A transnational inquiry has been launched to determine accountability for the deaths of five passengers aboard the OceanGate Expeditions submersible that imploded during a descent to the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic, the United States Coast Guard announced Sunday. Maritime agencies from Canada, France and Britain are joining an investigation that will be led by the Coast Guard, Capt. Jason Neubauer said during a news conference at Coast Guard Base Boston. Neubauer said the priority of the investigation, known as a Marine Board of Investigation, or MBI, "is to recover items from the seafloor." Neubauer said investigators will also determine "the cause of this marine casualty" and establish accountability.

The Technische Universität (TUU) KIWI biolab, which has been designated as one of three international artificial intelligence (AI) future laboratories by the German government, uses AI to design experiments with the aim of understanding how cells behave. "We cultivate various clones in parallel, and computer-controlled robots perform the fed-batch experiments and analyses automatically," explains Peter Neubauer, PhD, who heads the department of bioprocess engineering at TU Berlin. Experimental data is used to create "digital twins" of the cells that can be used for computer-based process development, he says. Neubauer developed the automated laboratory to multiply the number of cell lines he could analyze in parallel. "Currently in our facility we can do this for a large number of cells–for 48 different clones," he adds.

It goes without saying that humans are the intended beneficiaries of the AI applications and autonomous systems that data scientists and developers are creating. But what's the best way to design these AI apps and autonomous systems to maximize human interaction and human benefit? That's a tougher question to answer. It's also the focus of human factors specialists, who are increasingly in demand. Datanami recently caught up with one of these in-demand human factors specialists.

There's more than one way to build a paywall. Over the last year, Swiss news publisher Neue Zürcher Zeitung has been using a payment system that is personalized to the individual based on hundreds of criteria. NZZ requires people to register and eventually, pay. But when readers get these registration and payment messages and how those messages look varies based on predefined rules, dozens of A/B tests and machine learning. "If we're to be successful in paid content, we need to individualize the experience with our product and the product itself, and automate our marketing approach," said Steven Neubauer, managing director at Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

These areas serve as an'important hub' of brain organization, responsible for functions like motor control, balance, memory, language, social cognition and the ability to process things around us. This suggests that evolutionary changes to our brain were key to the evolution of the human condition, the scientists said. 'The evolution of endocranial shape within Homo sapiens suggests evolutionary changes of early brain development -- a critical period for neural wiring and cognitive development,' said Philipp Gunz, a co-author of the study. The scientists point out that these evolutionary changes were gradual, taking place over tens of thousands of years. New research suggests key evolutionary changes in our brain shape occurred 100,000-35,000 years ago.

What sets humans apart from other species, despite all the biological and genetic similarities, is our brains. But it turns out that the brain of a Homo sapiens who lived about 100,000 years ago was actually differently shaped, compared to ours. The earliest-known specimen of a Homo sapiens is from about 300,000 years ago, and it was discovered at a site in present-day Morocco. The Jebel Irhoud fossil had a modern-looking face that fell within the variations shown by modern humans and was therefore categorized as one. However, even at the time of its discovery's announcement in June 2017, researchers said the shape of its braincase, or cranium, indicated that the human brain had evolved since.