Minecraft is chock-full of dark and dreary locations, but the environment doesn't always have to stay that way. You can easily craft torches to light your way through a dark cave or install some ambiance in your base. While torches are among the easier items to make in Minecraft, you still need a recipe guide if you're crafting a torch for the first time.Making Torches in MinecraftTorches only require two simple resources to make, both of which can be added to your inventory within the first 30 minutes of a playthrough. You can see how to make a simple torch below:At a crafting table, place a Stick in the bottom middle boxNext, put a piece of Coal or Charcoal in the middle boxThe crafting recipe for a torch in MinecraftYou're able to swap the charcoal and coal interchangeably when crafting a torch, but you'll always need a stick for the recipe to work. Sticks are crafted by placing a single plank in a crafting table while coal is mined throughout caves, mountains, and other locations with a good amount of stone. Charcoal is crafted by placing wood and coal in a furnace together. Once you have all of your resources, head to a crafting table and craft some torches. For every one stick and charcoal/coal you place in the crafting table, you'll receive four torches. It's wise to make as many torches as possible, as you need them quite often in Minecraft.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Overwatch 2 has an incredibly large and diverse roster of heroes. It's important to take out and target certain heroes in Overwatch 2, but this can often change from game to game. However, with so many different heroes and abilities, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out which of the many characters is providing the most value to the enemy's team and should be eliminated first.

Hi everyone! Time to level up this Lunar New Year! Purchase a new PlayStation5 and stand to win prizes such as PS5 Digital Edition 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Bundle, PlayStation Portal Remote Player, PlayStation Store gift cards, Sony Bravia TV and more.View and download imageDownload the imagecloseCloseDownload this imageFrom 17th January to 2nd February, there will be discounts on PlayStation 5, PS VR2, DualSense wireless controllers, PULSE Elite Wireless headset and PULSE Explore wireless earbuds, applicable in participating retailers (https://www.playstation.com/local/retailers/).View and download imageDownload the imagecloseCloseDownload this imageFrom 17th January 17th February 2025, purchase a PS5 console, submit the entry form and stand to win rewards in participating countries/regions* including the grand prize of a Sony Bravia TV. Additionally, entrants who own PS Plus Membership during campaign period will qualify for special prizes that include PS5 Digital Edition 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Bundle, DualSense Wireless Controller Monster Hunter Wilds Limited Edition and PlayStation Portal Remote Player.You can find more details of the campaign here: https://www.playstation.com/th-th/local/campaigns/level-up-new-years-play .* Participating Countries/Regions means South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand).Please see below for full details of Level Up New Years Sale 2025.ThailandPlayStation 5 ConsolesOriginal SRPPromotion SRPPlayStation5THB 18,690THB 16,890PlayStation5 console Digital EditionTHB 15,690THB 13,890PeripheralsOriginal SRPPromotion SRPPlayStation VR2THB 22,190THB 14,890DualSense wireless controller (White, Midnight Black, Cosmic Red, Nova Pink, Galactic Purple, Starlight Blue, Gray Camouflage)THB 2,590THB 2,090DualSense wireless controller (Volcanic Red, Cobalt Blue, Sterling Silver, Chroma Pearl, Chroma Indigo, Chroma Teal)THB 2,690THB 2,190Pulse Elite Wireless HeadsetTHB 5,190THB 4,490Pulse Explore Wireless EarbudsTHB 7,790THB 6,790

Card games are having a huge moment. Marvel Snap is so big that everyone who plays it hates it. Pokemon TCG Pocket is introducing thousands of people to the card game, and raking in millions of dollars. Balatro, one of the best games Ive ever played, hooked people and won GOTY awards with its crazy synergies and repeatable runs.And last year, I got addicted to Solitaire.Why me.During the dark final days of 2024, I was averaging 12 wins per day in Sawayama Solitaire, one of the Solitaires created by developer Zachtronics. Sawayama Solitaire is a variant of Klondike the one thats been bundled into every version of Windows since 1990.Some games of Sawayama Solitaire felt impossible. Some were absurdly easy. Most of them were a satisfying detangling of cards that had me immediately pressing that new game button once I got the win.How was the most basic card game on Earth owning my life like this?I think its because we dont understand playing cards.In 1969, as protests raged against the Vietnam War and counterculture made waves across the nation, a magician named Persi Diaconis went to college.Diaconis had been a professional magician since age 14, and was skilled in sleight-of-hand tricks. But it was probability that fascinated him.He went on to take a degree in statistics. He became a world-renowned mathematician. In 1992, he proved that it takes seven riffle shuffles to truly randomize a 52-card deck, alongside fellow mathematician Dave Bayer. His research on card shuffling has implications for scientific fields as far-flung as the study of glass melting and the creation of magnets.He doesnt know how Solitaire works.One of the embarrassment of applied probability is that we can not analyze the original game of solitaire, he wrote in the abstract for an