Microsoft's new speech recognition technology is able to transcribe conversational speech as well as (or even better than) humans. The technology scored a word error rate (WER) of 5.9%, which was lower than the 6.3% WER reported just last month.

Planetary scientist James Shirley has suggested a model that could help predict when Mars' global dust storms are most likely to occur. The winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 97 km/h (60 mph), less than half the speed of some hurricane-force winds on Earth.

The possibility of arranging many small quantum computers into dense, powerful parallel networks could be the key to creating multiple-quantum computer systems. Fully functional quantum computing systems would dramatically change everything we do, affecting such sectors as finance, telecommunications, and healthcare.

With investing in new and established forms of renewable energy, Scotland sets itself up for independence from fossil fuels. With so many countries achieving or setting sights toward clean energy, pressure may turn up for others currently lagging behind.