In the hilly outskirts of sunny Barcelona, Spanish scientist Sergi Santos looks proudly over what appears to be five busty women in tiny shorts and tank tops perched around his living room. But look a little closer and it is clear they are not women but silicone sex dolls with wigs and artificial brains that Santos believes will not only earn him money, but may also be used to staff brothels and help combat sex trafficking.

Who will be watched and by whom? The test phase will take place at Berlin s Südkreuz train station. It will include only selected participants and be conducted by the German federal police, Federal Criminal Police Office and the Interior Ministry in conjunction with Deutsche Bahn, the station operator. More than 250 people have volunteered as test subjects. They submitted their names and two photos of their faces, which have been saved in a database so cameras can compare them to surveillance footage. How does the technology work?

We ve been trained to believe that Silicon Valley is nerd central. But that s a bad faith that s snowballed out of reality. Because most of the world s true nerds don t run cloud-based-data-sucking-app-a-ma-jigs. On the contrary, you will find them scattered around the world, holed up in attic studios, with a soldering iron in one hand and a PCB (printed circuit board) in the other. These are the guys and gals making DIY – sometimes boutique – synthesizer modules for electronic music. You know, the stuff that goes bleep. And what makes them geekier than thou is that they seldom do it for the money. It s for the love of it.

It’s almost eight months into 2017, and humanity’s demand for ecological resources has already exceeded what the planet can replenish annually, as Earth Overshoot Day is marked as August 2, reminding humans of the enormous toll they take on the Earth, World Wide Life Fund and Global Footprint Network said in a report. Earth Overshoot Day marks the point when humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds what the planet can renew in a whole year. Each year, the Earth regenerates an enormous amount of environmental resources – water, soil and clean air – that humans use up. In the last few decades, however, humans began using substantially more of these resources than can be replaced in a year.

Apple is removing virtual private network (VPN) services from its app store in China, VPN service providers said on Saturday, accusing the U.S. tech giant of bowing to pressure from Beijing to comply with stringent cyberspace regulations. VPNs allow users to bypass China’s so-called “Great Firewall” aimed at restricting access to overseas sites. Beijing has shut down dozens of China-based providers and it has been targeting overseas services as it bids to tighten its control over the internet, especially ahead of the Communist Party congress in August.

The Ministry of Environment has provided the Environmental Affairs Agency (EAA) with 34 exhaust gas/CO analyzer devices as a part of the ministry’s plan to inspect the levels of vehicles’ exhaust emissions in all governorates in Egypt.

Scientists are sucking carbon dioxide from the air with giant fans and preparing to release chemicals from a balloon to dim the sun s rays as part of a climate engineering push to cool the planet. Backers say the risky, often expensive projects are urgently needed to find ways of meeting the goals of the Paris climate deal to curb global warming that researchers blame for causing more heatwaves, downpours and rising sea levels. The United Nations says the targets are way off track and will not be met simply by reducing emissions for example from factories or cars – particularly after US President Donald Trump s decision to pull out of the 2015 pact.

Four international companies are set to compete to establish a wind farm in the Gulf of Suez. The farm will output 250 MW. Sources at the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) said that the companies include Vestas and Siemens, as well as Enercon and Ray Power. The consortium comprised of Power China and Goldenwind has been excluded, as their bid did not include European certificates. The new bids will be received from companies by the middle of August.

A South African girl born with the AIDS virus has kept her infection suppressed for more than eight years after stopping anti-HIV medicines, more evidence that early treatment can occasionally cause a long remission that, if it lasts, would be a form of cure. Her case was revealed Monday at an AIDS conference in Paris, where researchers also gave encouraging results from tests of shots every month or two instead of daily pills to treat HIV.

We tend to associate corals with warm, tropical regions. But there are also species that live in cold, dark, deep waters. What happens to these creatures as climate change warms the ocean and makes the water more acidic? A red and white colored cold-water coral It s a warm summer day in the German Baltic city of Kiel. But in the basement lab of the GEOMAR ocean research building, it s a chilly 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit). The seawater in the tanks is kept at 8 degrees Celsius. That s the temperature the cold-water corals live at in their natural environment, Janina Büscher tells DW.