academic talk called The Mathematics of Solitaire, given at the University of Washington in 1999. The talk has been given several times over the years, and is currently viewable on YouTube. One of his most recent appearances, in 2024, reiterates that despite all the technical advances weve made in science and mathematics, the complexity of cards is still somewhat a black box.Whats the chance of winning, how to play well, how do various changes of rules change the answers? Diaconis wrote. Surely you say, the computer can do this. Not at present, not even close.Its not hard to see the relationship between magic and math. Cards contain limitless possibilities. In fact, math tells us there are more combinations of cards in a 52-card deck than there are atoms on Earth.Writing for Quanta Magazine, Erica Klarreich asked mathematician Ron Graham what that means in practice. He told her, If everyone had been shuffling decks of cards every second since the start of the Earth, you couldnt touch 52 factorial, the number of possible arrangements of a 52-card deck. Klarreich goes on: Any time you shuffle a deck to the point of randomness, you have probably created an arrangement that has never existed before.So thats nuts.Card math is also useful for game devs simulating randomness in prototypes even if theyre not making card-based games.This randomness is probably one of reasons I cant stop playing Solitaire. No two decks of randomized cards are the same. No two rounds of Solitaire are alike.Its difficult for the human mind to comprehend the mathematical probabilities at play in card games. However, one thing we can understand is why that gameplay can keep us hooked. Its called the jerk.In a study from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, a team of researchers described the jerk as a sudden change in acceleration. Its mostly used to describe physical sensations your elevator dropping suddenly, a theme park ride jolting you around a corner.But in games, its informational: the balance between certainty and uncertainty in reaching a goal.For example, when you start a round of Overwatch, you dont have a lot of information about the other players: what characters theyve chosen, where theyll attack from, whether youre facing a bunch of randos or a coordinated team. One second youre setting up the next second Pharah is bombarding you with rockets. You have information. And now you need to do something about it.Thats an example of the jerk. And its certainly not relegated to action games. We think of puzzle games as slow-paced and methodical. But the moments that keep us hooked are the ones where you have a sudden revelation, the knowledge of what you need to do.Puzzle games by default require having some kind of an insight, some kind of a realization, Arvi Teikari told me in a video interview. Teikari is the developer behind Baba Is You, a fiendishly clever block-pushing puzzler that netted a ton of accolades in 2019. Depending on what kind of a puzzle game youre making, it can be possible to make that realization in a puzzle into kind of an aha moment, or an insightful moment.Almost all card games center around these aha moments that come when you start to have a bigger picture of the deck. They are, in a sense, puzzles. Think the next card being flipped in Texas Hold em, or filling your hand in Balatro and getting the exact card you need.There are other factors that contribute to games being hooky, like how frequently youre successful and how difficult it is to win. Card games tend to sit in a sweet spot on this scale. One of the researchers in the JAIST study, professor Mohd Nor Akmal Khalid, called them typical incomplete information games.Short, repeatable rounds, chances, and strategizing make them among the most entertaining, even addictive, games, he wrote.The JAIST study focused on Chinese card games like Big Two, Winner, and Fighting the Landlord. Im not a scientist, so take my analysis with a grain of salt here, but I can see how Solitaire fits this framework.Its incredibly easy to repeat a round, and while you start with some information with the cards face up on the board, youre constantly getting little hits of more when you flip the next card or cards from the deck. The moments when you get exactly the card you need, setting off a chain reaction of moves to organize your board, feel so good.But that feeling is not easy to manufacture.I dont enjoy the idea [that] when you deal a deck of cards to play a Solitaire, you might get an impossible hand, Teikari said. I played The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection and noticed myself enjoying it and noticed myself getting ideas for, Oh, what if I tried to design my own Solitaire where you had this kind of a gimmick in it or this kind of detail in it?The result is A Solitaire Mystery, Teikaris collection of 23 Solitaire games that came out on Itch.io last year. A Solitaire Mystery has Teikaris trademark humor and puzzling sensibility, but also a feeling of experimentation.I noticed that my main interest in making games is kind of to surprise the player, Teikari told me. To create some kind of reaction of amazement or amusement or something.The Solitaires of Mystery all have a twist to them. In Chaotic Solitaire, every time you move a card, two random cards swap spots. Or Tap Solitaire, where you can start temporary stacks by tapping cards like in Magic: The Gathering. One of my favorite variants lets you tear cards in half. And 52-Card Solitaire drops all the cards in a pile, and you have to pick them up in order.This is one of the Solitaires that demonstrates how challenging the math