It turns out gaming is good for you! New research from University of Houston indicates massive multiplayer online gamers learn by gaming and their skills in the workplace are enriched by those seemingly endless hours previously thought of as frittering away time. 

NJIT biologist Eric Fortune and a team of scientists called “Limelight Rainforest” have won the five-year XPRIZE Rainforest Competition, securing half of the competition's $10 million prize purse. The team's dramatic victory was announced Nov. 15 at the G20 Social Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the culmination of a global competition that began in 2019 when the nonprofit XPRIZE Foundation challenged innovators around the world to “develop technology to capture the true biological diversity of rainforests…and show the value of protecting the natural resources within them.”

Alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. nearly doubled from 1999 to 2020. The sharpest spike occurred among 25–34-year-olds (nearly fourfold), while individuals aged 55–64 had the highest rates. Men consistently had higher rates but women saw the largest proportional rise, with deaths increasing 2.5 times. Asian and Pacific Islander communities experienced the steepest ethnic increase, while the Midwest saw the greatest regional rise (2.5 times), followed by the Northeast, West, and South.