NASA s recruitment drive for a new Planetary Protection Officer was too good for headline writers to resist this week. "Frequent travel may be required," the vacancy posting on the US government s jobs website advised. There were no mentions of first contact or Hollywood action heroes, but retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly took the conversation there on everybody s behalf. He nominated Bruce Willis, perhaps in reference to films like Armageddon or The Fifth Element.

Medics first discovered noroviruses in 1972 using an electron microscope. Since then, they ve found a large variety of different noroviruses, several of which are contagious to humans. Where are they? Noroviruses can be found all over the world. They re responsible for roughly half of all non-bacterial cases of diarrhea. Children under five as well as the weak and elderly are most vulnerable. That s why epidemic waves of infections often hit child daycares or senior living facilities. There s a risk of infection anywhere that people are confined to a space over a long period of time. At theAthletic World Championships in London, for example, there s an ongoing epidemic. And in 2012, there was a case in Germany where a medium-sized cruise ship had to be put under quarantine in Wiesbaden after 67 tourists fell ill, or roughly every second guest.

As President Donald Trump touts new oil pipelines and pledges to revive the nation s struggling coal mines, federal scientists are warning that burning fossil fuels is already driving a steep increase in heat waves, droughts and floods. It is the latest example of collisions between Trump s environmental policies and the facts presented by his government s experts.

Facebook is continuing its quest to crack down on fake news. The social network on Thursday began rolling out “Related Articles” that provide additional perspectives and information on stories shared on News Feeds These articles will appear below the link for topics many users are talking about on Facebook(FB, Tech30). They will also include articles fact-checked by third-party sites such as Snopes and PolitiFact, which employ editors.

Sico Technology, an Egyptian-based company, recently announced that it will receive equipment to produce the first Egyptian-made smartphone in November. The company, which partnered with China’s Megane on the project, is set to begin the assembly lines in October, and hopes to launch at an annual production capacity of 1.8 million devices a year, head of SICO technology, Mohamed Salem, said in a statement on Sunday.

Head of the New & Renewable Energy Authority Mohamed Mousa announced on Sunday that Egypt will begin to manufacture solar panels soon, saying that the project will pave the way to launch other initiatives. According to the state-run newspaper, Akhabr Al Youm, the solar panels will be attached to buildings that are being already established in Egypt’s New Administrative capital.

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.