behind digital Solitaire can be for game developers.Something like Zachtronics Solitaire Collection actually has systems in place to make sure that every game you play is possible to be beaten, Teikari said, causing a ripple of shame to roll down my spine. I dont know how to do that, but when trying to balance my Solitaire games, it was interesting to notice that inevitably, making a more difficult Solitaire does usually mean that Im also making it more likely that the player can get stuck in it.The 52-Card Solitaire variant is the perfect example of this. Its a wonderful concept, and a very funny joke. But boy, is it difficult, because you can only pick up cards that are not covered by other cards. As in most Solitaires, you can stack cards in descending order and there are some helpful slots on the side where you can store cards for later. But with 52-factorial ways the deck can fall well, lets just say I have yet to beat it.Conversely, a Solitaire can be too easy.It feels more exciting to solve a Solitaire if you know that you might not have solved it, Teikari said. Theres currently one Solitaire in A Solitaire Mystery that people have reported is always solvable no matter what. You cannot get truly stuck. It does feel like a bug. Its a working Solitaire, you can get to the end, but it lacks, kind of, that something.He points to Tap Solitaire and Royal Flush Solitaire as two of the most successful in the collection. Tap Solitaire is the most like a traditional Solitaire, and the tapping mechanic adds complexity, but its also a tool that the player can use to their advantage. In Royal Flush Solitaire, the player makes poker hands to add up to a high score.I think it worked really nicely, and people have commented that they like it quite a bunch, Teikari said.And just think about that: Teikari has created 23 distinct Solitaires for his collection. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection has nine. There are so many kinds of Solitaire.Depending on your definition of Solitaire, this years biggest game is a Solitaire. Balatro has sold millions of copies and made millions of dollars. Its just a single-player card game but its got incredible complexity because of the different ways the cards can interact with each other and decks can be built.One of the interesting things about Balatro is that while its widely described as a poker variant, its gameplay owes more to Big Two one of the Chinese card games mentioned in that study.Any card game can become a new, even more addictive one with just a twist the possibilities might be infinite, and thats something we simply dont know about playing cards.But also.We dont know where playing cards came from.One of the things that makes games a tricky area of study is that up until very recently, theyve been physical objects that get a lot of use. Dice and game boards are sturdier and might last the test of time; cards are not.Think of how grubby your most-used deck of playing cards is. You might not think twice about tossing it for a new one and future historians are wailing and gnashing their teeth about it, because oh my god, an extant 2024 card deck, depicting popular figure Shrek and his companion, the Donkey?? What an important and unique historical object!Often the game pieces that get preserved are ones that are fancier and decorative. Or ones that were owned by notable people, whose random toy might be considered historically significant.In her book Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater, Gina Bloom writes that playing cards were mentioned in Spanish antigaming regulations as far back as 1332, but the oldest preserved, complete set, where no cards are missing from the deck, is this one from the Netherlands that dates to the late 1470s (and is now on view at the Met Cloisters). The Met says the cards were hardly used, if at all. It is possible that they were conceived as a collectors curiosity rather than a deck for play.But another old deck may contain clues toward understanding card evolution. Its this deck from the Mamluk Sultanate in what is now Egypt, on display at the Topkap Palace Museum in Istanbul. Its younger than the Dutch deck it dates from around 1500 but, as Tor Gjerde points out on this immaculate personal website, these cards mark the high card of each suit, similar to Chinese money cards and some Persian ganjifa cards.Andrew Los The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards puts 1294 in China as the earliest reliable date that the existence of cards has been recorded, ever, in all of history, but we dont have anything left of the cards themselves. Some researchers point to very old Chinese tile-based games like dominos and mahjong as precursors to cards.And there are lots of different kinds of cards in China. Domino tiles became domino cards. There are chess cards, money-suited cards, and cards with (gasp) numbers.The money cards are the ones that historians point to as potential precursors for our modern playing cards, since money cards developed four recognizable suits.On the other hand, ganjifa cards came from what was then Persia and are recorded as far back as the 14th century. As with most historical playing cards, the number of cards in a deck can vary but some ganjifa decks can have 96 cards and eight suits. Fancy versions of these cards were popular in the Mughal courts of India during the 1500s, where they wouldve been made of shells or ivory.Whether or not the ganjifa cards were based on Chinese cards originally, cards came to Europe through the Middle East, alongside such silly pastimes as chess and algebra. The Spanish word for playing