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A Croatia supporter and model has insisted she feels comfortable wearing her daring World Cup outfits without fear of arrest in Qatar, despite strict modesty rules in the conservative country. Ivana Knoll said she was initially 'super angry' after reading the dress code restrictions for the Gulf state, with both male and female visitors advised to 'dress modestly' in public I heard about the rules and I was shocked. The dress code forbids showing shoulders, knees, belly and everything and I was like 'Oh my God, I don't even have the clothes to cover all of that'. 'I was super...

Biotech wizards have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch, in a major step towards next-generation robotics and prosthetic limbs. The lab-tested material responds to almost the same pressures as human skin and with the same speed, they reported in the British journal Nature Materials. Important hurdles remain but the exploit is an advance towards replacing today's clumsy robots and artificial arms with smarter, touch-sensitive upgrades, they believe. "Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it," said Ali Javey, an associate professor of computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, who led one of...

Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows. "My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it. At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it...

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners. Levy's conclusion was based on about 450 publications in the fields of psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction. The...

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners. Levy's conclusion was based on about 450 publications in the fields of psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction. The...