Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man suspected of planting a series of bombs in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, praised Anwar Awlaki in handwritten notes found on his person after he was wounded in a shootout Monday. FBI agents recovered a notebook from Rahami after he was wounded by police in Linden, N.J., a U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times. In the notebook, Rahami describes his affinity for Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who became a leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Awlaki was killed in a CIA drone strike in 2011, but his legacy has spread among jihadists thanks to online audio and video sermons. The notebook also contained ramblings about the Boston Marathon bombers, the official said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation released long-awaited guidelines Tuesday for the testing and deployment of self-driving vehicles, giving manufacturers and researchers some clarity for the future, but providing only a vague sense of the federal government's exact responsibilities. At a Tuesday morning news conference, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx described the 116-page policy document as "the most comprehensive national automated vehicle policy that the world has ever seen." However, he added that the policy is a "living document" and leaves room for "more growth and changes in the future." "One of reasons we take great pains not to be so prescriptive" is because the technology is "dynamic" and changing fast, he said, so the government needs to be "flexible." In the document, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration emphasized that it did not intend to write the "final word on highly automated vehicles" with these guidelines.

Machine learning can predict strains of bacteria likely to cause food poisoning outbreaks, research has found. The study – which focused on harmful strains of E. coli bacteria – could help public health officials to target interventions and reduce risk to human health. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute used software that compares genetic information from bacterial samples isolated from both animals and people. The software learns the DNA signatures that are associated with E. coli samples that have caused outbreaks of infection in people. It can then pick out the animal strains that have these signatures, which are therefore likely to be a threat to human health.

Microsoft says it is going to "solve" cancer in the next 10 years. The company is working at treating the disease like a computer virus, that invades and corrupts the body's cells. Once it is able to do so, it will be able to monitor for them and even potentially reprogram them to be healthy again, experts working for Microsoft have said. The company has built a "biological computation" unit that says its ultimate aim is to make cells into living computers. As such, they could be programmed and reprogrammed to treat any diseases, such as cancer.

Vacations are supposed to reduce stress, not create it. Just planning a vacation can be pretty darn stressful. Now, Google wants to remove all those vacation anxieties--or at least some of them. Today, the company launched Google Trips, a new mobile app dedicated to trip planning. You key in where you want to go, and it helps you arrange everything from hotel and dinner reservations to sightseeing.

The new Bedtime feature is a new kind of alarm – meant not only to be set for when you wake up, but also when you should be going to sleep. It aims to make sure that people spend enough time in bed by alerting them to their sleep time, and analysing whether or not they're actually making it into bed on time. It's used by heading to the Clock app in iOS 10, where there is a new tab at the bottom. There, you'll get the option to add what time you want to wake up and then what time you want to go to sleep. This might be the first thing you notice, and it's probably the most significant change to your daily routine.

A new robotic end effector inspired by the movement and flexibility of octopus tentacles is being tested for full-scale implementation at salad and produce packager Taylor Farms Pacific in Tracy, CA. Comprising soft robotic "fingers," the new gripper tool is the first to be able to handle items as delicate as a cherry tomato and then immediately pick up an item of a different size, shape, and weight, without tool changeover or reprogramming. "This is the most exciting project I've worked on in my career," says Alan Applonie, President of Taylor Farms Pacific. "What's different about soft robotics is the actual fingers, the grippers, that go on the end of the arm, that are now able to handle and manage strawberries and other delicate fruits and vegetables without damage. It actually looks like you detached an arm off a robot and put octopus fingers on the end of it."

Some might remember the 2000 sci-fi film The 6th Day. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously instructs his refrigerator to order more milk when it informs him that the milk had expired. While at the time this convenience might have seemed preposterous, today smart products like this are quickly filling our homes. Insights firm Gartner suggests that the average household could be equipped with more than 500 smart devices by 2022. Samsung has recently launched one such device called the Family Hub Refrigerator.

In 2008, when Hillary Clinton first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Barack Obama, I asked one of her oldest allies how she could be losing a race that appeared to be hers to win. "I've known Hillary for many years, ever since she came to Arkansas," former Sen. Dale Bumpers told me. "She'll find a way to screw it up. Eight years later, the conventional wisdom is that Clinton is a much better candidate. She learned hard lessons from her failure in 2008; her campaign this year is smarter and less chaotic.

Each fall, groggy teenagers resign themselves to another year of fighting their body clocks so they can get to class on time. It's well known that teens who don't get at least eight hours of sleep a night face a slew of problems. That's why both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control recommend shifting middle- and high-school start times to 8:30 a.m. or later. Yet during the 2011-12 school year -- the most recent statistics available -- only 17.7 % of the nation's public middle, high and combined schools met the 8:30 a.m. In California, the average start time was 8:07 a.m.