Between humans, a kiss on the mouth or cheek is a clear signal of warm feelings. There's no single definitive answer, though canine cognition experts have theories. "If we want to distill it down to one thing, it's communication," says Ellen Furlong, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Transylvania University in Kentucky, where she studies dog behavior. Dogs are highly social and well-attuned to humans. If a pup is interacting with you, it's often with purpose.

Intra-operative image guidance using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can significantly enhance the precision of surgical procedures, such as deep brain tumor ablation. However, the powerful magnetic fields and limited space within an MRI scanner require the use of robotic devices to aid surgeons. Piezoelectric motors are commonly utilized to drive these robots, with piezoelectric ultrasonic motors being particularly notable. These motors consist of a piezoelectric ring stator that is bonded to a rotor through frictional coupling. When the stator is excited at specific frequencies, it generates distinctive mode shapes with surface waves that exhibit both in-plane and out-of-plane displacement, leading to the rotation of the rotor. In this study, we continue our previous work and refine the motor design and performance, we combine finite element modeling (FEM) with stroboscopic and time-averaged digital holography to validate a further plastic-based ultrasonic motor with better rotary performance.

Gary Furlong, a Texas-based audiobook narrator, had worried for a while that synthetic voices created by algorithms could steal work from artists like himself. Early this month, he felt his worst fears had been realized. Furlong was among the narrators and authors who became outraged after learning of a clause in contracts between authors and leading audiobook distributor Findaway Voices, which gave Apple the right to "use audiobooks files for machine learning training and models." Findaway was acquired by Spotify last June. Some authors and narrators say they were not clearly informed about the clause and feared it may have allowed their work or voices to contribute to Apple's development of synthetic voices for audiobooks.

Adobe Systems Inc. is the latest foreign technology giant planning to open an artificial intelligence lab in Canada. The Silicon Valley software giant, best known for document-creation products Photoshop and Acrobat, says it is looking for a Toronto-based AI lab director to "establish a cutting-edge research lab in artificial intelligence, that will both push the state-of-the-art and have a profound impact on Adobe's products," according to a job posting on LinkedIn. An Adobe spokesperson declined to elaborate on the company's plans, saying it does "not comment on rumours or speculation." Adobe would follow foreign giants NVIDIA Corp., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., Uber Technologies, Google Parent Alphabet Inc., Thales SA and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd. and LG Electronics Inc., who have opened AI labs in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton or Vancouver or disclosed plans to do so. Meanwhile, National Bank of Canada is also looking to ramp up its AI practice.

Note: This review was originally published July 3, 1991. The film is being re-released in 3D. And yes, without a doubt, they will come. He is the gifted James Cameron, the consensus choice as the action director of his generation. What he's built is "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," the most eagerly awaited film of the summer and one of the most expensive (officially, $88 million and counting) ever made.

A Canadian sniper recently broke the world record for the longest-range kill in military history when he shot an ISIS militant in Iraq. The Joint Task Force 2 gun specialist took the 3,450-meter shot from a high-rise building -- so far away it took a full 10 seconds to reach its target. "The shot in question actually disrupted a Daesh [ISIS] attack on Iraqi security forces," an anonymous source told Toronto's Globe and Mail Wednesday. "Instead of dropping a bomb that could potentially kill civilians in the area, it is a very precise application of force and because it was so far away, the bad guys didn't have a clue what was happening." There are less than 300 active snipers in the United States Marine Corps, according to Business Insider, all of whom have been put through a grueling training process to get to where they are.

Like iPhone's Siri on steroids, ROSS promises to cut down the time it takes to retrieve complex legal data from hours to minutes. He also learns and gets better with each use. ROSS is not a physical bot in the office but a complex AI system; it doesn't have the physical presence of an R2-D2 or Wall-E, but could easily outmaneuver them mentally. "Before, the human had to go through (and) read all the cases. The case could be 30 pages to find those three, four sentences they needed," said Arruda.