AI enables a Who's Who of brown bears in Alaska Being able to distinguish individual animals - including their unique history, movement patterns and habits - can help scientists better understand how their species function, and therefore better manage habitats and study population dynamics. Today, most computer vision systems for tracking animals are effective on species with patterns and markings, such as zebras, leopards and giraffes. The task is much more complicated for unmarked species where individual differences are harder to spot. Distinguishing a particular brown bear from its peers in a non-invasive way requires an incredible eye for detail and years of viewing the same bears over time. What's more, these bears emerge from hibernation in the spring with shaggy fur and having lost quite a bit of weight and then substantially increase their body weight feasting on salmon, as well as fully shedding their winter coat - that's enough to throw off experts as well as AI algorithms.

A deadly conflict between bears and humans is playing out across Japan, where authorities have deployed the military to protect locals who are using drone-based alert and surveillance systems to track the bears. Since April this year, at least 13 people have been killed and more than 100 have been injured in bear attacks in the country, according to an October report by the Ministry of Environment. The ministry added that the death toll is the highest since Japan began keeping records of bear attacks in 2006. It is also home to Asiatic black bears - also known as Moon bears - which are smaller in size, weighing between 80-200kg (176-440 pounds), and are found on the mainland, which is more densely populated. Both types of bear have been involved in incidents this year, and both are dangerous to humans to varying degrees.

The dangerous encounters are on the rise. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Japan is experiencing an unprecedented bear problem . According to the nation's Ministry of the Environment, the furry predators are confirmed to have killed seven people since March--the highest number on record since the government first started monitoring deaths in 2006. Given the country's ongoing ecological and demographic issues, however, it may be more accurate to say that the bears are facing an unprecedented human problem . Conservationists explained to the AFP that there are multiple factors contributing to the multiplying encounters between the wild animals and humans.

Polar bears and brown bears were still mating with each other long after they had split into two distinct species, a new study has found. The two species are known to have separated up to 1.6 million years ago, yet new genomic evidence suggests they have inherited traits from each other much more recently. Scientists from the USA, Mexico and Finland analysed the genomes of 64 modern polar and brown bears, as well as that of an ancient polar bear that lived up to 130,000 years ago. While evidence of evidence of hybridisation was found in both brown and polar bear genomes, the latter carried a particularly strong signature of DNA from brown bears. As global warming continued to melt Arctic sea ice, the two bear species may run into each other more frequently, their shared evolutionary history could become more significant.

Ed Miller and Mary Nguyen are Silicon Valley software developers by day, but moonlight at solving an unusually fuzzy problem. A few years ago the pair became mesmerized, like many of us, by an Alaskan webcam broadcasting brown bears from Katmai National Park. They also happened to be seeking a project to hone their machine learning expertise. "We thought, machine learning is really great at identifying people, what could it do for bears?" Could artificial intelligence used for face recognition be harnessed to discern one bear face from another?

The debate over whether dogs or cats are the smartest pet has raged for decades, if not centuries. But in a twist that is sure to ruffle the fur of cat-lovers, new research shows that dogs are more intelligent than their feline foes after all. Experts showed that dogs have more than twice as many brain cells in a region linked with thinking, planning and other complex behaviours. The researchers say the number of neurons in an animal's cerebral cortex is a hallmark of intelligence. The cortex is the largest layer of the brain and is associated with thinking, planning and other complex behaviours.

Google's image captioning software is part of its wider TensorFlow machine learning kit. Today, it announced a new release of the algorithm that comes with substantially improved performance. It is able to make more accurate descriptions that include more detail, enabling it to caption images with a standard as high as humans. In a blog post, Google provided some examples of images captioned by the new algorithm. They include "A person on a beach flying a kite" and "A man riding a wave on top of a surfboard."