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Homogenized fecal matter for transplantation (credit: Wikimedia)

Our guts are teeming with trillions of microbes. They fight, form alliances, gobble our food, spew chemicals, and hack our immune systems. These hidden happenings in our innards hold sway over our health. Yet the key microbial players and their affairs vary considerably from person-to-person. And, overall, these communities remain a mystery to scientists.

This week, three studies published in the journal Science offer new glimpses of what’s going on in the black box that is our guts. While they all provide insights into these complex communities, they also highlight just how much we still have to learn.

Two studies dug into people’s health and, literally, their poop looking why there is so much variation in gut microbiome. Factors the studies hoped might explain that variation include diet, medication, disease, and stool types—from hard lumps to mushy piles according to the Bristol stool scale. The studies looked at samples from 1,135 Dutch and 1,106 Belgian volunteers. Researchers found that such factors account for only 18.7 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively, of variation. What differences account for the rest are complete unknowns.

We'll have to wait until the demo's complete to see how these Blackroom weapons will work in John Romero's next video game. (credit: John Romero)

John Romero announced his return to video game development on Monday in the form of a Kickstarter project, but he and another ex-id Software veteran, Adrian Carmack, apparently agreed with Ars' initial assessment of their crowdfunding campaign. The duo has now put its money request on hold, declaring that they will return once they can put a playable demo into the hands of their fans.

"The team is at work on a demo which demonstrates the kind of gameplay, look, and innovative, cool features that make Blackroom truly unique," Romero announced in a "backer-only" update post. "Simply put, this will take more time than the Kickstarter has left, so we’ve decided to suspend the campaign and launch a new one when the gameplay demo is ready."

Blackroom's Monday announcement came with little more than big promises of a return to "classic" first-person shooter gameplay, a few snippets of concept art, and the confirmation of a single additional staffer in the form of a "metal composer." Instead of putting any money where his mouth is, Romero instead teased fans with a pair of remade levels (1, 2) from the original version of Doom—as in, downloadable WAD files you could inject into the original executable. Those throwback levels were admittedly very good, but they failed to illustrate new mechanics or systems to expect in a new game.

(credit: flickr user: hjl)

When people think they’re being watched, they’re more inclined to behave themselves. This behavior pops up again and again: in blood donation, energy saving, and charitable giving. There are many explanations for why this happens—maybe we think people are more likely to treat us well if they see us behaving in a prosocial way; in some cases, we might behave ourselves in front of others in order to avoid awkward conversations or having to lie.

Harvard researchers Todd Rogers, John Ternovski, and Erez Yoeli wanted to find out if they could leverage this tendency in order to increase voter turnout. A “get-out-the-vote” (GOTV) letter is a simple, impersonal reminder that has a small but noticeable effect on voter turnout. A meta-analysis of 79 experiments on the effects of GOTV letters found that, on average, they boosted turnout by 0.194 percentage points—for example, from 39 percent to 39.194 percent.

It’s a tiny figure, but if applied across the US, it would result in around 450,000 extra voters (out of an estimated 235,248,000 eligible voters). Not nothing, but still not a lot. Rogers, Ternovski, and Yoeli suspected that adding a hint of oversight to the letters could make a bigger difference.

Muraki Kanae

The 3D hologram pop star known as Hatsune Miku wags her hand at a Seattle crowd while singing about how men should bring her "pudding made from special eggs." (That's what Google Translate says, at any rate.)

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SEATTLE—"Do you think ten-year-old you would believe that a concert like this could ever exist?"

My buddy asked me this after we'd spent two hours laughing at the weirdest concert we'd ever attended: Hatsune Miku Expo 2016. The concert's distinguishing feature was a massive, see-through screen in front of a rock band, on which singing, 10-foot-tall anime princesses were projected. Forget Britney, Miley, or Taylor: no pop star fits the "larger than life" bill quite like a hologram singer who packs stadiums and can change costumes with a single hard-drive swap. The snark possibilities were rich.

As we walked out of the concert, however, snark gave way to giddy delight. We had finally seen Miku in the "flesh." Its creators and backing band rarely play in Miku's homeland of Japan, let alone elsewhere, forcing the curious to watch one of a scant few YouTube videos to see what the heck this show is all about. North Americans have nine more opportunities this year, including this coming Saturday in San Francisco, thanks to a continent-spanning tour. I caught the tour's opening night in Seattle last Saturday, fully prepared to chide it.