With slot machines producing the bulk of profits in most of the world's casinos, gaming managers make it their business to keep slot players happy. So how do they prevent customers who are losing from walking away?

A collaboration among microbiologists, clinicians and experts on bacterial evolution revealed that, with time, highly adapted bacterial communities in the sinuses of people with cystic fibrosis (CF) become more fragmented and experience mutations that erode their genomes—a dogma-challenging discovery that has scientists reimagining how they think about the evolution of microbes in chronic...

NIST has released a pH reference material in a uniquely stable form for calibrating the instruments used by a wide variety of manufacturers. pH is one of the most measured properties during the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, consumer products like detergents and toiletries, and commodity chemicals.

Along with the use of face masks, social distancing in public remains one of the most practiced front-line defenses against the spread of COVID-19. However, flows of pedestrians, including those practicing the 6-foot rule for distancing, are dynamic and characterized by nuances not always carefully considered in the context of everyday, public spaces.

In many parts of the world, the supply of COVID-19 vaccines continues to lag behind the demand. While most vaccines are designed as a two-dose regimen, some countries, like Canada, have prioritized vaccinating as many people as possible with a single dose before giving out an additional dose.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 218 million infections and over 4.5 million deaths as of Sept. 3, 2021. Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as case isolation, quarantining contacts, and the complete lockdown of entire countries, were implemented in an effort to contain the pandemic. But these NPIs often come at the expense of economic disruption, harm to social and mental...

Researchers have long suspected a connection between information and the physical universe, with various paradoxes and thought experiments used to explore how or why information could be encoded in physical matter. The digital age propelled this field of study, suggesting that solving these research questions could have tangible applications across multiple branches of physics and computing.

Humans are shaping environments at an accelerating rate. Indeed, one of the most important current topics of research is the capacity of animals to adapt to human-induced environmental change and how that change affects the expression of animal traits.

A new report released today shows that the cut in benefit caused by the withdrawal of the £20 uplift in Universal Credit will have a significant impact, especially for claimants without other sources of income. But the findings also highlight deeper, structural issues with Universal Credit which are revealed by the ways in which the uplift affects different groups of claimants.

Sub-Saharan Africa is developing rapidly. With growing economies and increased trade, major road infrastructure plans have been developed for the region, which also hosts some of the world's most unique and diverse ecosystems. New research looked into how roads might impact ecosystems in the region.

Super strong and only one atom thick, graphene holds promise as a nanomaterial for everything from microelectronics to clean energy storage. But lack of one property has limited its use. Now, researchers at Princeton University and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have overcome that problem using low-temperature plasma, creating a novel technique...

Climate change is causing temperatures to rise and is also increasing the likelihood of storms, heavy rain, and flooding—the recent flood disaster in the Ahr valley in Germany is just one such example. What we need to ask ourselves in this connection is how quickly the climate can recover from the warming caused by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Advancements in the design of medical devices have greatly improved patient survival rates, but currently employed metals, which are mostly based on crystalline titanium, still provoke a thrombosis response upon contact with blood, with potentially life-threatening consequences. This severe problem has also been recognized in the Zurich Heart project of University Medicine Zurich (HMZ), which aims...

An exciting new solar material called organic-inorganic halide perovskites could one day help the U.S. achieve its solar ambitions and decarbonize the power grid. One thousand times thinner than silicon, perovskite solar materials can be tuned to respond to different colors of the solar spectrum simply by altering their composition mix.

A study identified 514 marine species in the bathing areas of the Barcelona Forum, an artificial beach affected by different anthropogenic impacts. This high biodiversity—which includes the presence of exotic species—is a shocking finding in such an altered marine habitat like this city beach in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain).

Recently, photoredox catalysis has emerged as an appealing coupling partner for transition metal catalysis, termed metallaphotocatalysis, to develop new synthetic methodologies as well as improve the efficiency of established transformations. Conversely, most of these dual catalytic platforms have focused on the use of homogeneous photoredox catalysts such as Ru- and Ir-based polypyridyl complexes...

This research is led by Prof. Yunqi Liu (Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Prof. Yunlong Guo (Institute of Chemistry Chinese Academy of Sciences). Ambipolar polymer semiconductors have wide applications in electronic devices such as organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), logic circuits, and organic light-emitting transistors (OLETs). Although some high-performance...

Just north of Antarctica and a little east of the southern tip of South America is the Scotia Sea. Besides glimpses of an occasional iceberg, these waters offer little to tourists.

A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in France has recorded the details and characteristics of an undersea volcano that was born in 2018. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the group describes the volcano as the largest undersea eruption ever recorded.

A small international team of researchers has used laser-stimulated fluorescence to learn more about how pterosaurs flew. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of the ancient flying reptiles aimed at learning more about their flight mechanics.

A Russian actor and a film director who spent 12 days in orbit making the world's first movie in space said Tuesday they were so thrilled with their experience on the International Space Station that they felt sorry to leave.

At least 41 people died and more than a dozen were missing after landslides and flash floods triggered by several days of heavy rain hit northern India, officials said Tuesday.

Biological dispersants enhance the breakdown of the more toxic chemicals in crude oil better than synthetic chemical dispersants, a new study shows.

Architects, contractors, planners and construction clients must consider building projects from a moral standpoint based on their lifetime carbon impact, a leading design and climate expert has suggested.