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LONDON — As the world focuses on Zika’s rapid advance in the Americas, experts warn the virus that originated in Africa is just one of a growing number of continent-jumping diseases carried by mosquitoes threatening swathes of humanity.

The battle against the insects on the streets of Brazil is the latest in an ancient war between humankind and the Culicidae, or mosquito, family which the pests frequently win.

Today, mosquito invaders are turning up with increasing regularity from Washington DC to Strasbourg, challenging the notion that the diseases they carry will remain confined to the tropics, scientists documenting the cases told Reuters.

Ironically, humans have rolled out the red carpet for the invaders by transporting them around the world and providing a trash-strewn urban landscape that suits them to perfection.

The Aedes aegypti species blamed for transmitting Zika breeds in car tyres, tin cans, dog bowls and cemetery flower vases. And its females are great at spreading disease as they take multiple bites to satisfy their hunger for the protein in human blood they need to develop their eggs.

Around the world, disease-carrying mosquitoes are advancing at speed, taking viruses such as dengue and Zika, plus a host of lesser-known ills such as chikungunya and St Louis encephalitis, into new territories from Europe to the Pacific.

“The concern is that we have these species spreading everywhere. Today, the focus is on Zika but they can carry many different viruses and pathogens,” said Anna-Bella Failloux, head of the department that tracks mosquito viruses at France’s Institut Pasteur.

In 2014, there was a large outbreak of chikungunya, which causes fever and joint pains, in the Caribbean, where it had not been seen before, while the same virus sickened Italians in 2007 in a wake-up call for public health officials.

Europe has seen the re-emergence of malaria in Greece for the first time in decades and the appearance of West Nile virus in eastern parts of the continent.

Out in the Atlantic, the Madeira archipelago reported more than 2,000 cases of dengue in 2012, in a sign of the northerly advance of what — at least until Zika — has been the world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease.

In the past 40 years, six new invasive mosquito species have become established in Europe, with five arriving since 1990, driven in large part by the international trade in used vehicle tyres. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in the tyres and they hatch when rain moistens them at their destination.

North American health experts are also racing to keep up, with the first appearance of Aedes japonicus, an invasive mosquito, in western Canada last November and Aedes aegypti found in Washington DC, apparently after spending the winter in sewers or Metro subway stations.

Spread unprecedented

The speed of change in mosquito-borne diseases since the late 1990s has been unprecedented, according to Jolyon Medlock, a medical entomologist at Public Health England, a government agency.

For many experts, the biggest potential threat is Aedes albopictus, otherwise known as the Asian tiger mosquito, which is expanding its range widely and is capable of spreading more than 25 viruses, including Zika.

“There is strong evidence that Aedes albopictus is now out-competing aegypti in some areas and becoming more dominant,” said Ralph Harbach, an entomologist at London’s Natural History Museum, who has been studying mosquitoes since 1976.

In the United States, Aedes albopictus has been found as far north as Massachusetts and as far west as California. In Europe it has reached Paris and Strasbourg.

Adding to the challenge for public health authorities are the blurred lines between diseases carried by different mosquitoes, as shown by research in Brazil this month that another common mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, may also be able to carry Zika.

Both Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus probably first arrived in the Americas from Africa on slave ships, scientists believe. In the centuries since, commerce has shuttled other species around the world, while air travel has exposed millions of people to new diseases.

“You’ve got a global movement of mosquitoes and a huge increase in human travel. Humans are moving the pathogens around and the mosquitoes are waiting there to transmit them,” said Medlock.

Human incursions into tropical forests have aggravated the problem. Deforestation in Malaysia, for example, is blamed for a steep rise in human cases of a type of malaria usually found in monkeys.

Don’t kill the good guys

There have been some victories against mosquitoes, thanks to insecticide-treated bed nets and vaccines against viruses like yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis, as well as a new one for dengue approved in December.

But mosquitoes still kill around 725,000 people a year, mostly due to malaria, or 50 per cent more than are killed by other humans, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Climate change adds a further twist. A 2^oC to 3^oC rise in temperature can increase the number of people at risk of malaria by 3 to 5 per cent, or more than 100 million, according to the World Health Organisation.

Hotter weather also speeds up the mosquito breeding cycle from around two weeks at 25^oC to 7 to 8 days at 28^oC, according to the Institut Pasteur’s Failloux.

