NASA's Curiosity rover takes a selfie on the surface of Mars

The NASA Curiosity rover took a break from the alien hunt and made a nice selfie on the surface of Mars. The photo was taken to celebrate a great moment: the first time the robot performed a chemical experiment in the Glen Etive crater, rich in clay. You can see two small holes on the left of the rover where scientists hope to find the remains of bacterial life that died millions of years ago. The photo is sewn from a series of 57 photos taken in the robotic arm of Curiosity earlier this month. NASA scientists have been waiting for seven years for the ideal location for the rover to conduct "wet chemistry" experiments in its portable laboratory. SAM Principal Researcher Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, said, "We are looking forward to finding a zone that is compelling enough for wet chemistry. 'Now that we are in the clay unit, we have finally understood.' This is the second time that Curiosity has been conducting an experiment using liquid chemicals after scientists were forced to use its limited reserves when its drill did not work well in December. 2016. Curiosity landed on the red planet in 2012 and the Glen Etive is considered a "strategic location" that will tell more about the formation of the unit containing clay.

They took advantage of the precious dress rehearsal at Ogunquit Beach, Maine, Connecticut, USA, to make adjustments that improved the recent experience. The results will be known next year. Mr. Mahaffy added, "SAM's data is extremely complex and takes time to interpret, but we are all looking forward to seeing what we can learn from this new location, Glen Etive." At about 98 meters (300 m) behind the rover is Vera Rubin Ridge, which Curiosity left almost a year ago, and beyond the ridge you can see the Gale crater floor and the northern edge of the crater. Mount Sharp, a 3-mile mountain inside the crater Clay-based rocks preserve chemical compounds, which dissolve over time when they are bombarded by radiation from space and the sun. The scientific team is intrigued by the question of whether organic compounds - elements of life - have been preserved in the rocks of Glen Etive, and how this area will give them a better idea of ​​how the climate is. it has changed billions of years ago and hopefully will provide clues as to whether the red planet has ever supported life.

IA application: Manpower France adopts Sidetrade solution

Artificial intelligence solutions seem more and more adopted by French companies.

An example is Manpower France, which announced that it has acquired the Sidetrade AI solution.

Manpower France generates annual sales of 4 billion euros and covers 1.3 million invoices with 80,000 corporate customers. To cope with these volumes and ever more complex payment procedures, the financial department acquired Sidetrade's technology in 2013. This accelerates the automation of the recovery process and allows modeling a strategy adapted to different customer segments. Manpower France indicates having thus improved its efficiency, materialized by a significant improvement of its DSO (average payment time).

Despite these good performances, the complexity of the purchasing process and the exponential growth of data convinced Sidetrade to enrich its platform with artificial intelligence technology.

"Our solution, like all automation software, was based on a set number of scenarios, which had to be regularly reviewed by business experts. Sidetrade adds to these Artificial Intelligence by exploiting the profusion of data relating to the payment behavior of companies and providing financial departments with the best possible recommendations in real time "explains Jean-Cyril Schütterlé, Sidetrade's Chief Product Officer.

As a player in the changing world of work, Manpower is already using AI in its interactions with its candidates and clients to support them in constantly changing environments. Manpower France's financial management was therefore the ideal candidate to test the new Sidetrade AI, called Aimie, as a preview.

Aimie, an AI to adapt in real time to the behavior of each customer
Aimie has been driven by 230 million inter-company payment experiences, totaling more than 700 billion euros in sales over the last three years. With this unique knowledge, she analyzes each Manpower France customer account and determines the best possible strategy according to a multitude of criteria, such as the buyer and seller profile, the invoice characteristics and the history. the commercial relationship with any litigation.

"Aimie analyzes what has worked, executes the automatic recovery actions directly and identifies the debtors to be targeted first. It takes into account available resources in order to allocate actions optimally. We first tested Aimie on two client portfolios for two months.

In view of the results, we quickly rose to the charge. After four months, Aimie managed nearly 60% of single-site customers, which represents more than 5,000 accounts and nearly 10,000 recovery shares on average per month, "said Laurent Bueno, Credit Director at Manpower France.

"With more than 700 paying centers to manage, it is impossible for a manager to call all the debtors in his portfolio. Aimie helps her determine which customers should be contacted first. "

After nine months of testing, the first results are there: the efficiency of the recovery actions carried out with the support of Aimie is growing by 12%.

"The adoption of Aimie should allow teams to spend more time on high value-added tasks. Away from certain anxiety-provoking speeches, we hope that AI solutions will give back to human know-how, "concludes Laurent Bueno.