People rarely think about culverts until they are gone. These plain pipes and boxes carry roads over streams and span less than 20 feet -- the federal cutoff for what counts as a bridge. That means road-stream crossings stay out of the National Bridge Inventory and therefore, off the inspection schedule. Yet, when Tropical Storm Irene tore through New England in 2011, it destroyed more than 960 of them in Vermont's Green Mountains alone and left 13 communities entirely cut off for days.

Researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) present an algorithm that estimates the risks to players in online casinos based on their actual gaming behavior. Unlike similar tools made by commercial providers, the new algorithm will be available for free (open source). This will provide gambling industry regulators, such as the Netherlands Gaming Authority (Ksa), with an independent, transparent instrument to detect risky gambling behavior early and better assess whether online gambling companies are actually fulfilling their duty of care.

From phone jails to retro handsets, people are increasingly looking for ways to put distance between themselves and their smartphones, according to new research from Edith Cowan University.