So is it time to wipe out mosquitoes altogether?

Aggressive action in the 1950s and 1960s, including the use of the pesticide DDT, certainly pushed them back for a while.

Today, genetic modification, radiation and targeted bacteria are being considered.

Trying to eliminate all mosquitoes, however, would make no sense, since there are 3,549 species and fewer than 200 bite humans.

“It might be possible to wipe out a few species but we don’t want to wipe out the good guys because a lot of them serve as food for frogs, fish and bats,” said Harbach. “Many also visit flowers to feed on nectar and may play a role in pollination.”

Some are even our friends. Harbach has a soft spot for the Toxorhynchites genus, which have a convenient penchant for eating Aedes aegypti larvae.

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony plans to make virtual reality — long the stuff of films cast off into a distant future — mainstream with the October release of PlayStation VR headgear priced at $399.

“Virtual reality represents a new frontier for gaming, one that will forever change the way users interact with games,” Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Andrew House said during a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Sony chose October for the launch of PlayStation VR to allow time for making enough units to meet anticipated demand and to let developers get games ready for the headsets, according to House.

The headsets are designed to plug into PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles.

Sony touted PS4 as its fastest-selling console ever with more than 36 million of them bought since they hit the market in late 2013.

But there is competition and Facebook-owned virtual reality start Oculus is set to begin shipping its Rift headsets later this month. 

Oculus has been taking orders for Rift at a price of $599 and has worked with computer makers to certify machines as powerful enough to handle the technology.

Pre-orders have also been taken on bundles combining Rift with compatible gaming computers starting about $1,500.

Buying a PS4 and PlayStation VR would add up to about half that price.

“We are proud of the price point we have been able to achieve,” House said of PlayStation VR.

PlayStation VR users will still need to buy camera and controller accessories, pushing the price up slightly, but it is considerably less expensive than rival headsets that synch to gaming computers, according to Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

“The cost of ownership of PlayStation is going to be a lot more affordable than the PC [personal computer] counterparts,” Blau told AFP after attending the Sony event.

And, since millions of PS4 have already been bought, the price of adding virtual reality is comparably lower for owners of those consoles since no computer upgrade is needed.

Game makers dive in

More than 230 developers and publishers are working on games for PlayStation VR, with some 50 titles expected to be available by the end of this year, according to Sony.

The list included French video game titan Ubisoft, which is creating an “Eagle Flight” game that lets players virtually take wing, and a collaboration between Electronic Arts, DICE, and Lucasfilm on a new “Star Wars Battlefront” title for PlayStation VR.

PlayStation motion-sensing “Move” wand-shaped controllers were used to provide “hands” in some titles demonstrated at the event

Virtual reality was a hot topic at a Game Developers Conference (GDC) taking place a short distance from the Sony press briefing.

Chip makers showed off powerful processors designed to handle rendering rich, immersive graphics in virtual worlds. Games shown off at GDC included titles tailored for PlayStation VR and rivals Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Thirty-year-old GDC bills itself as the largest and longest-running event for professional game makers.

This year, GDC integrated an inaugural Virtual Reality Developers Conference focused on “making immersive virtual reality and augmented reality experiences”.

The virtual reality portion of GDC had to be moved to larger rooms to double the capacity in response to heavy demand, according to organisers.

In a sign that virtual reality is poised to extend beyond gaming, PlayStation VR boasted a Cinematic mode that can let people watch digital video on large virtual screens.

House promised more information on “entertainment content” in coming months.

“It makes sense that you should be able to see all kinds of PlayStation content inside the headset,” analyst Blau said.

“I think it will extend PlayStation into areas it has never been before.”

SAN FRANCISCO — If the controls and movement in a traditional video game aren’t natural, it’s merely annoying to players. For designers of virtual reality experiences, the same mistake could make users sick.

With the release of a trio of high-definition headsets on the horizon, many VR aficionados in attendance at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco are confronting that issue head on.

The low-latency headsets from Oculus, HTC and Sony are intended to right the nausea-inducing wrongs of their VR predecessors from 20 years ago, but many users still report feeling woozy after using souped-up systems, such as the Oculus Rift.

“The challenge is that people’s sensitivity to motion and simulator sickness varies wildly,” said Evan Suma, an assistant professor who studies VR at the University of Southern California, during a talk at the 30th annual gathering of game creators.