card, naipe, has been traced to the Arabic naib, the viceroy cards in the Mamluk deck.Early European playing cards were not uniform. As cards traveled north from Spain and Italy, European countries developed custom suits and decks with varied numbers of cards. Germany used acorns, leaves, hearts, and hawkbells. The Dutch deck that I referenced earlier is a custom hunting-themed deck. The Met describes its suits as hunting horns, dog collars, hound tethers, and game nooses. Many Spanish and Italian decks used the suits that we might recognize today as tarot suits: cups, coins, swords, and what were then called batons. Tarot, of course, was just another game, and the cards wouldnt get their reputation for divination until the late 1700s.What changed, of course, was the French.French card makers standardized the suits trfles, carreaux, curs, and piques. They simplified the colors, paring the designs down to red and black. This made them much easier to block print and stencil, and so playing card production shifted its centers of power to France. French playing cards took over Europe. And, gradually, the world.For 400-something years, the four suits and the 52-card deck have only become more globally ubiquitous. All those popular Chinese card games that were part of the study on addictiveness theyre played with this deck.That adds a dimension to the question of why playing cards are so compelling. As Gina Bloom wrote in Gaming the Stage, We can know something of what it felt like for early moderns to play or watch others play these games because we use essentially the same gaming materials they did.I feel like it mostly comes down to playing cards being something that almost all people are kind of intimately familiar with, Teikari told me. [] They have a surprising number of both mathematical and otherwise, kind of, utilities. But I would maybe say that that simplicity could be or not simplicity, but the familiarity would be the kind of major thing that might draw people.I grew up playing Spoons and War and Speed and Go Fish and Bullshit and, yes, Solitaire with these cards. Back in the 16th century they were playing Maw, and Romestecq, and Noddy, and Gleek (really.) The universality of playing cards has resulted in a seemingly limitless number of games to play. But were all using more or less the same deck. Thats kind of magic.One quality shared by most of the card-based video games that Ive played is that they evoke the physical act of touching cards. You cant make a digital card game without good card sounds, or good card feel.Modern playing card games are so pervasive in almost every culture in the world that I think there is something special about standard playing cards themselves as a medium for emergent game design, Balatro developer LocalThunk told Rogueliker, in the same interview where they discussed Big Two. People love to hold a set of cards in their hand, organize and arrange them, think about which cards make sense to play and which they might want to hold on to.The intimacy and familiarity is kind of a cheat code. Youre already connected to the game because youre connected to the cards.When it comes to cards, digital implementations of card games, and video games that use card games, can manage to recreate some of the tactile feel or the satisfyingness of playing cards that exist in real world, Teikari said. Ive seen people comment on A Solitaire Mystery of like, Yeah, the sounds that play when you move the cards around are satisfying. So they get some of that kind of enjoyment of moving cards around.One of the things that tickled me most about A Solitaire Mystery is that Teikari indicates whether or not each Solitaire can be played with a physical deck. For a lot of them yeah, its possible! You might be tearing your cards in half and you can really only do that once, but its possible!Playing cards are associated with everything from clownery to gambling to magic to childhood play. So, one thing we do understand about them is that their appeal is infinite.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.First, a confession: When my parents sent me off to brush my teeth at 7 or 8 years old, I would sometimes run the water in the sink, rub a dab of toothpaste on my front teeth, and stall long enough to make it seem like I had brushed. Only in a childs mind did it make sense to cheat at brushing with an elaborate ruse that took just as time and energy as actually brushing.My sneaky past primed me to see the signs of fake brushing in my own kids, but ramping up reminders and demonstrations after every dentist visit only had a short-term impact. I found a potential solution through an Instagram ad for Truthbrush. Truthbrush is a tracker you attach to your childs toothbrush to measure when, how long, and how thoroughly your child is brushing. Truthbrush Classic Tracker Hub Bundle $39.98 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $39.98 at Amazon Why you need to keep an eye on brushing routinesIn 2017, a UK study found that nearly half of kids lie about brushing their teeth. So it wasnt just me?Dentists recommend you assist with or monitor brushing until a child is at least 7 years old. After that, you might consider it a hands-off personal hygiene skill, but you can never really turn your back on the kids for too long, right?We know how important dental health ismy kids have never missed a dentist appointment or even had a cavity. But I also dont want them to get the idea that their lax brushing habits will never have negative consequences. Before Truthbrush, my extra monitoring and nagging didnt really make brushing more appealing. As soon as I