The Joshua tree’s range almost perfectly outlines the Mojave Desert itself. Scientists studying how that range is shifting are using the tree as a living instrument for measuring climate change across the region Las Vegas calls home. Joshua trees are spindly, tree-like yucca plants so closely tied to this specific desert that their historic range… Continue reading How a Warming Climate Is Reshaping the Mojave Desert’s Signature Tree

Lake Mead supplies drinking water to Las Vegas and much of the Southwest. Understanding why its water line keeps dropping starts hundreds of miles away, in the snowpack of the Rocky Mountains. The Colorado River stretches roughly 1,400 miles from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains through seven U.S. states before filling Lake Powell and… Continue reading The Science Behind Lake Mead’s Falling Water Line

Las Vegas and Reno have ranked among the two fastest-warming cities in the entire country for years running. The reason isn’t just global climate change. It’s what pavement and concrete do to a desert once you build a city on top of it. Climate Central, a nonpartisan nonprofit made up of climate scientists, analyzes average… Continue reading Why Las Vegas Is One of the Fastest-Warming Cities in America

Carbon dioxide makes up less than half a percent of Earth’s atmosphere. That tiny fraction is the main reason the planet has warmed as fast as it has over the past century. The greenhouse effect itself is not the problem. NASA describes it as the reason Earth is habitable at all: certain gases in the… Continue reading The Greenhouse Effect, Explained: How a Trace Gas Warms an Entire Planet

Nevada treats compulsive gambling the way other states treat a public health crisis, with a dedicated fund, a state advisory council, and its own annual research report tracking outcomes. The Nevada Legislature passed Senate Bill 357 in 2005, creating the Problem Gambling Fund and, alongside it, the Advisory Council on Problem Gambling, a state-appointed panel… Continue reading Nevada Built a Public Health System Around a Single Behavior: Gambling

The casino floor is not an accident. It is one of the most heavily studied behavioral environments on Earth, and much of that research happens a few miles from the Strip. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas houses the International Gaming Institute, a research center that treats gambling not as entertainment but as a behavioral… Continue reading Why Slot Machines Are Designed by Psychologists, Not Just Engineers

On the fourth floor of a research park north of the Strip sits a fake hotel room, a fake casino floor, and a fake sportsbook, built for one purpose: watching how people actually behave in them. Black Fire Innovation opened in 2020 at UNLV’s Harry Reid Research and Technology Park, a partnership between the university… Continue reading Inside the Las Vegas Lab Built to Study How You Behave in a Casino

For decades, emergency planners assumed a crowd under threat becomes a mindless mob. Modern behavioral research says that assumption is wrong, and a Las Vegas mass-casualty event became one of the case studies that helped prove it. Crowd psychology as a field spent much of the twentieth century built around the idea of panic, the… Continue reading What Actually Happens Inside a Crowd Under Threat — and Why Las Vegas Became a Case Study

Nevada law created an entire state office to build STEM education into the workforce pipeline. The Nevada STEM Framework never mentions the arts by name, and schools are folding them in anyway. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math, an expansion of the older STEM acronym that adds creative and design disciplines… Continue reading Nevada Built a State Office Just to Grow STEM Schools — Here’s Where the Arts Fit In

A tribal court sits less than a mile from the Fremont Street Experience, running its own criminal code, its own evidence rules, and its own appeals process, entirely outside the jurisdiction of Clark County. The Las Vegas Paiute Tribe operates a Tribal Court that, according to the tribe’s own government, exercises sovereign jurisdiction over criminal,… Continue reading Sovereign Ground: How Tribal Law Actually Works in Las Vegas