My friend Robert Burton, a neurologist and author, wanted to share a song with me last year, and sent me a link to an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. "It's wonderful to see truly new and inspiring music," he wrote. I clicked open the link to a band who appeared to have journeyed from their mountain village in Russia to busk for tourists in the city square. Three women wore long white wedding dresses, thick strands of bead necklaces, and Cossack hats that towered from their heads like minarets of black wool. They played, respectively, a cello, djembe drum, and floor tom drum. They were joined by an accordion player who could pass for a bearded hipster from Brooklyn. The accordionist was the first to sing. A bray of syllables erupted from him like an exorcism. A steady drumbeat followed and then the women commanded the singing. Their vocals ranged from yodels to yips, whoops to whispers. At first turbulence reigned, as if the women were singing different songs at each other. But soon their voices blended into a melody that curled like a river.

TEHRAN – A team of researchers at Tehran's Amir Kabir University of Technology have designed and manufactured a robotic arm for removing pollutants from the surfaces of the double umbrella type porcelain insulators, Mehr reported on Saturday. Cleaning the polluted insulators of the overhead high voltage power lines has been one of the problems for the power transmission network during recent years, Amir Kabir University faculty member Amir Abolfazl Souratgar told Mehr. He pointed to power failure in southwestern Khuzestan province and a number of western provinces due to sand and dust storm in January 2015 due to polluted insulators. The robotic arm is able to clean insulators at higher speed and precision in comparison with other methods, he said, adding that it can work at high temperatures of up to about 60 centigrade and at low temperatures of around minus 40 centigrade as well as during high humidity and other bad climate conditions. Live-line cleaning of insulators using robot technology is an alternative and novel approach to removing the contaminants on the surfaces of the insulator.

Government is always being asked to do more with less -- less money, less staff, just all around less -- and that makes the idea of artificial intelligence (AI) a pretty attractive row to hoe. If a piece of technology could reduce staff workload or walk citizens through a routine process or form, you could effectively multiply a workforce without ever actually adding new people. But for every good idea, there are caveats, limitations, pitfalls and the desire to push the envelope. While innovating anything in tech is generally a good thing, when it comes to AI in government, there is fine line to walk between improving a process and potentially making it more convoluted. Outside of a few key government functions, a new white paper from the Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation finds that AI could actually increase the burden of government and muddy-up the functions it is so desperately trying to improve.