Tips & News

Three days into their season and the Miami Marlins have at least 11 players testing positive for the coronavirus. (Mitchell Leff/Getty Images) Why can’t the Marlins keep playing? Twelve Marlins players and two coaches have reportedly tested positive. How likely is it that other Marlins have contracted the virus, and haven’t yet tested positive, but will in the coming days? “Very likely, unfortunately,” says Kathleen Bachynski, an epidemiologist at Muhlenberg College. “Quite likely,” says Ron Waldman, an epidemiologist at George Washington University. “Yeah,” says Jared Baeten, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington. “If it was one player, totally different. But clearly, to get to 13, there are not 13 separate introductions [of the virus] into the Marlins organization. There is transmission within the team. And if there is transmission in the team, there's great chance that there is still unrecognized transmission within the team.” In other words, the three Marlins player...

Contra Returns, the mobile version of the iconic 90's game, may soon be getting a worldwide release, or at least a wider release as per the tweet by developers TiMi Studios. Contra Returns was originally released in China in 2017 and then in Taiwan in 2018. Then, an English version of the game was released in Southeast Asian countries later in 2018. Now, looks like the game will be getting a wider release and the developers are looking for feedback from fans of the franchise to make it “the best that it can be.” TiMi Studios  tweeted  that Contra Returns has been quite successful in parts of the world that got to play it and following this success, the developers plan to have a “wider release.” The studio did not share a timeline for when the game will be released and which regions will have access to it. Contra Returns has pretty much the same gameplay as the original game from the 90's. It has been adapted for mobile and plays like most other side-scrollers. It is currently ...

Asus ROG Phone 3 has a secret 160Hz refresh rate that can be unlocked using the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) command-line tool. Launched in India last week, the flagship gaming phone comes with a refresh rate of 144Hz on paper. The Taiwanese tech giant has also confirmed the existence of the advanced refresh rate option, which it says is only meant for internal testing and not for end-users. The phone's display, however, has not been calibrated to suit a refresh rate of 160Hz. XDA Developers  found the hidden  160Hz refresh option, sharing steps on how to unlock it. It says that the mode can only be activated by using the ADB PC app. Once there, the user needs to you run a command from a prompt or terminal window, “adb shell setprop debug.vendor.asus.fps.eng 1.” Following this, when the phone is rebooted, the 160Hz refresh rate option should start appearing in the display settings. Asus ROG Phone 3 Specifications The  Asus ROG Phone 3  sports a 6.59-inch full-HD+ AMOLE...

Logitech MX Master 3 has been launched in India as the latest addition to the company's Master series of mice. The wireless mouse boasts of “ultrafast and ultraprecise scrolling” with the new MagSpeed scroll wheel. Logitech says it has a design that supports the users hand and wrist, providing a comfortable experience during long work sessions. The MX Master 3 features a 4,000 DPI sensor and a rechargeable battery that, as per the company, can last up to 70 days on a single charge. Logitech MX Master 3 price in India The Logitech MX Master 3 wireless mouse is priced at Rs. 9,495 in India and is available for purchase through  Amazon  India and Logitech India  website . It comes in two colour options namely, Graphite and Mid Grey. Notably, the  Graphite variant  of the MX Master 3 is priced higher at Rs. 12,999 on Amazon. Logitech MX Master 3 specifications and features With its Darkfield high precision sensor technology, the MX Master 3 by Logitech offers up to ...

iPhone 12 base variant is said to come with a 5.4-inch display and a new leak appears to add more credibility to that rumour, with an alleged image of the display. It also shows the notch that seems to have the same size as the iPhone 11 series. The screen size will make the base variant of the iPhone 12 more comfortable to use one handed. Recently, it was reported that the company is planning on hosting two events, one in September and the other in October, to show off a slew of new products including the iPhone 12 models. As per the Weibo  post  by known tipster Digital Chat Station (translated), the iPhone 12 base variant is said to come with a 5.4-inch display. The tipster shared a photo of the panel with a hand for scale, stating that the screen is 5.4 inches in size. The notch is also visible on the panel and seems to be the same size as that of the  iPhone 11  series, however, the sensors that will be included in the notch are unknown. Fans that were expecting...

The closest cluster of stars to Earth is falling apart and will soon die, astronomers say. Using the Gaia spacecraft to measure velocities of stars in the Hyades cluster and those escaping from it, researchers have  predicted the cluster’s demise . “We find that there’s only something like 30 million years left for the cluster to lose its mass completely,” says Semyeong Oh, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge. “Compared to the Hyades’ age, that’s very short,” she says. The star cluster, just 150 light-years away and visible to the naked eye in the constellation Taurus, formed about 680 million years ago from a large cloud of gas and dust in the Milky Way. Stellar gatherings such as the Hyades, known as open star clusters, are born with hundreds or thousands of stars that are held close to one another by their mutual gravitational pull. But numerous forces try to tear them apart: Supernova explosions from the most massive stars eject material that had been binding the clust...

An over-the-counter heartburn remedy probably won’t directly stop coronavirus infections, a new study suggests. Anecdotal reports from China suggested people hospitalized with COVID-19 who were taking famotidine (sold under the brand name Pepcid) had better outcomes than people who took a different type of antacid called a proton pump inhibitor. But famotidine has  no direct antiviral activity  against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to preliminary results reported July 15 at bioRxiv.org. Those findings, which have not been reviewed by other scientists yet, suggest famotidine won’t help prevent coronavirus infections or illness. But they don’t rule out that the drug might help in other ways, says Mohsan Saeed, a virologist at Boston University School of Medicine. “We’re not challenging that famotidine might help,” he says. “We’re saying that the mechanism of action is not antiviral.” The result isn’t a complete surprise. “A compound of this nature having ...

In a never-before-seen particle, four quarks of a feather flock together. Physicists think they have detected the first conglomerate of four quarks incorporating more than two of the same kind. This tetraquark contains  four quarks of the charm variety : two charm quarks and their antimatter counterparts, called anticharm quarks, researchers report online at arXiv.org on June 30. Quarks — fundamental building blocks of matter — typically make up three-quark particles, like protons and neutrons, or quark-antiquark pairs, like pions and kaons. Physicists have observed some more exotic  quark quartets  ( SN: 4/11/14 ) and  even quintets  ( SN: 7/14/15 ). But the new four-quark particle, dubbed X(6900), is the first four-quark particle with all of the same type. Since charm quarks and their anticharm counterparts are among the heaviest types of quarks, it is also the first tetraquark to include more than two heavy quarks. “It’s a pretty exciting finding,” says physi...

OnePlus is coming back to the budget smartphone market in a big way with the "OnePlus Nord," a device with an odd name but a pretty spectacular feature set for the ~$450 price tag. We've had the phone for almost two weeks now and can say it's easily one of the best Android phones on the market. Let's talk about what OnePlus is offering. With Snapdragon 865 phones often topping $1,000, this is the first phone we've tried with the cheaper Snapdragon 765G; at just one step down in Qualcomm's lineup, this is what most manufacturers seem to be going with to bring smartphone prices back down to Earth. The phone still has a minimum of 8GB of RAM, and while it's only using UFS 2.1 storage, the phone still feels plenty fast. The headline feature is probably the 90Hz display, which is sneaking out of the flagship realm and into less-expensive phones. The biggest downside to this phone is the distribution; for now, it is not for sale in the US. OnePlus is sending...