It’s a unique design challenge for game makers accustom to crafting interactive entertainment appearing on flat screens in front of gamers, not completely encasing them.

Despite the advancements made in VR over the past four years, there’s still concern the immersive technology may force players to lose more than a battle with an alien. They could also lose their lunch.

“It’s been a huge focus of development,” said Hilmar Petursson, CEO of CCP Games, which is developing several VR games, including the sci-fi dogfighting simulator “EVE: Valkyrie.” ‘’We want super comfort all the way.”

Petursson said the developers of “Valkyrie” opted to surround seated players with a virtual cockpit to ground and shelter them from the effects of appearing to whiz through space past asteroids, missiles and ships.

Other designers are attempting to tackle the problem by limiting movement in virtual worlds and not inundating players with head-spinning stimuli.

“If you have something for your brain to fixate on as the thing that matches similar inputs you’re given when sitting in the real world, you’re going to be feeling a lot better,” said Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus, which ignited the latest VR revolution in 2012.

Oculus and Sony both posted health and safety warnings outside their booths on the GDC show floor, cautioning attendees trying the Rift and PlayStation VR that they may feel motion sickness, nausea, disorientation and blurred vision. Those effects were felt by many attendees.

“After a morning’s worth of different Rift games, I felt disorientated, a touch nauseous and distinctly headachey,” wrote Keza MacDonald on the gaming site Kotaku. “After five hours, I felt like I needed a lie-down in a dark room.”

Kimberly Voll, senior technical designer at Radial Games, noted during her GDC speech about the effects of VR on the brain that more academic research about VR should be conducted.

“We really need to look hard at the effects of long-term exposure to VR, the psychological effects and what we can say about the power of our VR experiences,” said Voll, who has studied computer and cognitive science.

With hype for VR at an all-time high and pre-orders for the Rift and HTC Vive sold out, it’s no longer a question of if consumers will want to experience VR. They do. It’s now becoming a matter of how long it’s safe to keep it on their noggins.

Would two hours in VR be too much?

“With the current technology, it’s iffy,” said Luckey. “It’s all technologically solvable. It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Oh no. We can’t get any better. This is a dead end.’ We have tons of ways to make this higher resolution, lighter weight and more comfortable. Eventually, the goal is to make something that’s not much heavier than a pair of sunglasses.”

For many who’ve tried VR, it’s not an issue at all. Hidden Path Entertainment founder Jeff Pobst said he recently spent 15 hours wearing the Rift headset while playing the VR version of his strategy game, “Defence Grid 2”.

“I was happy,” said Pobst. “I even did it with glasses on and didn’t take the headset off to put in my contacts. It all depends on the person and the experience. When there’s not a lot of movement and the controls aren’t tiring, I think you can be in VR indefinitely.”

Yousef Kawar, the most progressive composer in Jordan and perhaps in the Arab World, has just released his fifth album titled Internal Dialogue. The artist is not the kind to take the easy way out. Always seeking to create new sounds, working hard to deliver material that does not resemble anything done before, the Jordanian musician has once again produced a superb collection of mainly instrumental electronic music pieces. He entirely composed, recorded, mixed and produced them single-handed, with a couple of guest artists participating in some of the tracks.

Speaking to The Jordan Times, Kawar said: “My music is not meant to make people dance in a club. It is more about research and technology.”

He believes that musicians should not be playing over and over music contents that have already been played thousands of times. In his book of rules to innovate is not an option but an absolute must.

Which is not to say that he is unable to play a “traditional” instrument. On the contrary, listening to him playing the Caprice No. 5, a cover of a piece by Italian classical master Nicolo Paganini, reveals a true virtuoso guitarist. If you like speed and flawless technique look no further. Even here, however, the “electronic” treatment is obvious and in the end the sound is nothing short of extraordinary, different and captivating.

The excellent drum parts are performed by New-York based drummer extraordinaire Jai Es, while the vocal part on “I Need to See You” is the contribution of Jorge Abundis. There are creative, original touches all over the place, from “irregular beats offset by soothing synthesised sounds” to the female voice of the Google translator that Kawar recorded from the Web and that of course he twisted, twirled and played with ad lib.

