Ewers grew up skiing and hiking in the Highlands, giving him a clear idea of the complicated challenges involved in rescue operations there. "There wasn't much to do growing up, other than spending time outdoors or sitting in front of my computer," he says. "I ended up doing a lot of both." To start, Ewers took datasets of search and rescue cases from around the world, which include details such as an individual's age, whether they were hunting, horseback riding or hiking, and if they suffered from dementia, along with information about the location the person was eventually found--by water, buildings, open ground, trees, or roads. He trained an AI model with this data, in addition to geographical data from Scotland.

Researchers at America's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are developing machine learning techniques to help the Feds crack down on potentially rogue nuclear weapons. Suffice to say, it's generally illegal for any individual or group to own a nuclear weapon, certainly in the United States. Yes, there are the five officially recognized nuclear-armed nations – France, Russia, China, the UK, and the US – whose governments have a stash of these devices. And there are countries that have signed the United Nations' Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, meaning they've promised not to "develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use" these gadgets. So if anyone has a nuke in their possession, it's because they are a country in the official nuclear-armed club, they are a government that's produced its own nukes, a terrorist who stole, bought, or somehow built one themselves, or some other sketchy scenario, in America's eyes at least.

New software is based on deep learning model and can analyse pictures of countryside taken by drones for human-like objects, department says.

The energy transition requires critical minerals. Though the U.S. has plentiful resources of its own, the country has largely relied on foreign sources. That's in part because one major roadblock to accessing American critical mineral deposits is that they remain largely unmapped. That may be about to change, though. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Geological Survey have issued two separate challenges to explore using artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite USGS' task of assessing the availability and mining potential of 50 critical minerals.

Artificial intelligence (AI) adds efficiency to any number of marketing applications, from content to conversational chatbots. For organizations looking to harness these capabilities, here are some ways to get started. "You do not, and should not, try to create this yourself in-house from scratch," said Jim Lecinski, clinical associate professor of marketing at Northwestern University at The MarTech Conference. One important way AI can boost marketing functions is helping the team make better predictions instead of singling out campaign targets and goals "by hand." "We've all sat in conference rooms for years and made decisions based on staring at cells in a spreadsheet," said Lecinski.

Only one in four Americans (26 percent) think government should strictly limit the use of facial recognition technology, according to a new survey from the Center for Data Innovation--and that support drops even further if it would come at the expense of public safety. Fewer than one in five Americans (18 percent) would agree with strictly limiting the technology if that is the tradeoff, while a solid majority (55 percent) would disagree. Similarly, only 20 percent of Americans say government should strictly limit use of facial recognition if it would mean airports can't use the technology to speed up security lines, while a 54 percent majority would disagree with such a limit. And just 24 percent want strict limits if it would prevent stores from using the technology to stop shoplifting, while 49 percent would oppose such a tradeoff. There were some differences in these opinions based on age, with older Americans more likely to oppose government limits on the technology.

Logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL says deployment of an AI-powered internal career marketplace has started to allow its half a million-plus global employee base to take charge of their own career paths. The company also claims that the technology is encouraging team members to build personal profiles that showcases their skills, helping them quickly find relevant training tools to fill skill gaps. The new system - delivered as part of what the corporation sees not as old-style'learning and development', but more modern'learning and growth' - is also claimed to support retention through internal career progression. It is also seen as boosting productivity, as employees feel more supported and empowered. The tech - from AI-powered people experience platform supplier Cornerstone - was also able to do in less than five minutes, what an average two years of learning and development (L&D) effort had been unable to: achieve 85% accuracy of skills categorization, even from a non-customized version.

Murat Sonmez, managing director of the World Economic Forum, explains how big data and machine learning can help find a vaccine for COVID-19. Dan Patterson, senior producer for CNET and CBS News, spoke with Murat Sonmez, managing director of the World Economic Forum, how big data and machine learning can help find a vaccine for COVID-19. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Murat Sonmez: The World Economic Forum is a 50-year-old international organization, focused on public-private cooperation, bringing together business, international organizations, governments, academia, and civil society, to understand how we can shape a better future for the world and create action groups to that effect. In terms of the data piece, we launched an initiative called the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to really look at how we can leverage emerging technologies, to accelerate these solutions.

Amino acids are critical to the structure of proteins, which are often visualized as 3D ribbon structures. Northeastern biochemists are studying the chemistry of amino acids within SARS-CoV-2 to predict the reactions they enable. Chemically speaking, proteins might be the most sophisticated molecules out there. Millions of different kinds of them live within our cells and work together as a fine-tuned orchestra catalyzing the biochemical reactions that keep us alive. Few things in the world would function without proteins--not the cells within your body, and certainly not SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization announced it would host a global research and innovation forum on February 11 and 12. The invite list will include public health officials, research funders, and scientists who are working on coronavirus 2019 vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics, and other relevant innovations. The goal is to chart out a global research agenda targeting the new coronavirus. To date, roughly 31,000 people around the world have been infected with the coronavirus. Some 600 have died, according to CBS News.