Encounters

Following the finale of the Teamfight Tactics Remix Rumble Championship yesterday, Riot Games unveiled the next set for the popular autobattler. Inkborn Chronicles introduces a fun new RNG-based gameplay mechanic called Encounters. At random points throughout a TFT match, players will encounter legendary mythological figures from Runeterra. These figures add some sort of spin to the match, providing bonuses or altering gameplay completely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHkmcEeNQew A little chaos goes a long way I’ve…

Image: Photo: Shutterstock Graphics: Vicky LetaRenowned puzzler Peter Winkler invented the addictive word game, HIPE, with some friends when they were juniors in high school. While it may not have become the overnight success of Wordle, the game did earn Winkler admission to Harvard. According to his book, Mathematical Mind-Benders, he wrote a college admission essay about how his verbal diversion sparked a local craze. Four years later, as a Harvard senior, Winkler overheard an admissions committee member quizzing a…

It's mating season for coyotes, which means they're more likely to be out and about during the day.With that in mind, the City of Burlington, Ont., is reminding residents what to do if they encounter one, and how to coyote-proof their properties. Last week, the city also updated its bylaws to let wildlife management professionals use firearms but the city's head of bylaw says that's not to make it easier to kill coyotes but makes the response require less staffing."Coyotes have always been here. People just didn't notice…

Astronomers have uncovered a celestial revelation: stars passing near our solar system have wielded a profound influence on the orbit of Earth as well as those of its its planetary companions. This cosmic dance, detailed in a study titled "Passing Stars as an Important Driver of Paleoclimate and the Solar System's Orbital Evolution" published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, challenges our understanding of Earth's history and even encompasses shifts in climate.Stellar Perturbations and Climate VariabilityNathan A.…

Cat behavior is a great reminder that just because you think of some piece of property as yours, this is just a human legal formality and hardly applies anywhere else. Cat owners already know that their pets will range as far and wide as they can manage, but what is truly confusing is when one encounters a cat that isn’t even theirs. The “My house, not my cat” Facebook page is dedicated to those hilarious, if unnerving moments when people come home to find a strange feline just hanging out. So get as comfortable as the…

Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan said that he`s `lucky to be alive` after he encountered toxic caterpillars during his holiday. The Hollywood actor was on holiday in Portugal with friends when he started suffering from heart attack symptoms, which were most likely to have been caused by `toxic` caterpillars. He had to be hospitalised due to the pain, reports mirror.co.uk. His friend also experienced some of the symptoms while they were at the golfing resort. Doctors asked the actor’s friend how much…

An Aspergillus mold under a microscope.Image: M-Production (Shutterstock)The global burden and death toll of fungi has substantially climbed over the past decade, new research finds. The study estimates that fungal infections help kill nearly 4 million people annually—almost double the amount estimated by similar research in 2012. Co-infections like HIV and tuberculosis, a lack of speedy and reliable diagnostic testing, and growing antifungal resistance are thought to be major contributors to these deaths. - Ed Cara Read…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Every year, employees worldwide enter annual performance reviews with mixed feelings. Do employees enter these conversations with enthusiasm to learn new things? Rarely. Are managers eager to have these conversations and coach their employees on how they can improve in the coming year? No. These meetings are typically…

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Researchers have discovered that NASA’s Juno spacecraft frequently encounters massive swirling waves, or Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, at the border between the solar wind and Jupiter’s magnetosphere. These waves are a crucial mechanism for transferring energy and mass from the solar wind, a flow of charged particles from the Sun, into planetary spaces.Waves produced by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities transfer energy in the solar system.A team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San…