Making the album interesting from beginning to start is the fact that the 14 tracks are all quite different. The music is inspired, well arranged and perfectly mixed. The entire production is first class, world class. From the moment you enter the sonic world of Kawar you are immersed in futuristic, avant-garde music, and taken on an amazing trip. I was immediately caught by the album and liked it when I played it the first time. I then waited two days and listened again, over and over. To say that “I like it” would be a gross understatement.

Given the elaborate nature of the sound, and as Kawar himself advises, it is recommended to listen to the album “with a good pair of headphones in a quiet space…”, or at least on large, high definition stereo speakers. Careful with the bass though! My personal recommendation is to be mentally prepared when playing the album — this is no mainstream pop music, it is well above. Though I must say that some of the tracks do have a nice beat…

It is perhaps a strange coincidence that one of the early pioneers of electronic music, the kind Kawar composes, passed away this week, just when Kawar was releasing his new opus. English keyboardist Keith Emerson, from the legendary trio Emerson Lake & Palmer from the 1970s, brought a major contribution to the world of electronic music and influenced many of the artists of the genre who came after him.

Kawar has been studying and researching music theory, practice, performance, recording and production for over 20 years. He currently works out of his hi-tech home studio in Amman. His work truly deserves wider international coverage and more global recognition.

Bluetooth (BT) transmitters, receivers, stereo systems and audio is everywhere now.

Once underestimated and neglected by audio purists as a low-grade means of wireless music transmission, often associated with poor resolution MP3 files, BT has finally made the grade and has won the recognition it deserves. It can truly transmit and playback high-quality music. It all depends on how you use it and what kind of signal you feed it with in the first place.

Its only limitation is the range it can cover, typically up to a maximum of 10 metres in open area. There doesn’t seem to be currently any plan in the industry to extend this range. If you can live with that — most people can — then it is no limitation at all. Freeing you from cables and instantly interconnecting BT devices is what it is about; not a minor point; convenience exemplified.

Bluetooth audio doesn’t just transmit MP3; it transmits any music format you send over it. So if you playback original non-compressed wave sound, like for example from an industry-made audio CD, you’ll hear excellent audio quality. And if your MP3 files are made of top grade 320Kbps MP3, as opposed to 128Kbps, you’ll still benefit from superior sound.

The acknowledgement of the quality of BT and the fact that virtually all smartphones, laptops and tablets sport BT connectivity, it has all made an audio standard to take seriously.

The last two years have brought countless BT add-ons, mainly in the form of transmitters and receivers, allowing you to retrofit older equipment.

Assume you like to play music from your smartphone on an existing, wired stereo set at home. You’ve always enjoyed the full-bodied sound of the real 100-watt amp and big, no-compromise speakers. But these are cabled, how are you going to send the music to them from your smartphone? Surely not by connecting an ugly cable all across the living room!

Just buy a BT receiver, connect it to one of the inputs on the back of the amp and send music to it from your smartphone, tablet or laptop. Et voilà. You get the best of both worlds: the wireless audio transmission of your smartphone, and the superior audio experience of your big stereo system. Belkin, Avantree, Logitech and Mediabridge are some of the manufacturers making excellent receivers, and it will not cost you more than JD15 to JD30 a piece. If you want to connect the BT receiver to a 1000-watt set and blast the music to the entire neighbourhood now you can.

Similarly, if the device on which your music stored doesn’t have BT, like an old laptop for instance, or a full-size desktop computer, you can add a small BT transmitter to it. It’s as easy, convenient and inexpensive as a receiver.

A big advantage of BT receivers and transmitters is that they are fool proof, instantly set and don’t require high-tech knowledge or programmes at all to install. Just plug them in and playback the music. It’s zero hassle. This alone is a huge incentive.

Given all these advantages, manufacturers have also come up with some esoteric BT solutions. Whereas the widest choice of small BT speakers consists of one small cabinet, delivering mono sound, now makers like GraceAudio and JBL offer true stereo in two separate speakers’ cabinets, like the real thing. This is invaluable if you playback classical music or jazz, for instance.

As for Bose, they still make these incredible small BT speakers that deliver sound that belies their size and weight. The company’s SoundLink Mini weighs a mere 650g, sits in the palm of your hand and generates a sound that you’d swear comes from a speaker 10 times bigger, with genuine bass that is good enough to drive a dancing party. Oh, and the battery lasts for up to 15 hours on one charge. This is convenience that is hard to beat.

