. Here I characterized the distinctiveness of BOLD connectivity pattern in the schizophrenia brain relative to healthy brain with various similarity measures using time-frequency domain analysis, while participants performing the working memory task in the MRI scanner. To assess the distinctiveness of the BOLD connectivity in the schizophrenia, recognition performances of pattern classifier machine trained by each similarity measure were compared. Interestingly, classifier machine trained by time-lagging patterns of low-frequency fluctuation (LFF) produced highest classifying accuracy than the machines trained by other measures. Also, classifier machine trained by coherence pattern in LFF band also made better performance than the machine trained by correlation-based connectivity pattern. These results indicate that characteristics of altered functional network in the schizophrenia brain can hardly defined with single aspect of relationship across the multiple brain regions.

Companies have been trying to drum up enthusiasm for them for years, with little success. Pepper, a humanoid machine carrying the hopes of SoftBank Group Corp.'s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, was supposed to change that. Promoted as the first robot to be endowed with emotions, the company marketed Pepper aggressively after it was unveiled in 2014, promising the gadget was sophisticated enough for tasks usually handled by shop clerks, receptionists and translators. "It's not there to have a conversation," said Junichi Nishi, a municipal official in Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, a city of about 140,000. "We use it primarily as a tablet," he said, referring to the touch screen attached to the robot's chest.

Stock market cheats, A.I. will soon be looking for you. The sheer volume of transactions conducted in financial markets renders market surveillance by regulatory groups difficult, but machine learning and artificial intelligence tools will soon be employed to ferret out cheaters, according to Reuters. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is developing A.I. that it will start testing in 2017 along with its existing surveillance and detection mechanisms. NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange Group intend to start using artificial intelligence to spot trade irregularities and violation patterns this year. Related: Future AI assistants like Siri could be trained by Joey from'Friends' Reuters reports that financial firms already use artificial intelligence for picking stocks and for monitoring their own firms' compliance.

Artificial intelligence is learning to take on an increasing number of sophisticated tasks. Google Deepmind's AI is now able to imitate human speech, and just this past August IBM's Watson successfully diagnosed a rare case of leukemia. Rather than viewing these advances as threats to job security, we can look at them as opportunities for AI to fill in critical gaps in existing service providers, such as mental healthcare professionals. In the US alone, nearly eight percent of the population suffers from depression (that's about one in every 13 American adults), and yet about 45 percent of this population does not seek professional care due to the costs. There are many barriers to getting quality mental healthcare, from searching for a provider who's within your insurance network to screening multiple potential therapists in order to find someone you feel comfortable speaking with.

Scientists have found why amputees feel the sensation of phantom limb pain. It is due to this reorganization pain occurs in the amputated limbs of a vast majority of amputees. The researchers also found a proposed way of treating the affliction through the use of artificial intelligence techniques. The researchers used a brain-machine interface to come up with this conclusion. They trained a group of ten amputees so they could control a robotic arm from their brain. The research team found learning to control the prosthetic through the amputated arm resulted in pain.

"The holy grail of a chatbot or virtual assistant is to help you adjust your behavior, telling you when to save more or spend in order to reach certain goals," said Lex Sokolin, global director of fintech research for Autonomous Research. Could UBS clients soon be serviced by voice-controlled AI? Maybe not yet, but a new pilot program between the bank and Amazon's Alexa service is testing the frontiers of both science fiction and wealth management. UBS' partnership with Amazon will enable clients and non-clients of the bank to get answers to financial and economic questions, ranging from what is inflation to how the U.S. economy is faring. It's the latest example of how wealth management firms are experimenting with new technologies such as data analytics and artificial intelligence to expand or reinvent the business.

With a human voice and mindful mannerisms, she's the first alarm clock you'll be happy to wake up to. A.I. algorithms ease your morning routine by learning about you & what you love. The Bonjour Smart Alarm Clock is like the personal assistant you never had. She's always there early to wake you up and make the most of your day. Bonjour can adjust your wake-up time if certain conditions are fulfilled.

Facebook recently announced a rather scenically named system, Big Sur, designed around Nvidia's Tesla compute cards aimed at helping their neural networks, and obviously machine learning, become faster and more versatile. They are, of course, not alone. IBM Watson has similar visions as does Microsoft. Big Data and analytics have long staked claim to the holiday shopping season, but I sense that this 2015 holiday shopping season the real big winner will be Machine Learning. The big gun in the Machine Learning camp is the aforementioned IBM Watson.

This week, a self-driving truck, operated by Uber-owned Otto, drove 120 miles in Colorado to deliver 2,000 cases of Budweiser. But the barreling truck carrying 51,744 cans of beer -- labeled with Otto -- is quite symbolic of Uber's past, present and future. If there's one industry (other than taxicabs) that has contributed to the rise and success of ride-hailing companies, it's alcohol. SEE ALSO: The story of Otto, the creator of Uber's self-driving truck When I traveled to Pittsburgh to test Uber's self-driving cars in August, I took a few regular Uber rides to chat with drivers about their experiences. Two things were clear: They didn't believe that their jobs as drivers were in jeopardy anytime soon, and they were quick to mention their frequent confrontations with drunk passengers.