Five minutes prior to the start of a speed-dating program called "Drawn to You" at the El Segundo Museum of Art, organizer Chelsea Hogan confides that no men have RSVP'd. It is a January evening, Friday the 13th -- a nightmare dating scenario. Eight women mill about the museum lobby, carefully dressed and nervously snacking on a cheese and veggie platter laid out beside bottles of Champagne and wine. The clock ticks 10 minutes past 6:30 p.m. as the awkward truth of the situation dawns on the women. A few men walk past the picture window on Main Street, but none turns and enters.

Exactly a century ago, a Tennessee entrepreneur named Clarence Saunders was granted a patent for a new idea that would disrupt retail by cutting jobs and costs at the same time. Though Saunders' name isn't well-known, you might have interacted with his invention in the past week or so: the self-service grocery store, where you choose your own items from the shelves. Before Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, customers would hand a shopping list to a clerk, who would assemble the order. It's an example of innovation that has endured. But in 2017, a group of entrepreneurs are starting to wonder whether more cost -- and more jobs -- could be wrung from the grocery business by having robots roam the aisles.

I teach one of the world's most popular MOOCs (massive online open courses), "Learning How to Learn," with neuroscientist Terrence J. Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The course draws on neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and education to explain how our brains absorb and process information, so we can all be better students. Since it launched on the website Coursera in August of 2014, nearly 1 million students from over 200 countries have enrolled in our class. We've had cardiologists, engineers, lawyers, linguists, 12-year-olds, and war refugees in Sudan take the course. We get emails like this one that recently arrived: "I'll keep it short. I've recently completed your MOOC and it has already changed my life in ways you cannot imagine. I just turned 29, am in the middle of a career change to computer science, and I've never been more excited to learn."

We are in an age where technology seeps into every aspect of our lives. We communicate with friends and family through Whatsapp and Facebook, sort out our finances on personal banking apps, largely carry out our jobs via email and other online arenas, and singles use dating apps as a platform for prospective partners. So it is no surprise that matters in our relationships can now be sorted online too.In our increasingly busy lives, it can be difficult to co-ordinate diaries, sort out the food shop or fairly split the bills. Meet the couples who are using apps in their relationships. A new study has revealed that Sunday at 9am is the most popular time of the week for Brits to get busy in the bedroom.

When she was a practicing occupational therapist, Elizabeth Fain started noticing something odd in her clinic: Her patients were weak. More specifically, their grip strengths, recorded via a hand-held dynamometer, were "not anywhere close to the norms" that had been established back in the 1980s. Fain knew that physical activity levels and hand-use patterns had changed a lot since then. Jobs had become increasingly automated, the professional and service sectors had grown, all sorts of measures of physical activity (like the likelihood that a child walks to school1) had declined, and the personal computer age had dawned. But to see the numbers decline so steeply and quickly was still a surprise, and not just to her.

I believe "less is more" will become the mantra for companies that need to consolidate their various service-driven mobile apps into one enterprise app. The goal will be to integrate data, analytics and insights into a single platform to create a more seamless customer experience. We helped one of our clients do this by deconstructing its old digital presence and revamping its mobile offering. After assessing its needs and analyzing user behavior, we helped them create a mobile app that integrated web functionality with mobile. Meanwhile, Google is reimagining apps with the introduction of Instant Apps.

Julian Assange may soon be asked to leave the Ecuadorian embassy. The WikiLeaks boss has been hiding inside the country's London building since summer 2012. But he may be given a month's notice to leave soon, according to Ecuadorian politicians. One presidential candidate, who will fight in the election next week, has promised that he will "cordially ask" Mr Assange to leave if he wins the contest. And the existing government has suggested that it is becoming unhappy with Mr Assange's continuing stay, which is intended as a way of him avoiding extradition to Sweden for questioning about a sexual assault allegation.

The rail industry has come up with a plan that may as well be out of a science-fiction movie to cope with growing demand and overcrowding: charging rail passengers for journeys by fingerprint or iris scan. The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), the organisation representing train operators and Network Rail, claims biometric technology would enable fares to be automatically charged marking the start of an era that could radically accelerate commute times. The technology represents the next step from travellers being able to us smartphones' Bluetooth signals to open station barriers. That will be trialled on Chiltern Railways' route between London Marylebone and Oxford Parkway over the coming months. The use of digital signalling technology will also allow trains to operate closer together, cutting delay, according to the RDG.

Activists protest against the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl in Brazil last year – videos and images of the assault were posted to social media and circulated widely, revictimizing the woman. As Facebook defended itself in a German court against claims that it does too little to counter abusive content on its platform, one of its lawyers made the intriguing claim "There are billions of postings each day. You want us to employ a sort of wonder machine to detect each misuse. Such a machine doesn't exist." For a technology company with a heavy investment in deep learning and filtering technologies that has repeatedly run afoul of free speech advocates for its aggressive stance on content removal this is certainly a curious claim to make.

Former NASA engineer Mark Moore will now be working on Uber's flying car project, Uber Elevate. SAN FRANCISCO -- George Jetson, your ride is on its way. Uber has just hired a NASA expert to build out its vision for flying cars Monday. Mark Moore, a 30-year veteran of the space agency with expertise in using electric motors to get a vehicle airborne, will help the ride-hailing giant execute on an expansive white paper it released last fall on developing VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) vehicles. "Uber continues to see its role as a catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem," Nikhil Goel, Uber's head of product for advanced programs, said in a statement.