Again, with the incredible variety of BT speakers on the market, the new possibility to add simple receivers and transmitters to music devices who don’t come so-equipped, the now available stereo BT dual cabinet speakers, and last but not least the genuine high resolution sound you get if you know how, there is virtually no limit to BT, expect for its 10-metre distance constraint.

BERLIN — In a hotel not in a galaxy far, far away, a robot bids you welcome as you pull into the driveway.

Another hands out the keycard to your room, and a third gives you the password to the Wi-Fi network.

Robots are making an entry into the hospitality industry that has until now always prided itself on delivering a warm and personable touch.

At an entrance to Berlin’s exhibition hall where thousands of travel industry professionals are gathering for the ITB trade show, humanoid robot ChihiraKanae greets visitors — in English, German, Chinese and Japanese.

Dressed in a blue jacket with a neck scarf, ChihiraKanae is on her first visit to Europe where she is seeking potential employment for herself and her kind.

Three months ago, her “sister” began working as a meet-and-greeter in a Tokyo shopping centre.

Their creator, Toshiba, also foresees a great future ahead for them in tourism. 

Mario has already found a job — at the Ghent Marriott Hotel in Belgium, where he has welcomed visitors since June.

He is also multilingual, speaking 19 languages to be precise. On top of that, he helps with serving at hotel buffets, and entertains guests by singing and dancing.

He makes guests smile

Unlike ChihiraKanae, Mario doesn’t pretend to look like a human. 

Standing just 50 centimetres tall, Mario is white with red stripes, has speakers for ears and a total of just six fingers.

But his employer is pleased with his work.

He “puts a smile on everybody’s face,” said Roger Langhout, director general of the hotel, adding that “it’s a good way to get people to remember our hotel”.

“We are still exploring the possibilities of Mario,” he said, even if he acknowledges that humans can never be fully replaced by machines in the hotel business. 

Oxford University’s Carl Benedikt Frey believes, however, that robots do have a big future in the industry.

“In tourism, quite a few jobs remain non-automatable, like concierges or chefs,” he said. 

“But a wide range of jobs are very much sustainable to automation,” he added, suggesting that robots could work as waiters, dishwashers, tour guides or even chauffeurs.

What is key is that they should do tasks that require only basic communication, he said. 

In fact, a survey of 6,000 travellers by US online bookings company Travelzoo found that two in three people are comfortable with seeing robots in the tourism industry. 

The Chinese are among the most enthusiastic, while the French and Germans are more reticent. 

Taleb Rifai, secretary general of the World Tourism Organisation, said the industry should broaden its usage of technology and robots. 

“I would not put any limit on the use of technology or innovation in any hotel or tourism facility,” he said.

“As a matter of fact, we are way behind as a sector in the implementation of technology and the use of it. We were able to send a man to the moon long before we thought about adding wheels on a suitcase.”

Virtual reality

If robots are still a nascent discovery in the industry, virtual reality (VR) has charmed operators.

German high-tech association Bitkom said virtual reality is the technology that “perhaps has the greatest potential” in the travel industry.

At several stands at the ITB fair, which runs until Sunday, guests could put on virtual reality glasses and escape the gloomy Berlin winter.

In one case, you could lounge on a tropical terrace and watch elephants lumbering against the backdrop of the setting sun, while a waiter delivers a colourful cocktail.

The hotel chain Cinnamon, which is active in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, is using the “new marketing tool” to allow potential visitors to get “closer to the product you see”, said marketing director, Dileep Mudadeniya. 

At the stand for southern Germany’s Bavaria region, young women dressed in the traditional dirndl dress are also trying to tempt visitors to put on the glasses for a glimpse of its green meadows and snow-capped mountains.

British tour operator Thomas Cook has been a pioneer in giving its clients a VR preview of adventure — a tour by helicopter above Manhattan.

Professor Armin Brysch, from Kempten’s Applied Sciences University in southern Germany, believes that VR is here to stay in the industry as it provides a “new quality of experience” that could entice people to book holidays in destinations that they may not have considered.

But would people just opt to see the world from their armchairs?

Unlikely, said Rifai. 

“To think that virtual reality could be used so that you stay at home and travel the world, it is not going to happen — I hope,” he said.