thought they were building good habits, I relaxed my control, and they returned to their slack ways.What Truthbrush doesThe Truthbrush device loops securely around a manual or electric toothbrush handle. Like a Fitbit for oral care, it tracks brushing events, duration, and coverage. It maps your brushing strokes, highlights what youre doing right, and shows areas where you can improve.The Truthbrush app makes it easy to see your brushing stats, including frequency, duration, and coverage. You can set reminders, create goals, and earn rewards. So I wouldnt have to worry about my phone picking up the tracker signal, I got the optional Hub ($14.99), which connects to our home wifi.Using Truthbrush in practiceAt bedtime, I hug and kiss my kids, look directly into their little eyes, and say, Go upstairs, brush your teeth, and go to sleep. On a good night, my phone buzzes to let me know each kid brushed, for how long, and how well. We all rest peacefully with clean teeth. On a normal night, they each come down three to five more times to show me LEGOs or report an anxious thought, and I send them back with reassurances and a reminder that they still need to brush. On a bad night, I send them upstairs to bed, never get a brushing notification, and fall asleep without following up. Its not a perfect system.Now that we have been using Truthbrush for almost three months, though, the biggest change has been in my awareness. The kids are still not always brushing twice daily, but now I have data instead of uncertainty and suspicion.Using the data to motivate and improveI recently went over the Truthbrush data with my oldest, discussing how many times she skipped brushing, that her average brushing time was lower than ideal, etc.Does seeing this motivate you to try to improve your stats? I asked her.No, she said.Would going to the dentist and getting cavities motivate you? I asked. Scare tactics!No, she said with an eye roll.How can we use this information to motivate better brushing habits? I asked.Let me see [younger sisters] stats.Bingo! They may not be motivated by oral wellness or by impressing me, but they are motivated by competing with each other. I will definitely use this to my advantage.Truthbrush Pros and ConsProsThe data is priceless when you are not the type of parent to watch and analyze every brushing session.It's pretty easy to set up and create profiles in the app.You can tap into siblings gamer competitiveness to motivate them toward better brushing.ConsThe cost: It starts at $25 for one Classic tracker. You can spend more for a Pro tracker or for skins to make your tracker cuter. The classics battery is meant to last one year, so you will be repurchasing if your kids brushing isnt totally transformed by then. Theres no subscription fee for the app, though.I still have to follow through with reminders. The Truthbrush device is not their actual mom.I suspect that waggling the brush is recorded as a brushing event sometimes, based on alerts Ive gotten during cleaning or travel. But dont tell my kids that, or they will be running water and waving their brushes around to trick me.Based on my experience, I recommend Truthbrush for parents of kids who are past the age of needing you to brush for them, but still need a little surveillance to keep them focused and honest.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is stepping down from the company after eight years on the job, according to reporting by Bloomberg. This follows last years disastrous app launch, in which a redesign was missing core features and was broken in nearly every major way.The company has tasked Tom Conrad to steer the ship as interim CEO. Conrad is a current member of the Sonos board, but was a co-founder of Pandora, VP at Snap and product chief at, wait for it, the short-lived video streaming platform Quibi. He also reportedly has a Sonos tattoo. The board has hired a firm to find a new long-term leader.I think well all agree that this year weve let far too many people down, Conrad wrote employees in a letter. Getting back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos. He also suggested that he wants the company to expand well beyond home speakers and related gear.As for Spence, hell be just fine. His payout package includes $7,500 per month until June, a cash severance of $1.9 million and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest. He was with Sonos for more than a decade.The decision to swap leadership comes after months of turmoil at the company. It rolled out a mobile app back in May that was absolutely rife with bugs and missing key features like alarms and sleep timers. Some customers even complained that entire speaker systems would no longer work after updating to the new app. It was a whole thing.Sonos tried to win back customer trust by extending the manufacturer warranty for home speaker products and creating an advisory board that would provide the company with "feedback and insights from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products before they are launched.That didnt ease the financial burden faced by the company. The stock price has fallen by around 13 percent since the app launched. Sonos laid off over 100 people in August as it tried to fix the software and revenue fell 16 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on September 28. Analysts project an additional 15 percent decline throughout the holiday period.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-falls-on-his-sword-after-horrible-app-launch-160704330.html?src=rss

RCS delivers greater engagement, efficiency, and trust as a more dynamic version of SMS.

