One day Butch Sargent was contacted by the Jasper Police, telling him about a disturbance in a certain area. "I don't want anyone to think Jasper's unsafe but we had a police problem one afternoon and a whole community was shut down," recalls Sargent, transportation director at Jasper City School District in Alabama, located about 40 miles northwest of Birmingham. "They called to tell me what blocks to shut down and I was able to reroute those students" in the affected areas. Routefinder PLUS made the difference because it is so user-friendly. It's been a baptism by fire for Sargent.

Over the last few years, companies across industries from retail to manufacturing have started using digital twins to weather the worst of the world's ongoing supply-chain disruptions. "We wanted to step back and look at a country's whole health care network," says Heidi Albert, head of FIND South Africa. "That's what led us to supply-chain thinking." FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) is a nonprofit based in Switzerland. Testing is one of the weakest links in global health care, says Albert: "Our aim is to make sure that everyone who needs a test has access to one."

Zachary Ulissi (right) explores how surface chirality affects chemical reactions.Credit: Materials Science and Engineering Department/Carnegie Mellon University Materials scientists are increasingly turning to machine learning and other computational techniques to discover new materials. From corrosion resistant aeroplane components and better batteries to new drugs or novel catalysts, big data can help to find them. "The problem is that the number of possible materials is infinite," says Matthias Scheffler, a computational materials scientist at the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin, Germany. "With high-throughput screening, you can screen thousands of systems, and a thousand is nothing compared to infinite." Along with physicist Claudia Draxl, of Humboldt University Berlin, Scheffler launched the Novel Materials Discovery Laboratory (NOMAD) at Fritz-Haber, a data repository for a wide variety of information about chemical compounds.

Researchers at University of Toronto Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress in transforming waste carbon into a commercially valuable product with record efficiency. They leveraged AI to speed up the search for the key material in a new catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethylene -- a chemical precursor to a wide range of products, from plastics to dish detergent. The resulting electrocatalyst is the most efficient in its class. If run using wind or solar power, the system also provides an efficient way to store electricity from these renewable but intermittent sources. "Using clean electricity to convert CO2 into ethylene, which has a $60 billion global market, can improve the economics of both carbon capture and clean energy storage," says Professor Ted Sargent, one of the senior authors on a new paper published today in Nature.

Researchers from U of T Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using electrolyzers like this one to convert waste CO2 into commercially valuable chemicals. Their latest catalyst, designed in part through the use of AI, is the most efficient in its class. Researchers at University of Toronto Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress in transforming waste carbon into a commercially valuable product with record efficiency. They leveraged AI to speed up the search for the key material in a new catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethylene -- a chemical precursor to a wide range of products, from plastics to dish detergent. The resulting electrocatalyst is the most efficient in its class.

At the University of Toronto, Ted Sargent runs a test kitchen of sorts. His team, composed of researchers and students, develops recipes, measures and mixes ingredients carefully, and then evaluates the aftermath. The concoctions mostly--if not always--turn out to be inedible. Fortunately, though, flavor is not the point. Their goal is to invent recipes to "upgrade" the greenhouse gas into useful materials, says Sargent, an electrical engineer.

IMAGE: Researchers from U of T Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using electrolyzers like this one to convert waste CO2 into commercially valuable chemicals. Their latest catalyst, designed in part... view more Researchers at University of Toronto Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress in transforming waste carbon into a commercially valuable product with record efficiency. They leveraged AI to speed up the search for the key material in a new catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethylene -- a chemical precursor to a wide range of products, from plastics to dish detergent. The resulting electrocatalyst is the most efficient in its class. If run using wind or solar power, the system also provides an efficient way to store electricity from these renewable but intermittent sources.

Researchers at University of Toronto Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress in transforming waste carbon into a commercially valuable product with record efficiency. They leveraged AI to speed up the search for the key material in a new catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethylene--a chemical precursor to a wide range of products, from plastics to dish detergent. The resulting electrocatalyst is the most efficient in its class. If run using wind or solar power, the system also provides an efficient way to store electricity from these renewable but intermittent sources. "Using clean electricity to convert CO2 into ethylene, which has a $60 billion global market, can improve the economics of both carbon capture and clean energy storage," says Professor Ted Sargent, one of the senior authors on a new paper published today in Nature.

Two doctors are using data analysis and predictive algorithms to stretch healthcare resources in South Africa and help millions of people live with HIV. Dr. John Sargent and Dr. Ernest Darkoh co-founded BroadReach in 2003 to make the healthcare system more efficient and treat more patients. In 2010, the two developed Vantage, a data analysis platform and recommendation engine that runs on Microsoft Azure. The initial idea was to use the platform to manage and improve the public-private partnerships that support many healthcare services in Africa. The two realized that the analytic work could also improve access to healthcare in countries where there are many more people than doctors.

British businesses are looking forward to a future driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which many believe could be the keystone technology of the next industrial revolution. However, many workers worry that their employers may not be ready to seize the opportunity. Almost half of IT decision makers (45pc) believe that AI will drive the biggest innovations of the next three years, according to a survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of Brother UK and The Telegraph. Melissa Di Donato, chief revenue officer at SAP Cloud ERP, says this should come as no surprise: "Once in a generation a disruptive technology arrives and changes everything. For this generation, it is artificial intelligence. "The real risk UK businesses face is not embracing AI and the productivity benefits it can provide." Respondents believed that AI was more important than other "buzz" technologies such as the internet of things (24pc), and virtual reality or VR and augmented reality or AR (16pc). In part, that could be because the direct links to increased efficiency and productivity are clearer, whereas VR and AR usage remains contingent on the devices needed to experience them. Artificial intelligence will enable British businesses to save trillions, according to Kriti Sharma, VP of bots and artificial intelligence at Sage. "Businesses in the UK spend on average 120 days a year on administration," she says. "This has a huge impact on productivity.