Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and former prime minister Baroness Theresa May are among the six public figures who will guest edit BBC Radio 4's Today programme over the Christmas period. Broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, historian and podcaster Tom Holland, inventor Sir James Dyson and Microsoft's head of artificial intelligence (AI) Mustafa Suleyman will also guest edit shows between 24 December and 31 December. For the past 22 years, the news programme has handed over the editorial reins to guest editors during the festive period. Owenna Griffiths, editor of Today, said: In a rapidly changing world, this year's guest editors will help bring illumination and understanding. She added: Every Christmas on Today, a new set of guest editors take up residence and bring with them a wonderful range of new stories, fresh ideas and, hopefully, a sprinkling of joy.

The group, led by Guillaume Cabanac at the University of Toulouse in France, could not understand why researchers would use the terms'counterfeit consciousness', 'profound neural organization' and'colossal information' in place of the more widely recognized terms'artificial intelligence', 'deep neural network' and'big data'. Further investigation revealed that these strange terms -- which they dub "tortured phrases" -- are probably the result of automated translation or software that attempts to disguise plagiarism. And they seem to be rife in computer-science papers. Research-integrity sleuths say that Cabanac and his colleagues have uncovered a new type of fabricated research paper, and that their work, posted in a preprint on arXiv on 12 July1, might expose only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the literature affected. To get a sense of how many papers are affected, the researchers ran a search for 30 tortured phrases in journal articles indexed in the citation database Dimensions.

Prof. Zheng-Hua Tan is a Professor of Machine Learning and Speech Processing, a Co-Head of the Centre for Acoustic Signal Processing Research (CASPR), and Machine Learning Research Group Leader in the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University, Denmark. Prof. Zheng-Hua Tan was a Visiting Scientist/Professor at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and a postdoctoral fellow at AI Spoken Language Lab, in the Department of Computer Science at KAIST, Korea. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Hunan University, China, in 1990 and 1996, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 1999. His research interests include machine learning, deep learning, pattern recognition, speech and speaker recognition, noise-robust speech processing, multimodal signal processing, and social robotics. He has over 200 publications.

As our world and the nature of work fundamentally changes, leaders must consider necessary new skills and accompanying mindset shifts. Changes in the world and workplace mean a shift from traditional leadership to one led by digital transformations. In order to execute effective leadership in a digital world, leaders must embrace key changes rooted in factors like technology, demographics, and cultural norms while retaining the enduring and contextual characteristics of leadership. Will I be ready to lead in 2025? I'm wondering how many of us are asking this question of ourselves.

At the 2018 Worldcon, fantasy author N.K. Jemisin became the first person to ever win three consecutive Hugo awards for Best Novel. Given that level of success, science fiction editor John Joseph Adams felt she'd be the perfect guest editor for the latest edition of his anthology series The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. "Given that she's clearly the face of the genre at the moment, I thought it would be wonderful to have her as guest editor," Adams says in Episode 342 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "And thankfully she said yes." Caroline M. Yoachim, whose short story "Carnival Nine" appears in the book, says the 20 stories selected by Jemisin reflect the growing diversity of the fantasy and science fiction field. "One of the things I loved about the book was just the sheer variety of it," Yoachim says.

PLOS Medicine, PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS ONE announce a cross-journal Call for Papers for high-quality research that applies or develops machine learning methods for improvement of human health. The team of Guest Editors for this Collection seeks research with direct clinical and health policy implications, studies that elucidate biological processes underlying health and disease, innovations in machine learning methodology and data provision, and other advances in the field. Research accepted for publication in PLOS Medicine will appear in a Special Issue to be published in late Fall 2018, along with commentary from leading experts in the field. The broader Collection, comprising all articles published in PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS ONE and PLOS Medicine, will launch in late Fall and continue into 2019. Articles must be submitted by May 25, 2018.

PLOS Medicine, PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS ONE are excited to announce a cross-journal Call for Papers for high-quality research that applies or develops machine learning methods for improvement of human health. The team of Guest Editors for this Collection seeks research with direct clinical and health policy implications, studies that elucidate biological processes underlying health and disease, innovations in machine learning methodology and data provision, and other advances in the field. Research accepted for publication in PLOS Medicine will appear in a Special Issue to be published in late Fall 2018, along with commentary from leading experts in the field. The broader Collection, comprising all articles published in PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS ONE and PLOS Medicine, will launch in late Fall and continue into 2019. Articles must be submitted by May 25, 2018.

This editorial introduces the articles published in the AI Magazine special issue on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), based on a selection of papers that appeared in the IAAI-05 conference, which occurred July 9-13 2005 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. IAAI is the premier venue for learning about AI's impact through deployed applications and emerging AI application technologies. Case studies of deployed applications with measurable benefits arising from the use of AI technology provide clear evidence of the impact and value of AI technology to today's world. The emerging applications track features technologies that are rapidly maturing to the point of application. The six articles selected for this special issue are extended versions of papers that appeared at the conference.

IAAI seeks out applications of artificial intelligence that either demonstrate new technology or use previously known technology in innovative ways. IAAI particularly seeks out examples of deployments of AI technology that tackle the problems of demonstrating value and planning for long-term deployment. The five articles we have selected for this special issue are extended versions of papers that appeared in the conference. Two of the articles are deployed applications that have already demonstrated practical value. The remaining three articles are particularly innovative emerging applications.

He noted the shared interest of the members of this community in studying high-level cognition, structured representations, comprehensive system development, heuristics, and openness to insights into human cognition. The developments of the last five years warrant a new look at the issues. The five thematic articles in this issue offers such a look. The contributions are diverse and cover a representative -- though by no means a complete -- set of issues and opinions. Sergei Nirenburg's introductory essay offers a bird's eye view of the current directions of research in the field and suggests some aspirational issues that need attention for the cognitive systems community to make a lasting impact.