Edmund Melson Clarke, Jr., a celebrated American academic who developed methods for mathematically proving the correctness of computer systems, died on December 22, 2020 at the age of 75 from complications of COVID-19. Clarke was awarded the A.M Turing Award in 2008 with his former student E. Allen Emerson and the French computer scientist Joseph Sifakis, for their work on model checking. "I've never liked to fly, although I've done my share of it. I wanted to do something that would make systems like airplanes safer," Clarke said in a 2014 video produced by the Franklin Institute when he was awarded their 2014 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Sciencea "For his leading role in the conception and development of techniques for automatically verifying the correctness of a broad array of computer systems, including those found in transportation, communications, and medicine." Model checking is a practical approach for machine verification of mathematical models of hardware, software, communications protocols, and other complex computing systems.

Parents not enforcing boundaries and being unwilling to chastise children has led to a generation of'infantilised millennials', according to a sociology professor. In his book, Why Borders Matter, Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University, says a lack of clear boundaries has created a childlike generation. Not chastising children or using moral-based judgements'deprives them of a natural process' of fighting against parental rules and boundaries, says Furedi. He says children develop by reacting against boundaries given to them by parents and society, and over three or four generations those parameters have weakened. This has led to millennials in their twenties acting the way they did in their teenage years and refusing to embrace adulthood, he explained in his book.

"In the world of imagination, it is possible to envisage a cognitively and emotionally intelligent chief executive, who happens also to be an inspiring public communicator... and the possessor of exceptional political skill and vision. In the real world, human imperfection is inevitable, but some imperfections are more disabling than others .... Beware the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence. Fred Greenstein, an emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, wrote this in his book "The Presidential Difference" (third edition, 2009), which surveys the characters of American presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama and seeks to glean the characteristics needed to be a good leader. In his book, Greenstein goes deeper into the popular American habit of ranking presidents. The genesis of this method is usually ascribed to the American historian Arthur Schlesinger. In the 1940s, Schlesinger discovered a relatively empty niche in his field, American history, ...

Think lawsuits involving humans are tricky? Try taking an intelligent robot to court. While autonomous robots with humanlike, all-encompassing capabilities are still decades away, European lawmakers, legal experts and manufacturers are already locked in a high-stakes debate about their legal status: whether it's these machines or human beings who should bear ultimate responsibility for their actions. The battle goes back to a paragraph of text, buried deep in a European Parliament report from early 2017, which suggests that self-learning robots could be granted "electronic personalities." Such a status could allow robots to be insured individually and be held liable for damages if they go rogue and start hurting people or damaging property.

Kevin Warwick is Emeritus Professor at Reading and Coventry Universities. Prior to that he was Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University, England. His main research areas are artificial intelligence, biomedical systems, robotics and cyborgs. Due to his research as a self-experimenter he is frequently referred to as the world's first Cyborg. Kevin was born in Coventry, UK and left school to join British Telecom.

Australian experts have spoken out about a recent US study that claimed to show artificial intelligence can identify people with suicidal thoughts - by analysing their brain scans. It sounds promising - but it's worth pointing out only 79 people were studied, so are the results enough to show this is a path worth pursing? The research, published in Nature, studied brain activity in subjects when presented with a number of different words - like death, cruelty, trouble, carefree, good and praise. A machine-learning algorithm was then trained to see the nureal response differences between the two groups involved - those with suicidal thoughts, and those with non-suicidal thoughts. And it showed promise - the algorithm correctly identified 15 of 17 patients as belonging to the suicide group, and 16 of 17 healthy individuals as belonging to the control group.

Australian experts have spoken out about a recent US study that claimed to show artificial intelligence can identify people with suicidal thoughts - by analysing their brain scans. It sounds promising - but it's worth pointing out only 79 people were studied, so are the results enough to show this is a path worth pursing? The research, published in Nature, studied brain activity in subjects when presented with a number of different words - like death, cruelty, trouble, carefree, good and praise. A machine-learning algorithm was then trained to see the nureal response differences between the two groups involved - those with suicidal thoughts, and those with non-suicidal thoughts. And it showed promise - the algorithm correctly identified 15 of 17 patients as belonging to the suicide group, and 16 of 17 healthy individuals as belonging to the control group.

In the world of machine learning, deep learning neural networks (DLNN) is the fastest growing field. World Scientific's latest book "Deep Learning Neural Networks: Design and Case Studies" shows how DLNN can be a powerful computational tool for solving prediction, diagnosis, detection and decision problems based on a well-defined computational architecture. The applications in this field serve as a major decision tool in Big Data applications. DLNN successfully applied to a broad field of applications ranging from computer security, speech recognition, image and video recognition to industrial fault detection, medical diagnostics and finance. Their range of applications covers almost any problem whose input data, performance evaluation and target decision can be numerically expressed.

Teenagers may lose their virginity to sex robots in the future, a leading expert predicted yesterday. Professor Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics at Sheffield University, warned that android sex dolls may have damaging consequences for society. He said that just as the rise of internet porn took the Government by surprise, a similarly seismic robot revolution is on the way – with far-reaching consequences. Professor Sharkey, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, explained that he was'fairly liberal about sex'. But he explained: 'It's not a problem having sex with a machine.

Teenagers may lose their virginity to sex robots in the future, a leading expert predicted yesterday. Professor Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics at Sheffield University, warned that android sex dolls may have damaging consequences for society. He said that just as the rise of internet porn took the Government by surprise, a similarly seismic robot revolution is on the way – with far-reaching consequences. Professor Sharkey, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, explained that he was'fairly liberal about sex'. But he explained: 'It's not a problem having sex with a machine.