AAbalanced Dungeons & Dragons party is a fundamental part of creating an enjoyable gaming experience. Yes, you want to make sure you have strong fighters who can provide a variety of melee or ranged attacks, some magic users, and definitely at least one person with a healing spell. You want a range of stats for the non-battle parts so that conversations with innkeepers can go smoothly and potential dangers and traps can be spotted from a glance around the room.

A recent study explores the psychology behind labeling ideas as conspiracy theories. The findings, published in the British Journal of Psychology, suggest that labeling a statement as a conspiracy theory does not make it less believable.

New research draws a conclusive link between Parkinson’s disease and the deterioration of a subpopulation of neurons found within the substantia nigra, a brain region linked to motor control and executive functioning.

A new report shows that U.S. plastic recycling rates have declined from about 8.7% to between 5% and 6%, revealing the challenges and shortcomings of the country’s waste management infrastructure and policies. Environmental organizations Last Beach Clean Up and Beyond Plastics issued the report, which found a decline in recycling rates since 2018, the last time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the rates. According to the report, per capita plastic waste generation has in...

The White House announced $3.16 billion is on the way to help with the battery shortage in America. The money, which will come from funds in the recently enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was announced by the White House and the Department of Energy on Monday. Officials promise the money will help domestic manufacturers make more batteries in the U.S., iron out supply chain issues for components, and also mitigate some of the environmental impacts from battery manufacturing.

China’s theatrical box office fell to a new low over the weekend as anti-COVID restrictions forces thousands of cinemas to close. Data from consultancy Artisan Gateway showed that nationwide box office across the world’s most populous country amounted to just $10.5 million. That was the lowest scoring weekend of 2022 and means the year-to-date cumulative at $2.42 billion is now running some 28% below last’s equivalent figure.

Apple is believed to have struck a deal with a new supplier of telephoto lens components for a periscope camera system in future iPhones, reports The Elec. On Wednesday, South Korean firm Jahwa Electronics said it plans to spend 191 billion won ($155 million) on building plants to produce new optical image stabilization (OIS) actuators.

The operation is the latest effort by the Biden administration to thwart actions by Russia by making them public before Moscow can strike.

Leah Remini, the actress who famously quit Scientology, is writing a memoir about her experiences in and out of the church, Random House imprint Ballantine Books announced Thursday.

As Moscow’s forces bog down in Ukraine, many young Russians of draft age are increasingly jittery about the prospect of being sent into combat. Making those fears particularly acute is an annual spring conscription that began Friday and aims to round up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty.

Al Nilsen, a former Sega of America marketing director, tells it like this: There was a time in the early 1990s where Sonic the Hedgehog was more popular in the United States than Mickey Mouse. He’s based this on something called a “Q Score,” or “quotient score,” which ranks consumer appeal and familiarity of brands, assigned by a company called Marketing Evaluations.

Russia has been the target of extensive economic sanctions in the weeks since its invasion of Ukraine, but Moscow’s space program has been largely unaffected until now. The European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to postpone the ExoMars mission, a joint effort with Russia that was supposed to launch this year. Instead, the ESA will undertake a study to determine how it can launch ExoMars without Russia.

Nvidia, IBM, and researchers have a plan to make the lives of those working in machine learning a bit easier: connecting GPUs directly to SSDs. Detailed in a research paper, the idea is called Big accelerator Memory (BaM) and involves connecting GPUs directly to large amounts of SSD storage, helping unwind a bottleneck for ML training and other intensive tasks.

A company that plans to drill deeper into Earth than ever before, creating holes that would extend a record-shattering 12 miles under our planet’s surface, has raised a total of $63 million since its launch in 2020. Most recently, Quaise Energy, a startup that aims to revolutionize the geothermal energy market, secured $40 million in series A funding in February, reports Axios. The goal of these super-deep holes is to access a limitless amount of renewable energy from the heat deep inside Eart...

Tears, hugs, laughter and the shouts of children echoed through the arrivals halls of New Zealand, as the country opened its borders and lifted isolation requirements. “I’ve been waiting six months for this moment,” says Steve, 72, who was waiting for his fiancee, Karin, to arrive from Australia. “I’m over the moon,” he said. “I feel a bit shaky.”