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Back in March, Microsoft announced that it would allow generic cross-platform play on its Xbox Live network. The move was essentially a public challenge for Sony to similarly open up the PlayStation Network, allowing for multiplayer matches involving more than one type of console for what would essentially be the first time.

Now, some major game developers are stressing that any technical hurdles to this cross-platform play have been overcome. Sony's walled-garden policy is the final obstacle to allowing play between Xbox and PlayStation systems, they say. "Right now, we're literally at the point where all we need is the go-ahead on the Sony side and we can, in less than a business day, turn [cross-platform play] on and have it up and working, no problem," Jeremy Dunham, vice president of Rocket League developer Psyonix told IGN in a recent interview. "It'd literally take a few hours to propagate throughout the whole world, so really we're just waiting on the permission to do so... It could be tomorrow, it could be longer than that. We just don't know—we're anxiously awaiting that, just like the rest of our fans."

Rocket League was one of the first games that announced cross-platform play between the Xbox One and Windows 10 (well before Microsoft's recent Play Anywhere initiative), so it's not that surprising that the title is ready to link in with the PS4 as well. But The Witcher maker CD Projekt says it's also simply awaiting Sony's go-ahead for a cross-platform version of the upcoming Gwent card game.

(credit: Randy)

The capture of CO₂ from smokestacks could make an important contribution to limiting climate change, but there are two obstacles. One is that you have to store that CO₂ somewhere (like underground reservoirs). The other is that the capture process requires energy, so your power plant ends up producing less electricity per unit of fuel. That comes with a financial cost.

There are efforts afoot to overcome both of those hurdles, but there are also other possible approaches. One that sounds obvious and attractive is to turn that CO₂ into something useful and valuable, rather than just reservoir filler. The sticky wicket here is chemistry. Carbon dioxide is pretty stable, and turning it into something else can require a large energy input.

Cornell University’s Wajdi AlSadat and Lynden Archer, however, are playing with one possible process that could convert CO₂ into a commodity—and generate electricity while you’re at it.

Women washing hands in white sink good suds (credit: Arlington County)

Poke around any bathroom or cleaning cabinet in the US and you’re likely to find a product spiked with an antimicrobial chemical. One of the most common of these, triclosan, has shown up in about 75 percent of antibacterial hand soaps and is easily spotted in a range of other goods, from toys to toothpaste. It has also been found in about 75 percent of Americans’ urine. Yet, despite their omnipresence, these antimicrobials go largely unregulated and scientists don’t know their health effects.

In an opinion piece published Thursday in Science, Alyson Yee and Jack Gilbert, microbiologists from the University of Chicago, call for that to change. They lay out just how little data we have on the chemicals—and some of it even conflicts. Yet, it’s clear that our exposure may begin in the womb and that the chemicals do have the potential to mess up our microbiomes—the communities of microbes in and on us that strongly influence our health. Such microbial disturbances have been linked to wide ranging conditions, from neurological disorders to arthritis, allergies, obesity, and irritable bowel disorder.

As such, scientists should prioritize figuring out if the chemicals that are already all around us, are causing harm, Yee and Gilbert argue.

Two men who were arrested last year for making online threats and bringing guns and ammunition to a Boston Pokémon card game tournament have been sentenced to two years each in prison and two years of probation afterward. The Boston Globe reports that James Stumbo and Kevin Norton pled guilty to unlawful possession of the guns and nearly 300 rounds of ammunition found in their car outside the Hynes Convention Center event last August.

Stumbo and Norton, both well-known members of the high-level Pokémon card playing community, were arrested after driving from Iowa to Boston for the event as well as posting messages on Facebook showing off the guns and threatening to "kill the competition." Another message stated that "my AR-15 says that you lose." Event security was warned about the postings and notified the police before informing attendees of the issue.

Miller's attorney, Robert LeRoy, tried to downplay the pair's online postings as "adolescent stuff" that "wasn’t threatening in any capacity." He also defended their actions by contrasting Iowa's relatively lax gun laws with the stricter regulations in Massachusetts. “They basically always drive around with loaded guns in the trunk in Iowa,” he said, according to the Globe report.