Step behind the curtain of visual storytelling with MotionPixel Studios latest VFX breakdown! Using Unreal Engine 5.4 and 5.5, this cinematic showcase combines cutting-edge technology with artistry to craft breathtaking visuals. Shot on RED Camera and ARRI Alexa Mini, the team skillfully integrated green screen footage, leveraging the power of Unreal Engine for realistic environments and dynamic lighting.In the post-production of After Effects, every frame is enhanced for the seamless blending of live action with virtual elements. This showreel showcases how VFX work can turn raw footage into amazing cinematic experiences, so sit tight and watch for the moments when magic comes to life through the before-and-after!The post Unreal Engine 5 VFX Cinematic by MotionPixel Studio appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Firefighters battling the deadly wildfires that raced through the Los Angeles area in January 2025 have been hampered by a limited supply of freshwater. So when the winds are calm enough, skilled pilots flying planes aptly named Super Scoopers are skimming off 1,500 gallons of seawater at a time and dumping it with high precision on the fires.Using seawater to fight fires can sound like a simple solutionthe Pacific Ocean has a seemingly endless supply of water. In emergencies like Southern California is facing, its often the only quick solution, though the operation can be risky amid ocean swells.But seawater also has downsides.Saltwater corrodes firefighting equipment and may harm ecosystems, especially those like the chaparral shrublands around Los Angeles that arent normally exposed to seawater. Gardeners know that small amounts of saltadded, say, as fertilizerdoes not harm plants, but excessive salts can stress and kill plants.While the consequences of adding seawater to ecosystems are not yet well understood, we can gain insights on what to expect by considering the effects of sea-level rise.A seawater experiment in a coastal forestAs an ecosystem ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, I lead a novel experiment called TEMPEST that was designed to understand how and why historically salt-free coastal forests react to their first exposures to salty water.Sea-level rise has increased by an average of about 8 inches globally over the past century, and that water has pushed salty water into U.S. forests, farms and neighborhoods that had previously known only freshwater. As the rate of sea-level rise accelerates, storms push seawater ever farther onto the dry land, eventually killing trees and creating ghost forests, a result of climate change that is widespread in the U.S. and globally.In our TEMPEST test plots, we pump salty water from the nearby Chesapeake Bay into tanks, then sprinkle it on the forest soil surface fast enough to saturate the soil for about 10 hours at a time. This simulates a surge of salty water during a big storm.Our coastal forest showed little effect from the first 10-hour exposure to salty water in June 2022 and grew normally for the rest of the year. We increased the exposure to 20 hours in June 2023, and the forest still appeared mostly unfazed, although the tulip poplar trees were drawing water from the soil more slowly, which may be an early warning signal.Things changed after a 30-hour exposure in June 2024. The leaves of tulip poplar in the forests started to brown in mid-August, several weeks earlier than normal. By mid-September the forest canopy was bare, as if winter had set in. These changes did not occur in a nearby plot that we treated the same way, but with freshwater rather than seawater.The initial resilience of our forest can be explained in part by the relatively low amount of salt in the water in this estuary, where water from freshwater rivers and a salty ocean mix. Rain that fell after the experiments in 2022 and 2023 washed salts out of the soil.But a major drought followed the 2024 experiment, so salts lingered in the soil then. The trees longer exposure to salty soils after our 2024 experiment may have exceeded their ability to tolerate these conditions.Seawater being dumped on the Southern California fires is full-strength, salty ocean water. And conditions there have been very dry, particularly compared with our East Coast forest plot.Changes evident in the groundOur research group is still trying to understand all the factors that limit the forests tolerance to salty water, and how our results apply to other ecosystems such as those in the Los Angeles area.Tree leaves turning from green to brown well before fall was a surprise, but there were other surprises hidden in the soil below our feet.Rainwater percolating through the soil is normally clear, but about a month after the first and only 10-hour exposure to salty water