Smartphones are revolutionising the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, thanks to add-ons and apps that make their ubiquitous small screens into medical devices, researchers say.

For the first time, astronomers have discovered seven Earth-size planets orbiting a single nearby star — and these new worlds could hold life. This cluster of planets is less than 40 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, according to NASA and the Belgian-led research team who announced the discovery Wednesday.

Astronomers have discovered seven new planets which may host liquid water. Their find shows that earth-like planets are even more common in the universe than previously thought. Sieben erdähnliche Planeten um Trappist-1 (NASA/JPL-Caltech ) It is not the first time astronomers have found earth-like planets outside our solar system. But, it is the first time they have found so many of them at one time around one single star.

It's no secret the UK is keen to take a significant slice of the growing space industries pie. And on Tuesday, the government set out its plans for the future. If brought into law, the Draft Spaceflight Bill would allow horizontal flights to the edge of space from spaceports across the UK. Scientists will be able to "conduct vital medical experiments" in zero gravity. The draft legislation also seeks to encourage commercial space businesses and the creation of a "space launch market" in the UK. The aim is to start commercial spaceflight from a UK spaceport by 2020.

Fast isn't the word. If China's Tianhe-3 supercomputer manages to hit the exascale mark, it will handle one quintillion calculations per second. NB: 1 quintillion = 1,000 000 000 000 000 000 (yep, that's 18 zeros) Meng Xiangfei, a director at the National Supercomputer Center at Tianjin, told the China Daily newspaper that his institute aims to have a prototype of its Tianhe-3 ready by 2018. For that they will need breakthroughs in high-performance processors. But Meng is confident. If they succeed, Tianhe-3 will be 10 times faster than the current fastest supercomputer in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight.

If gangs of kids suddenly start loitering in your garden or your favourite corner café appears overrun with people staring excitedly at their smartphone screens this weekend, don't panic, it's just Pokémon Go. The mobile game developed by Niantic that took the world by storm last summer and ended the year having clocked up a remarkable 550 million downloads is getting its first major overhaul since it launched back in July and started setting world records.

The 28th annual Apple developers' conference, WWDC, is to take place over the week of June 5-9, 2017, marking a major opportunity for the company to outline big updates to iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV apps and abilities.

A new malaria immunization method that you tested on 67 healthy individuals was 100 percent successful in the first round of testing. Is this a breakthrough in the fight against malaria? Peter Kremsner: We sure hope so. The success we had with this new approach to malaria immunization surprised us, too. New malaria vaccines have been released quite frequently. What is different about your results? We took the living parasites and put them in a vaccine, which we then gave the individuals together with an anti-malaria drug. That drug is ingested orally. The parasites get into the liver, but the illness only breaks out when they reach the bloodstream - and that's where the anti-malaria drug catches them. It weakens or kills the parasites so that they can't do any harm anymore.

What are the threats for kids online? Official advice on internet safety tends to focus on a few main threats. In late 2015, the UK government published measures to keep children safe online at school and at home. It includes "cyber bullying, pornography and the risk of radicalization" as major threats. It refers to "some school children, who travelled or attempted to travel to Syria, were able to access material about Daesh ["Islamic State" or ISIS] and foreign fighters via school computers."

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is holding a meeting in Harare on how to stop the spreading infestation of the "fall armyworm." The caterpillar has already caused damage to staple crops in Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ghana. There are reports that Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia are also affected.

My daughter keeps asking why the dinosaurs died, and I've been telling her that an asteroid hit the Earth and threw a lot of dust into the air, and that's why the plants couldn't grow anymore so the dinosaurs got hungry and went to sleep and never woke up. (She's four). But that's not exactly right, is it? During the last few years, some research has shown that there was not that much dust, or dust of the right size, that was thrown into the air. But there was sulfur. And then the sulfur in the atmosphere developed into sulfur aerosols. And they can cool down the Earth and block the light.

Silicon Valley is struggling for its life on the issue of immigration. Over 100 tech firms, including Google, Facebook and Apple, have joined the legal battle against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily barring entry to nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of low-lying areas of Oroville, Yuba and other towns downstream from Oroville Dam on Sunday, citing a "hazardous situation" at the tallest dam in the US. According to US Census data, over 160,000 people live in the area.

Deutsche Welle: As the first new German astronaut after Alexander Gerst there are going to be comparisons, and even here today (2.2.2017) at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, you were almost introduced as Gerst. How are you going to jump that shadow? What do you bring to the table? Matthias Maurer: Well, you said it: Alexander Gerst is very well known in Germany - he's famous here. That's because he did an outstanding job. He flew the 2014 Blue Dot mission. And next year he flies again and then it'll be as commander of the International Space Station (ISS). So I believe he did an outstanding job, and I want to follow his example. But I also want to try to find my own profile. And what would that profile be? Would it be in the science you do?

Social giant Facebook has released a new networking feature on its mobile Android and iOS apps, designed to facilitate connections between people who aren't already Facebook friends.

The race to space between East and West was in full swing on August 26 1978, when East-German Sigmund Jähn took off on board of space ship Soyuz 31 to the Soviet space station Saljut 6. Some time had passed since Yuri Gagarin flew to space as the first man in 1961 - an achievement countered by US space agency NASA with a total of five moon landings between 1969 and 1972. Now, a new phase in the world's space competition was about to begin: The Soviet Union's socialist fraternal countries were invited to send their own cosmonauts into space - long before the US opened its own space program to its allies.

This could be a special year for human spaceflight. Europe and the US are collaborating and progressing with the Orion spacecraft, and next week, SpaceX inaugurates a revamped launch site in part for human cargo. To call it a space race at this stage would be odd, not to mention misleading. What we're seeing now is more like a sprint, or a dash, where all the competitors are holding hands to the finish.

Yelling, corporal punishment or verbal threats of physical consequences, or "harsh parenting," as it was defined in a new long-term study, causes children to perform poorly in school and to behave badly outside of it. According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh in the US state of Pennsylvania, children raised in a severe parental environment are more likely to skip homework to play with friends and more willing to break rules in order to maintain those friendships - at the consequence of academic performance.

Data-Guru Hans Rosling died on February 7, 2017. His organization Gapminder sent out a tweet with the information late Tuesday evening Swedish time. Rosling was a scientist who made an art form out of explaining the world to us while never losing his hope for humanity.

At a Vatican conference on organ trafficking, China's top official on transplantation said on Tuesday that the country was working on improving the way it handled organ transplants. "China is mending its ways and constantly improving its national organ donation and transplantation systems," said Dr. Huang Jiefu, the director of China's transplant program.