"And the third possibility is that it is aliens." Only the *third* possibility, mind. That s the assessment of Dr Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life) in California. So what s all this speculation about aliens sending us signals from a faint star in our "neighborhood"? "On the basis of history, I would say the chances are not very great that it s aliens," Shostak told Deutsche Welle on Tuesday. "We go through this fairly frequently whenever anybody picks up an interesting signal - or anything unusual in the sky - and if you don t know what it is, one possibility is that it s aliens. Right? Well, look at history …"

Scientists described the case as a "mystery" but remain skeptical that the signal could be caused by intelligent aliens. "In case you are wondering, the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations," Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, said in a blog post.

Following the fuel subsidy cuts, ride-hailing service app Careem has increased their base fares on to start at LE5.5 — up from LE3.5 — and charge LE2.21 per kilometer, in order to balance the effect of the increase in fuel prices. The government announced earlier in July that 80 octane petrol and diesel will sell for LE3.65 ($0.20) a liter, up from LE2.35 ($0.13), while 92 octane petrol rose from LE3.5 to LE5 ($0.19 to $0.27) per liter. The company updated its fare rates for Cairo riders, announcing that the minimum fare rate would be increased to LE12 from LE10, and the price of ‘waiting’ per-hour to LE46. Careem also increased the airport surcharge to LE20 for riders commuting to and from Cairo International Airport.

So far, people who have problems climbing the stairs have had to rely on elevators or a stair-lift - but now American researchers have developed a new system. Yun Seong and his colleagues from the Missouri University of Science and Technology have designed suspension stairs that can buffer energy to re-release it when needed. This is intended to allow elderly people to climb up or down the stairs with greater ease.

The German Aerospace Center expressed readiness to provide Egypt with technical and logistic support to turn it into a main headquarter for the African Aerospace Agency, according to state-run news agency MENA. Egypt will officially implement this in January 2018, according to MENA. However, to reach this target Egypt has to seek international support.

The iPhone 8 might not be ready before its release date, a new report claims. Some central features in the new Apple handset still look like they will need more improvement at launch, according to Fast Company. As such, Apple might ship the hardware required to make them work, but not enable them until it can send a fix through a software update later on.

Ever since Louis Vuitton produced his first handcrafted leather luggage in 1854, his eponymous label has been synonymous with luxury. With the launch of Tambour Horizon, the French fashion house hopes to elevate the smartwatch in the same way it elevated the suitcase.

Apple Inc. is working on a feature that will let you unlock your iPhone using your face instead of a fingerprint. For its redesigned iPhone, set to go on sale later this year, Apple is testing an improved security system that allows users to log in, authenticate payments, and launch secure apps by scanning their face, according to people familiar with the product. This is powered by a new 3D sensor, added the people, who asked not to be identified discussing technology that s still in development. The company is also testing eye scanning to augment the system, one of the people said.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, will embark on another ambitious project, with the aim to world s largest grid-scale battery within 100 days, the company confirmed on Friday. The 46-year-old South African-born entrepreneur had agreed in the spring to come up with a solution to South Australia s renewable energy crisis, which the two sides have since spent months firming up.

No one has ever witnessed a male baboon forcing a female to have sex with him. Now a French-English research team thinks they have found the reason: raping her is simply unnecessary. The males use a much more subtle and longer-term strategy to get the amount of sex they want. "When I was in the field and observing the baboons, I often noticed that males were directing unprovoked attacks or chases toward females [in heat]," says Alice Baniel, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France, and lead author of the study.

The rodents - which were engineered to lack a sense of smell, put on a high-fat diet and ate just much as their non-engineered counterparts - lost an average of 16 percent of their body weight. Mice with enhanced olfactory senses gained weight. It seems the smell of delicious food is enough to make you gain weight. "Weight gain isn t purely a measure of the calories taken in," lead researcher Andrew Dillin said. "It s also related to how those calories are perceived."