in 2022, the soil water turned brown and stayed that way for two years. The brown color comes from carbon-based compounds leached from dead plant material. Its a process similar to making tea.Our lab experiments suggest that salt was causing clay and other particles to disperse and move about in the soil. Such changes in soil chemistry and structure can persist for many years.Sea-level rise is increasing coastal exposureWhile ocean water can help fight fires, there are reasons fire officials prefer freshwater sourcesprovided freshwater is available.U.S. coastlines, meanwhile, are facing more extensive and frequent saltwater exposure as rising global temperatures accelerate sea-level rise that drowns forests, fields, and farms, with unknown risks for coastal landscapes.Patrick Megonigal is an associate director of research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at the Smithsonian Institution.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

German studio Batek Architekten has designed the T7.2 dental clinic in Berlinusing saturated colours and tactile materials to give the space an "inviting, artful atmosphere".The dental prophylaxis practice in west Berlin is an extension of the T7 clinic that Batek Architekten designed in 2017.The T7.2 dental clinic has a green acrylic box at its centre"As with the first dental practice, the concept aligns with the client's brief to craft an interior design that evokes the atmosphere of an art gallery," Batek Architekten founder Patrick Batek told Dezeen."The bright, minimalist space functions as both a practical setting for daily medical operations and a showcase for the client's carefully chosen pieces, adding a distinctive and personal touch to the practice."The space was designed with a gallery-like feelAt the centre of the 200-square-metre interior, a green acrylic glass cube that reaches from the floor to the ceiling holds spaces for the clinic's personnel.Batek chose to add the colourful cube to the otherwise mostly white space to create a striking contrast that also nods to the design of the original clinic.Walnut wood was used for the doors"Strategically positioned, it becomes the centrepiece of the practice, with the functional rooms thoughtfully arranged around it," he said."With its material choice and comparatively darker, bold colour, it adds an accent similar to the yellow reception area from the previous design while enclosing spaces designated exclusively for staff use."Treatment room are arranged around the green box"Green was selected as a counterpart to the distinctive yellow from the first practice, aligning with the corporate design," he added. "This choice allows both colours to coexist harmoniously while maintaining a clear distinction between them."Surrounding the green box are waiting areas and treatment rooms, which have doors made from walnut wood and "cathedral glass".Read: Batek Architekten renovates historic cinema in pastel and earth-coloured huesThese materials were chosen to contrast against the minimalist materials used in the rest of the clinic."The floors, walls and ceilings are designed in bright, clean white to meet the practical demands of the space," Batek said. "It is important that the surfaces comply with hygiene regulations and are easy to clean."Batek Architekten chose a desk made of foamed aluminium for the T7.2 receptionThe reception area also features touches that were added to underline the gallery feel, including a pale sage-green partition wall and a desk with a decorative grey pattern."The partition wall, crafted from glass-fibre-reinforced plastic, and the reception counter, made of foamed aluminium, stand out as artistic elements within the interior due to their unusual materiality, thus aligning with the overall design," Batek said.A pink bathroom adds another touch of colourAlso adding a touch of colour to the space are the bathroom and sanitary spaces, which were "completely immersed" in a pastel-pink hue.Furniture in organic materials including leather and wood adds a warm feel and matches the walnut wood door frames of the function rooms.The T7.2 dental clinic has an "inviting" atmosphereBatek's aim was for visitors to feel like they are going to an art gallery, rather than their dentist."Visitors should feel as if they are in a gallery, which is just as homely as a private apartment," he concluded. "The carefully chosen furniture, artwork, and fixtures should reinforce this inviting, artful atmosphere."Other dental clinics recently featured on Dezeen include a Montreal clinic with a residential vibe and an Amsterdam clinic with colour-block interiors.The photography is by Daniel Schfer.The post Batek Architekten arranges gallery-like dental clinic around acrylic glass cube appeared first on Dezeen.