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Phys.org / Native Americans were making dice, gambling, exploring probability millennia before their Old World counterparts

A new study in American Antiquity presents evidence that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by Native American hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago at the end of ...

Apr 2, 2026
Phys.org / 58 tortillas, five hot sauces and one toilet: life aboard spacecraft Orion

They're sipping smoothies, snapping phone pics, dealing with crashed email and fixing broken toilets: astronauts, they're just like us.

Apr 4, 2026
Phys.org / Why forest loss is making our watersheds leak rain

It's a well-established fact that forests and water are deeply connected. For decades, paired-watershed experiments—a scientific method for evaluating land-use impacts on water quantity or quality—have shown that when we ...

Apr 4, 2026
Phys.org / Nature's photocopiers caught 'doodling'—scientists say it could revolutionize how DNA is written

New research has discovered that the molecular machines responsible for copying our DNA have a surprising hidden talent—an ability to create entirely new and highly sophisticated DNA sequences from scratch. The study, led ...

Apr 1, 2026
Phys.org / How noise limits today's quantum circuits

Imagine you're trying to build a very long, complicated chain of dominoes. The aim is that each domino hits the next one perfectly, all the way down the line, producing an amazing result at the end. A quantum circuit is like ...

Apr 2, 2026
Medical Xpress / Childhood cancer is a substantial contributor to global childhood mortality and global cancer burden

Childhood cancer is the eighth-leading cause of childhood death globally and causes more deaths than measles, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, with outcomes largely determined by resource availability, according to the latest findings ...

Apr 3, 2026
Phys.org / Humor helps older adults navigate aging, research suggests

Humor plays a vital role in helping older adults cope with the challenges of aging and staying socially connected, according to new research.

Apr 4, 2026
Medical Xpress / Heat-activated skin patch can kill melanoma cells without surgery

Melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer that is typically removed surgically. Now, researchers publishing in ACS Nano report they have developed a potential noninvasive treatment for melanoma in the form of a stretchy, heat-activated ...

Apr 1, 2026
Tech Xplore / Gold coating could solve long-standing challenge with zinc batteries

As the demand for more reliable power systems grows in the renewable energy sector, the race is on to develop batteries that cost less but have a longer lifespan. While zinc-based batteries are safer and more cost-effective ...

Apr 2, 2026
Phys.org / Engineered E. coli dependency may help contain microbes to defined areas

Take a typical fish out of the water and it won't live long. It gets the oxygen it needs from the water it swims in. In a similar way, scientists are exploring dependency as a method of controlling what microbes can do and ...

Apr 2, 2026
Tech Xplore / Hygroscopic salts pull lithium from mining waste using only moisture from air

The world cannot have enough of the third element on the periodic table. From smartphones and laptops to state-of-the-art EVs, all are powered by lithium batteries. The demand for metal is only going to rise, and projected ...

Mar 30, 2026
Medical Xpress / Why AI health chatbots won't make you better at diagnosing yourself: New research

Millions of people are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for advice on everything from cooking to tax returns. Increasingly, they are also asking chatbots about their health.

Apr 4, 2026