Despite all our best intentions to lose those pounds piled on over Christmas, it doesn't always work out. All too often, exercise plans - like regularly attending the gym - go by the wayside before January is through. In a study reported in the journal Cell Metabolism, US scientists found that diet and dopamine - sometimes dubbed the happiness hormone - might be a factor in our motivation.

Next year will be very much about Saturn. Early in the year, the Cassini spacecraft will come very close to the planet's rings, transmitting unprecedented views of the breathtaking system. However, on September 15, the joy will turn into sadness. At 1207 UTC the spacecraft will plunge into the planet and burn up in its thick atmosphere. This is going to be the end of one of the most successful space missions ever. The Cassini spacecraft, a US-European mission, was launched in 1997. Sentinel-3A (Eumetsat)

Nokia Corp (NOKIA.HE) said on Wednesday it had filed a number of lawsuits against Apple Inc (AAPL.O) for violating 32 technology patents, striking back at the iPhone maker's legal action targeting the one-time cellphone industry leader a day earlier.

The world's most popular social network is also the app that is still eating away most at your Android handset's performance. According to Avast Software's latest study into app use and performance drain, Facebook still tops the charts. Moreover, because of Instagram (6th place), Pages Manager (9th) and Facebook Messenger (10th), the company actually has four apps in the top 10.

The Ministry of Antiquities said it seized an archaeological stone that was placed on display at a market in Gharbiya governorate on Friday.

E-CIGARETTE use is exploding among young people and is now "a major public health concern", the US Surgeon General warned Thursday, sparking disagreement from experts in Britain where the devices are seen more favourably.

The gulf between “human” and “machine” is closing. Machine learning has enabled virtual reality to feel more “real” than ever before, and AI’s replication of processes that were once confined to the human brain is ever-improving. Both are bringing technology into ever-closer proximity with the human body. Things are getting weird.

Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn't get too excited about the results of animal studies, and he doesn't make house calls.

Come December 25, there will no doubt be many a new doll lying under a Christmas tree. Either one that walks, one that talks, or one that cries or laughs. So at 18 inches tall, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll - sporting a denim jacket and pink skirt no less - should seem quite harmless.

Video has gone through so many mutations it is hard to keep track. From Ampex's studio-bound VRX-1000 Quadruplex tape machine in 1956 to more commercial models through the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

On the day it rolled out its self-driving car fleet in its hometown of San Francisco, ride-hailing company Uber was threatened will legal action from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). "If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action," the DMV said in a letter on Wednesday.

On the day it rolled out its self-driving car fleet in its hometown of San Francisco, ride-hailing company Uber was threatened will legal action from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

It was an accident waiting to happen. Despite all efforts by Joachim Müller-Jung the conversation slowly but surely swerved towards self-driving cars. Up until then, I had been rather bored.

Yahoo has discovered a 3-year-old security breach that enabled a hacker to compromise more than 1 billion user accounts, breaking the company's own humiliating record for the biggest security breach in history.

Britain's fertility regulator has decided that "three-parent baby” treatments can go ahead, opening the way for parents to be treated as early as next spring. This landmark decision makes Britain the first country in the world to offer licenses for this treatment. Earlier this year, a baby was born in Mexico through the technique.

You've just published a new book, "Welcome to the Universe" with co-authors J. Richard Gott and Michael Strauss. It's based on a course you taught at Princeton University. And it starts with a thought exercise in numbers as a way to describe the size and scale of the universe. So I wanted to try one out on you… … and I'm sure you're scared! Thing is, I was talking to this kid the other day, and I tried to describe the universe as this endless expanse. But I also said how that confused me, because surely the universe has to exist in something. And he said, "Well, what about endless - plus one?" And I was totally stumped by that, so I thought I'd hand it over to you. Endless plus one? Is that possible?

Nowadays, the smartphone is our constant companion: Spotifiy for music, WhatsApp for messaging, Netflix for movies. We often use our phones for several hours per day, for private and work purposes. Some people even have the feeling they can't live without it. But because of the broad use of smartphones in society, it is hard to say when an individual person is addicted to media - or just a frequent user.

If all we do is listen to the technology industries - in all their various shapes and sizes - there is but one truth: digitalization is good. Or if you'll permit a line of Orwellian poetry: digital good, analog bad. Truths are seldom so simple or one-sided. Even in the digital world, we have the Boolean values "true" and "false," "on" and "off," and zeros and ones. And even these ignore the grey zones in between.

Even for the skeptics among us, it's hard to overstate the importance of this anniversary: 75 years ago - at the height of the Second World War - a 31-year-old German civil engineer called Konrad Zuse presented the Z3. It was the first programmable, automatic computer - and was widely viewed as the child of a family of machines we take for granted today, from desktop computers and mobile devices to the massive data centers controlling the world.

Yoshinori Ohsumi, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, was awarded science's most prestigious award for "his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy," the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine announced in Stockholm on Monday October 3rd.

The thing that stands out most for me in your book "The Glass Cage" is the idea of automating moral choices. You suggest it's impossible to automate certain processes without automating moral choices too - for instance, how should a self-driving car be programmed to react in an accident if there's a chance only one of two lives can be saved? How do you feel about companies such as Apple and Google, who are developing self-driving cars, taking on the responsibility of making these moral choices for the rest of us?