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.

Robots could be used to help kids diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a new research project carried out jointly by a university and a robotics startup. Researchers at Spain's Universidad Miguel Hernández and the Spanish Aisoy Robotics company are collaborating to investigate how the latter group's pint-size educational Aisoy robot can enhance the effectiveness of therapy sessions at the UMH University Clinic -- particularly related to developing children's emotional, social, and cognitive skills. As an example, the robot will express emotions a child can then identify, or suggest playing certain games. Over the course of their time together, the idea is that kids will build up emotional attachments with the robot, and the interaction will aid with therapeutic adherence. "We already have an Emotional OS, called Airos, which includes an emotional engine, a cognitive engine, and a decision engine," José Manuel del Río, Aisoy's CEO, told Digital Trends.

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.

Around midnight one Saturday in January, Sarah Jeong was on her couch, browsing Twitter, when she spontane ously wrote what she now bitterly refers to as "the tweet that launched a thousand ships." The 28-year-old journalist and author of The Internet of Garbage, a book on spam and online harassment, had been watching Bernie Sanders boosters attacking feminists and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. In what was meant to be a hyper bolic joke, she tweeted out a list of political carica tures, one of which called the typical Sanders fan a "vitriolic crypto racist who spends 20 hours a day on the Internet yelling at women." The ill-advised late-night tweet was, Jeong admits, provocative and absurd--she even supported Sanders. But what happened next was the kind of backlash that's all too familiar to women, minorities, and anyone who has a strong opinion online. By the time Jeong went to sleep, a swarm of Sanders supporters were calling her a neoliberal shill. By sunrise, a broader, darker wave of abuse had begun. She received nude photos and links to disturbing videos. One troll promised to "rip each one of [her] hairs out" and "twist her tits clear off." The attacks continued for weeks. "I was in crisis mode," she recalls.

For two decades, Jerry Gonzaga was addicted to drugs. Like many of his neighbors and friends in Parañaque, a city south of Manila, Gonzaga would take shabu, an inexpensive amphetamine, to keep him focused on fixing cars, selling umbrellas, and doing other odd jobs to feed his wife and eight children. Then, on June 30, Rodrigo Duterte assumed the Philippine presidency on promises to kill scores of drug users -- and Gonzaga, a wiry 43-year-old, tried to turn himself in to police. At the station, officers made him sign a form pledging to stay off drugs. "It said, 'If you're caught the first, second and third time, there are warnings and conditions,'" he said.

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.

With one out of every 64 American children being affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder, it's a huge problem worth working on. Shriya Sreeju (aged 6) agrees. She presented the Pepper Robot-powered Autism Solutions robot to the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon audience today. "Pepper shows you a flash card on its screen," Shriya explains. "If the kid shows the right card, they get a high five and the robot will say good job! When the kid gets two high fives, Pepper will do a happy dance and show a smiley on screen, to help show emotion."

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."