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(credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

Improving the public's understanding of anthropogenic climate change is vital to cultivating the political will to do something about it. However, a lot of research has shown that simply improving people’s understanding won’t necessarily do much to change their stance. This is because people’s opinions on many topics rest largely on their political affiliation, rather than how well they understand the science.

That leaves us with a thorny state of affairs. If improving science education isn’t going to shift public opinion, what can? A recent paper in Nature Climate Change suggests that education might not be as hopeless a cause as previously thought—but the work has some important limitations that may not give us much cause for optimism.

A problem with previous research on the topic is that “knowledge about climate change” was treated as a monolith, the authors of the new paper argue. Past studies didn't take into account that there are different kinds of knowledge about climate change. While knowledge in one area might be influenced by ideology, knowledge in other areas might not be.

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.