In a writer’s life, especially that of a columnist, there is no such thing as negative publicity. As long as people are reacting to what you are writing, you can carry on doing so. The absolutely worst thing that can happen to you is when readers become indifferent to your work. 

Therefore, after more than two decades of being in this line, I have sort of disciplined myself to be stoic, both towards effusive praise as well as cutting censure. I try not to get influenced by it because eventually, everyone is entitled to his or her outlook that might not agree with mine. Which is fine because the live-and-let-live strategy which I imbibe, essentially teaches us that much about peaceful co-existence. 

And yet, once in a while I slip up when someone gets too personal in criticising what I have written. All my mental training goes for a toss as my confidence takes a beating. To regain my composure and rebuild my self-assurance is an uphill task. I have to remove myself from the writing and examine the two separately to see if there is indeed any substance to the critique. 

Being an empath does not help matters. Who, or rather, what is an empath you ask? It is derived from the term empathy, which means the capacity to understand or feel what another being is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference.

Different from the word sympathy, which is largely used to convey commiseration, pity, or feelings of sorrow for someone who is undergoing misfortune, empathy is used to refer to the ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another, thereby vicariously experiencing the emotions, ideas, or opinions of that person. Empath, consequently, is the people with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual. 

Empaths are hypersensitive individuals, and their problem is that they are constantly putting themselves in other people’s shoes. Being an empath is not unusual. According to research conducted by Elaine Aron, PhD, a psychologist at Stony Brook University in New York, 20 per cent of the population are genetically inclined to be empathic. She and her research team have found physical evidence in the brain that empaths respond especially strongly to certain situations that trigger emotions. 

All the creative people in the world have an intuitive sensitivity towards their surroundings but empaths tend to feel more. When individuals come to me with their problems, literal strangers confide in me, I feel their pain as my own and am easily reduced to tears. If I spend some time with a person suffering from a bout of depression I feel depressed too. Sudden noise startles me and I have to physically disengage from a negative situation and go for a long walk to ease the stress that I unconsciously absorb from other stressed folks.

Research tells me that being an empath is a genetic predisposition. I struggle to understand which one of my parent passed on this trait because both of them are not with me anymore. But in our daughter’s case, I am definitely the culprit. 

“Coping with an empath is tough,” I confide in my husband. 

“You are telling me!” he exclaims. 

“Too much of angst,” I admit. 

“Completely unnecessary,” he agrees. 

“Is that so?” I ask. 

“Terrible melodrama,” he says. 

“No empathy from you,” I accuse. 

“I can extend apathy,” he shrugs. 

“Apathy cannot be extended,” I argue. 

“Reduce it then,” he guffaws.  

LOS ANGELES — When a person’s intelligence is tested, there are exams. IQ tests, general knowledge quizzes, SATs.

When artificial intelligence is tested, there are games. Checkers, chess, Go.

But what happens when computer programmes beat humans at all of those games? This is the question AI experts must ask after a Google-developed programme called AlphaGo defeated a world champion Go player in four out of five matches in a series that concluded Tuesday.

Long a yardstick for advances in AI, the era of board game testing has come to an end, said Murray Campbell, an IBM research scientist who was part of the team that developed Deep Blue, the first computer programme to beat a world chess champion.

“Games are fun and they’re easy to measure,” said Campbell. “It’s clear who won and who lost, and you always have the human benchmark,” he said. “Can you do better than a human?”

For checkers, chess, and now Go, it seems the answer is now a resounding yes. Computer algorithms beat world champion-level human players in checkers and chess in the 1990s.

Go — an ancient board game developed in China that is more complex than chess — was seen as one of the last board game hurdles.

Board games, Campbell said, were perfect tests because they have clear rules and nothing is hidden from players. The real world is much messier and full of unknowns. What’s next, it seems, is for AI to get messy.

With AI having conquered what experts call “complete information” games — the kind in which players can see what their opponents are doing — Tuomas Sandholm, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies artificial intelligence, said the next step is “incomplete information games” like poker.

“The game of two-player-limit Texas hold ‘em poker has almost been solved,” said Sandholm, who described “solving” a game as finding the optimal way of playing it. “In the larger game of two-player no-limit Texas hold ‘em poker, we’re right at the cusp of it. We currently have the world’s best computer programme, but we are still not better than the very best dozen or so humans.”

