Mohamed Taha's ambition to disrupt the fertility industry began after his first sperm test. He had just been diagnosed with a kidney disease (which later turned out to be a misdiagnosis) and his doctor advised him to freeze his sperm as a precaution. According to the World Health Organisation, a normal sperm count is around 15 million sperm per millilitre (m/ml) of semen. Taha's sperm count was 15 times lower. Concerned, he chose to do a second analysis at a different clinic and, to his surprise, the result was far more positive: 20 m/ml.

Associate professor Tarek Taha will use the three-year, $44,000 award from the National Science Foundation to work toward his goal of developing an artificial intelligence chip. Taha says the chip will be more efficient and compact than current ones.

A senior Egyptian al-Qaida figure fighting in Syria was killed in a U.S. drone strike this week, the latest to be killed in such attacks in Syria, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and relatives said Friday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike Tuesday in the northwestern Idlib province. Before joining al-Qaida, Taha was a top figure in Egypt's notorious militant group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said several al-Qaida members, including Taha, were killed in Tuesday's strike.