Lifeboat Foundation

What would it mean if you lost all of your personal documents, such as your family photos, research or business records? How much would you pay to get them back? There’s a burgeoning form of cybercrime that hinges on the answers to these questions.

You have probably heard of viruses and malware. These dangerous pieces of software can make their way into your computer and wreak havoc. Malware authors are intent on stealing your data and disrupting the proper functioning of your digital devices.

Then there is ransomware. This is crafted by cyber-criminals for extorting data from innocent users, and is rapidly becoming a threat to individuals, small business and corporate users alike.

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How robotics is making live music a more enriching experience.

Scientists have developed a ‘smart’ wearable robotic limb that responds to human gestures and the music it hears, allowing drummers to play with three arms.

The two-foot long robotic arm can be attached to a musician’s shoulder, and knows what to play by listening to the music in the room. It improvises based on the beat and rhythm. For instance, if the musician plays slowly, the arm slows the tempo. If the drummer speeds up, it plays faster.

Continue reading “Robot limb lets drummers play with three arms” »

The facts about the CRISPR Patent.

Xconomy San Francisco —

If you ask people who don’t follow biotech too closely what they know about CRISPR, you might get two answers: genetic editing and a big patent fight.

Continue reading “Caribou Bio’s New CRISPR Patent Isn’t About Gene Editing” »

New insights on GBM resistance markers.

A research team, with the participation of the University of Granada (UGR), has made some progress in determining the causes for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), one of the most aggressive brain tumors known, to be resistant to the drugs currently used, which is one of the main limitations of its treatment. The results have been recently published in two articles in PlosOne magazine.

The researchers have proven that proteoglycans (the cells’ structural elements), called decorin (DCN) and lumican (LUM), could be decisive in the behavior and development of a resistance to the drugs used for treating glioblastoma multiforme, such as temozolamide (TMZ). In the other hand, they have laid bare that the inhibition of the transcription of some of the sub-units belonging to the mismatch-repair (MMR) complex, a system that analyzes and repairs DNA, could be responsible of the failure of current therapies against this kind of tumor.

Continue reading “GBM Treatment Discoveries: Why Select Drugs Might not Work” »

Americans are the most impacted by ransomware infections.

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Absolutely; it will and that is the real danger in technology. This is why security roles will be increasingly in demand over the next 7 to 10 years.

Kaspersky director Marco Preuss looks at the future of biometric technology and bio-cybersecurity.

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Actors and Actresses will never have to worry about reading through pages of scripts to decide whether or not the role is worth their time; AI will do the work for you.

A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

During his 12 years in UTA’s story department, Scott Foster estimates he read about 5,500 screenplays. “Even if it was the worst script ever, I had to read it cover to cover,” he says. So when Foster left the agency in 2013, he teamed with Portland, Ore.-based techie Brian Austin to create ScriptHop, an artificial intelligence system that manages the volume of screenplays that every agency and studio houses. “When I took over [at UTA], we were managing hundreds of thousands of scripts on a Word document,” says Foster, who also worked at Endeavor and Handprint before UTA. “The program began to eat itself and become corrupt because there was too much information to handle.” ScriptHop can read a script and do a complete character breakdown in four seconds, versus the roughly four man hours required of a reader. The tool, which launches Feb. 16 is free, and is a sample of the overall platform coming later in 2016 that will recommend screenplays as well as store and manage a company’s library for a subscription fee of $29.99 a month per user.

Continue reading “This New Artificial Intelligence Script-Reading Program Could Find Your Next Oscar Role (Exclusive)” »

Big Blue is cool again according to investors.

NEW YORK: Here’s a vexing question for artificial mega-brain Watson: Why is IBM stock surging? Big Blue’s market value rose about $6 billion after the computer giant agreed on Thursday to buy Truven Health Analytics for $2.6 billion. Giving IBM’s artificial-intelligence platform more data to chew on is useful, but investors’ glee over an opaque addition to an enigmatic business effort is confusing.

Big Blue’s top line has been shrinking steadily for nearly four years. In the fourth quarter of 2015, all major divisions had declining sales, with overall revenue falling 8.5 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. Clients need less of IBM’s hardware, and its software and consulting businesses are faltering in competition with rivals’ cloud-based versions.

Continue reading “Why is IBM surging?” »

This is so true and even more importantly in the space of technology as we introduce more products and services in the AI space. Reason is because we are seeing the consumer’s buying patterns changing especially as consumers have more options around devices, services, and AI available to them.

As a result of more choices and AI sophistication; consumers are now & more so in the future will chose to buy things that “fit” more with their own style and personality today. And, this places pressures on companies to change/ expand their thinking on product innovation to include emotional thinking as well. Gone are the days of technology just being a machine/ devices designed to only process information and provide information insights only. Tech consumers today and in the future want technology that marries with their own sense of style and personalities. Therefore, corporate culture as a whole will need to change their thinking at all levels.

I once wrote an article about how people with outstanding academic achievement or technical brilliance can easily get hired, but brilliance will get them nowhere if they lack emotional intelligence and the ability to build strong working relationships. This is especially true in today’s highly competitive world where organisations rely heavily on interdependence to stay ahead of the game.

Continue reading “We need leaders with emotional intelligence” »