Games are typically chosen for the specific challenges that researchers want their AI to be able to overcome. With board games such as chess and Go, computer programmes are put through the ringer to see if they can learn from past matches and determine the best next move. With Texas hold ‘em, it’s about interpreting actions as signals, and figuring out the next best move without knowing what the opponent has in their hand.

All these things have real-world applications, Sandholm said. In complete information games, AI can help people search through large databases and do calculations and modelling. In incomplete information games, it can be used in situations where there are lots of unknown factors, such as negotiations, cybersecurity and auctions, and even in planning medical treatment.

Some robotic experts believe AI will one day get messier than that, taking algorithms out of controlled game environments and into the open world.

“That’s next,” said Thomas Johnson, founder of MotionFigures, a start-up that is bringing robotics and AI to toys. “The challenge will be putting AI algorithms into practice in open environments where the rules are not all given to it upfront, and adaptation is required to be successful.”

Johnson points to DARPA challenges — competitions run by the US Department of Defence — as an example of robots and AI being put to the test in the real world. Past DARPA challenges forced researchers to build robots that can walk up and down hills; many fell over or staggered like toddlers learning to walk.

“We take for granted things like balance and vision,” he said. “But for a robot, to walk up and down hills requires so many complicated decisions to be made in real time, and it’s really difficult to do.”

There’s still more that can be done in controlled environments, though.

Algorithms such as AlphaGo only know how to play Go. Oren Etzioni, executive director of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, believes the next step could be for AI to learn to play (and beat world champions) at any game. Or, as his institute is doing, putting AI through standardising testing. As in, the SATs. Or eighth grade science tests.

“The scientific part of it isn’t complicated,” Etzioni said.

After all, it’s not hard to get a computer programme to remember and regurgitate facts. What is hard is getting computers to apply their knowledge to everyday situations.

“The question in the test doesn’t require the computer to give a definition of gravity or recite an equation, but to describe a real world situation,” he said. “For example, ‘There’s a ball rolling down a hill.” This is the paradox: The hard part for the machine is easy for the human. The machine is struggling to figure out what does it mean when it says ‘the ball is rolling down the hill’?”

There are no shortages of benchmarks and tests that come after Go. And that doesn’t even get into benchmarks for different types of artificial intelligence, such as emotionally intelligent AI, speech recognising robots, or computers designed to understand language.

“It’s an exciting field to be in,” said Johnson. “I think it’s incredible and it makes me stop and think what the next 10, 20 years is gonna bring in AI.”

SEOUL — Game not over? Human Go champion Lee Sedol says Google’s Go-playing programme AlphaGo is not yet superior to humans, despite its 4-1 victory in a match that ended Tuesday.

The week-long showdown between the South Korean Go grandmaster and Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence programme showed the computer software has mastered a major challenge for artificial intelligence.

“I don’t necessarily think AlphaGo is superior to me. I believe that there is still more a human being could do to play against artificial intelligence,” Lee said after the nearly five-hour-long final game.

AlphaGo had the upper hand in terms of its lack of vulnerability to emotion and fatigue, two crucial aspects in the intense brain game.

“When it comes to psychological factors and strong concentration power, humans cannot be a match,” Lee said.

But he added, “I don’t think my defeat this time is a loss for humanity. It clearly shows my weaknesses, but not the weakness of all humanity.”

He expressed deep regret for the loss and thanked his fans for their support, saying he enjoyed all five matches.

Lee, 33, has made his living playing Go since he was 12 and is famous in South Korea even among people who do not play the game. The entire country was rooting for him to win.

The series was one of the most intensely watched events in the past week across Asia. The human-versus-machine battle hogged headlines, eclipsing reports of North Korean threats of a pre-emptive strike on the South.

The final game was too close to call until the very end. Experts said it was the best of the five games in that Lee was in top form and AlphaGo made few mistakes. Lee resigned about five hours into the game.

The final match was broadcast live on three major TV networks in South Korea and on big TV screens in downtown Seoul.

Google estimated that 60 million people in China, where Go is a popular pastime, watched the first match on Wednesday.

Before AlphaGo’s victory, the ancient Chinese board game was seen as too complex for computers to master. Go fans across Asia were astonished when Lee, one of the world’s best Go players, lost the first three matches.

