UN warns of potential'ethnically driven' atrocities in Sudan's el-Fasher At least 91 people have been killed in Sudan's besieged city of el-Fasher in attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over 10 days last month, the United Nations says. The attacks took place during intensified fighting between the RSF and Sudan's army around the city, the largest urban centre in the Darfur region that remains under the control of the military and its allies, known as the Joint Forces. UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday that the city's Daraja Oula neighbourhood was repeatedly attacked and subjected to RSF artillery shelling, drone strikes and ground incursions from September 19 to 29. He called for urgent action to prevent "large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities in el-Fasher." He said "atrocities are not inevitable", adding that "they can be averted if all actors take concrete action to uphold international law, demand respect for civilian life and property, and prevent the continued commission of atrocity crimes".

The Self-Defense Forces' newly launched Joint Operations Command (JJOC) will play a critical role in coordinating responses with allies and partners to a broad spectrum of potential crises, the chief of a similar Australian military command established in 2004 told The Japan Times. "I see this as another milestone in an ever-evolving and strengthening relationship with Japan," Vice Adm. Justin Jones, the Australian Defence Force's (ADF) chief of joint operations, said in an exclusive interview Monday, noting that the new structure will not only enable direct communication with similar commands in partner countries but also result in greater speed and efficiency when coordinating and conducting joint operations. "Without a doubt, the new SDF command will be enormously important for contingency planning," he said.

While most of the robots listed in the SFPD's inventory are primarily used for defusing bombs or dealing with hazardous materials, newer Remotec models have an optional weapons system, and the department's existing F5A has a tool called the PAN disruptor that can load 12-gauge shotgun shells. It's typically used to detonate bombs from a distance. The department's QinetiQ Talon can also be modified to hold various weapons -- a weaponized version of the robot is currently used by the US Army and can equip grenade launchers, machine guns, or even a .50-caliber

Khyati Sundaram is the CEO and Chairperson of Applied. Founded in 2016, Applied's mission is to be the essential platform for unbiased hiring. To that end, the company offers a comprehensive hiring platform relied on by clients like Ogilvy and UNICEF to improve diversity by applying lessons from behavioral science, such as anonymizing applications and removing gendered language from job descriptions. Throughout the company's history, Applied has been hesitant to use machine learning on its platform given the potential of AI to amplify the very harmful biases the company is seeking to prevent. However, after years of research, Applied now sees a disruptive opportunity to train and deploy models to help ensure that humans make fairer hiring decisions at scale.

BEGIN ARTICLE PREVIEW: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing disparities in the healthcare system, including the consequences of bias on racialized or marginalized groups.Some of the ways racial bias in the healthcare system emerge are more obvious, such as horror stories of Black people being turned away at emergency departments. Others, experts said during the HIMSS Machine Learning and AI for Healthcare Digital Summit this week, are less visible – but can still be incredibly harmful. HIMSS20 Digital Learn on-demand, earn credit, find products and solutions. Get Started >> “There are other ways this bias manifests structurally that are not as potentially sort of obvious,” said Kadija Ferryman, industry assistant professor of ethics and engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, at a panel on Tuesday. “That is through informatics and data.” For instance, COVID-19 is a disease that attacks

The introduction of unmanned fighter jets has been considered to succeed the Air Self-Defense Force's aging F-2s, which are expected to start being retired within two decades, as part of efforts to reduce development costs, according to government officials. The proposal was made earlier this year by Taro Kono, who was defense chief until last month before he became administrative reform minister in new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's Cabinet. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said discussions in the Defense Ministry were, however, suspended in the wake of the government's decision in June to scrap its plan to deploy the U.S.-developed Aegis Ashore land-based defense system, designed to counter missile threats from North Korea. Japan plans to start work on a new fighter jet in fiscal 2024 together with U.S. or British companies, and aims to introduce it in fiscal 2035 when the current F-2s are scheduled to start being retired. The ministry estimates that at least ¥1.2 trillion is needed to develop a manned fighter jet, while a drone -- which has no space for a pilot and requires no safety equipment -- costs much less to build.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. "Hello, and welcome [to] Mars!" From a flash of blush-tinted light appears Saeed, a shimmering, trim-bearded, space-suited projection of a man, with the disconcerting proportions and awkward gestures of a 2002-era video game character. But it's not 2002--Saeed is the first person you encounter in a virtual reality experience set in 2057, a fanciful ambassador welcoming you, virtual visitor, to your "second home" on Mars. Saeed, and the dusty virtual landscape he guides you through, are creations of the United Arab Emirates. In the fall of 2017, the UAE released this particular VR experience to promote its plans for a mission to Mars (anticipated launch 2021) and the Mars Science City, a simulated habitation slated for construction in the Emirati desert.

Thursday night, dozens of robots designed and built by undergraduates in a mechanical engineering class endured hours of intense, boisterous, and often jubilant competition as they scrambled to rack up points in one-on-one clashes on special "Star Wars"-themed playing arenas. As has often happened in these contests -- which have been going on, and constantly evolving, since 1970 -- the ultimate winner in the single-elimination tournament was not the one that'd most consistently racked up the highest scores all evening. Rather, it was a high-scoring bot that triumphed when its competitor missed a crucial scoring opportunity because its starting position was just slightly out of alignment. The class, 2.007 (Design and Manufacturing I), which has 165 mostly sophomore students, begins by giving each student an identical kit of parts, from which they each have to create a robot to carry out a variety of tasks to score points. This year, in a nod to the 40th anniversary of the first "Star Wars" film, released in 1977, the robots crawled around and over a replica of a "Star Wars" X-wing Starfighter.

Talking about their hasty retreat from the planet Tattoine are Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd, and Jedi Apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), as droid R2-D2 listens in Star Wars:Episode I The Phantom Menace. Why are most Star Wars fans so vehemently opposed to the idea of midichlorians? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. The more time the narrative spends on those holes, they don't close, they actually widen. If X-Men spent air-time explaining why Storm could magically move the air molecules around to form storms, the more you'd think about how utterly impossible it is or how she must really be the most powerful mutant on Earth because the ability to move air molecules means that she can move any molecule, which means she could probably rearrange matter. But we don't do that.

For machines to perform classification tasks, such as speech and character recognition, appropriately handling deformed patterns is a key to achieving high performance. The authors presents a new type of classification system, an Adaptive Input Field Neural Network (AIFNN), which includes a simple pre-trained neural network and an elastic input field attached to an input layer. By using an iterative method, AIFNN can determine an optimal affine translation for an elastic input field to compensate for the original deformations. The convergence of the AIFNN algorithm is shown. AIFNN is applied for handwritten numerals recognition. Consequently, 10.83% of originally misclassified patterns are correctly categorized and total performance is improved, without modifying the neural network.