A scorpion-milking robot designed to extract and store venom could put an end to the tricky manual method traditionally used by scientists. Researchers at the Ben M'sik Hassan II University in Morocco claim their robot not only speeds up the extraction process, but also makes it safer. Scorpion venom is used in a variety of medical fields, including cancer research, and the development of anti-malarial drugs. Current harvesting methods include electrical and mechanical stimulation, which can prove deadly for the scorpions and troublesome for scientists, due to electric shocks from the equipment. Not to mention the fact that the mere thought of grasping a venomous arachnid sounds pretty darn terrifying.

Five young inventors from Gambia are the latest students to be denied visas to enter the US for a prestigious international robotics contest in Washington. The teens found the rejection'very disheartening,' their coach, Mucktarr Darboe, said on Tuesday. Darboe, who is also a director in the largely Muslim West African nation's ministry of higher education, said the students were not given a reason for the visa denials in April, and he called the decision'disappointing and unfair.' The US Embassy in Banjul, Gambia's capital, could not immediately be reached for comment. Mucktarr Darboe is pictured with members of Gambia's student team that was denied visas to travel to Washington for a robotics contest Gambia has been through dramatic change in recent months, ousting via elections a longtime dictator, Yahya Jammeh, whose administration was accused of human rights abuses.

HERAT, AFGHANISTAN/DAKAR – Two Afghan girls refused visas to the United States for a robot-building competition said on Tuesday they were mystified by the decision, as the contest's organizers said teams from Iran and Sudan as well as a de facto Syrian team had gained visas. The unusual story of the Afghan all-girl team of robotics students emerged as the United States grapples with the legality of President Donald Trump's order to temporarily ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries. Afghanistan itself is not on the list and Team Afghanistan's robot, unlike its creators, has been allowed entry to the United States. Asked by Reuters on Tuesday why the girls were banned, a U.S. State Department spokesperson cited regulations prohibiting the agency from discussing individual visa cases. So the six team members will watch the ball-sorting machine compete in Washington D.C. via video link during the July 16-18 event from their hometown of Herat, in western Afghanistan, according to the FIRST Global contest organizers.

Scientists are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help predict which embryos will result in IVF success. In a new study, AI was found to be more accurate than embryologists at pinpointing which embryos had the potential to result in the birth of a healthy baby. Experts from Sao Paulo State University in Brazil have teamed up with Boston Place Clinic in London to develop the technology in collaboration with Dr Cristina Hickman, scientific adviser to the British Fertility Society. They believe the inexpensive technique has the potential to transform care for patients and help women achieve pregnancy sooner. During the process, AI was "trained" in what a good embryo looks like from a series of images.

FIRST Global holds the annual robotics competition to encourage learning in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, around the world. It invites one team from each country in an effort to build bridges, organizers said. This year's competition takes place from July 16-18.

A school robotics team made up of five students from The Gambia has joined Afghanistan's all-girl robotics team in having their one-week visas rejected by the U.S. in order to attend the First Global Challenge robotics competition in Washington D.C. The five Gambian students on the robotics team will have their robot shipped from the West African country to the First Global Challenge competition in the U.S., which takes place from July 16-18. But the teens will not be able to attend the prestigious international event themselves, Al-Jazeera reports. Despite saying they worked "rigorous shifts" of seven hours during Ramadan to complete the robot, they will instead have to settle for presenting it via Skype. Director of The Gambia's ministry of higher education, research, science and technology, Moktar Darboe, told Al Jazeera that the students are "very disappointed" they won't be able to attend the competition.

Samsung is working on a standalone virtual reality headset that can work without a smartphone or connected computer. A prototype of the VR headset has now appeared, and it comes with eye and hand tracking technology. The prototype VR headset by Samsung is labeled as Exynos VR III, and it comes with a 10nm hexa-core processor with an ARM Mali G71MP20 graphics, according to Liliputing. This seems to be an Exynos 9 Series chip, specifically the Exynos 8890 SoC. This setup will be able to run dual WQHD displays (2,560 x 1,440 resolution, or close to it) at 90Hz, or a single 4K display running at 75Hz.

On the day U.S.-backed forces made a major breakthrough in the battle for Islamic State group's (ISIS) operation capital Raqqa, reports said the terror group's poster girl Sally Jones, also known as Mrs. Terror, is desperate to return to the U.K. This was revealed by the wife of a former ISIS militant who is now living in a refugee camp in Syria, in an interview to Sky News. The woman, known as Aisha, said of Jones: "She was crying and wants to get back to Britain. She told me she wish [sic] to go to her country. Aisha said Umma Hussain al Britani, the name adopted by Jones, was distraught and crying as her plea had been denied by ISIS leaders on the basis she considered a military wife. READ: Who Is Sally Jones? Jones is originally from from Chatham, Kent, became the leading female recruitment officer for ISIS after moving to Raqqa and marrying a now-dead jihadist in 2004. She is now the most wanted woman in the world after climbing to the top of the CIA assassination list, the Sun reported. Jones, 47, has remained at large since her husband, ISIS recruit Junaid Hussain, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2015. The couple are thought to have been behind at least a dozen murderous attacks both in the Middle East and abroad. On September 28, 2015, the United Nations sanctioned Jones as an agent operating on behalf of a terrorist organization, the Mirror reported. Jones is believed to have enticed scores of would-be European jihadis to join the self-declared caliphate through her influential recruitment network called the "Raqqa 12," the Sun reported. Jones has been attributed with the recruitment and training of young girls in Syria. The Express quoted a counter extremism website as saying Jones's activity online was in line with her role as leader of the secret "Anwar al-Awlaki" battalion's female wing. "In this role, Jones is responsible for training all European female recruits, or'muhajirat', in the use of weapons and tactics.

Simon Sinek is by far one of the greatest thought leaders of our time. Almost religiously and on numerous occasions, I've implemented his "start with why" model and received positive results in doing so. When introduced, it challenged new and existing businesses to think differently, and pull on the emotions of consumers rather than their purse strings. It offered us the challenge of inventing a new way of thinking; outside of the box and with creative tact. Since the release of his now viral TED talk, we continue to see praise for the Sinek model, and it has been a for certain positive addition to education curriculums far and wide.

The challenge we face today is not a "world without work" but a world with rapidly changing work. The pace of progress in AI and machine learning is accelerating rapidly. In the past month alone, these are just a few of the news items I've seen: Deep learning and neural networks have dramatically improved in effectiveness and impact, leading to human-level performance in many aspects of vision, conversational speech, and problem-solving. As a result, industries are in the midst of a major transformation and more is on the way. Median income in America is lower now than in the past 15 years, and wealth is concentrated at the highest levels.