Lee’s win over AlphaGo in the fourth match, on Sunday, showed the machine was not infallible: Afterward, Lee said AlphaGo’s handling of surprise moves was weak. The programme also played less well with a black stone, which plays first and has to claim a larger territory than its opponent to win.

Choosing not to exploit that weakness, Lee opted for a black stone in the last match.

Go players take turns placing the black and white stones on 361 grid intersections on a nearly square board. Stones can be captured when they are surrounded by those of their opponent.

To take control of territory, players surround vacant areas with their stones. The game continues until both sides agree there are no more places to put stones, or until one side decides to quit.

Google officials say the company wants to apply technologies used in AlphaGo in other areas, such as smartphone assistants, and ultimately to help scientists solve real-world problems.

As for Go, other top players are bracing themselves.

Chinese world Go champion Ke Jie said it was just a matter of before top Go players like himself would be overtaken by artificial intelligence.

“It is very hard for Go players at my level to improve even a little bit, whereas AlphaGo has hundreds of computers to help it improve and can play hundreds of practice matches a day,” Ke said.

“It does not seem like a good thing for we professional Go players, but the match played a very good role in promoting Go,” Ke said.

Parents often catch medical errors that their child’s doctor missed, according to a US study that suggests families may be an untapped resource for improving hospital safety and preventing mistakes. 

Roughly one in ten parents spotted mistakes that physicians did not, according to the study of safety incidents observed on two paediatric units at a hospital in Boston. 

“Parents may notice different things than healthcare providers do, and thereby provide complementary information that can only help make care safer,” said lead study author Dr Alisa Khan, a paediatrics researcher at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. 

“As anyone who has ever been hospitalised knows, hospitals are very complex places where there are a lot of moving parts, and errors are bound to happen despite all of our best efforts,” Khan added by e-mail. “I think we — including parents — can all work together to keep children safe.”

To assess how frequently parents detect mistakes that doctors didn’t catch, Khan and colleagues reviewed data on 383 kids hospitalised in 2013 and 2014. 

Parents completed written surveys detailing any safety incidents their children experienced during their hospital stays. 

Then, two physician reviewers classified incidents as medical errors, other quality issues, or situations that weren’t safety problems. 

Overall, 34 parents (8.9 per cent) reported 37 safety incidents, the researchers report in JAMA Paediatrics.

When doctors reviewed these incidents, they found 62 per cent, or 23 of the cases, were medical mistakes. Another 24 per cent, or 9 situations, involved other quality issues. 

The remaining 14 per cent, or 5 cases, were neither mistakes nor quality problems, the physician reviewers concluded. 

For the subset of cases that were medical mistakes, the reviewers found 30 per cent of the incidents caused harm and were preventable. 

Children with medical errors appeared to have longer hospital stays, and these kids were more likely than others in the study to have either metabolic or neuromuscular conditions. 

Preventable errors described by parents included delays detecting a foreign body left behind after a procedure, recognition and treatment of urinary retention, and receipt of pain medication. 

In one case a poorly dressed wound got contaminated with stool, while in another instance a child got an infection from an unused intravenous catheter. 

Parents identified communication problems as a contributing factor in a number of errors, including instances when day and night staff didn’t note a medication change and when written information for one patient was documented in a different patient’s medical record. 

Beyond its small size and the fact that it was conducted at just one hospital, other limitations of the study include its reliance on English-speaking parents and its sample of participants who were predominantly female, well-educated and affluent, the authors note. 

Kids of non-English-speaking parents may be particularly vulnerable to errors, and it’s possible that including these families might have exposed even higher rates of parent-reported errors, the researchers point out. 

Even so, the findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that clinicians may often be unaware of errors affecting their patients, said Dr Daniel Neuspiel, a paediatric researcher at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Charlotte who wasn’t involved in the study. 

“The specific frequency of such errors may differ in other populations, but we know they occur in all clinical settings,” Neuspiel added by email. 

While the study is too small to draw broad conclusions on error rates or safety, it still highlights the value of parents speaking up when something seems amiss with their child’s care, said Dr. Irini Kolaitis, a paediatric researcher at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study. 

“A parent knows their child better than any member of the healthcare team does, stands by their bedside and plays an active role in their child’s healthcare delivery throughout their hospitalisation and after discharge, and often has a sense when something is not right,” Kolaitis said by e-mail. “For these reasons, any perceived error that a parent reports, noting in the care of their child must be taken seriously.”