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Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding (in green) from a human cell. (credit: CDC)

In the current era of microbiome research, us humans are already having to come to grips with the fact that ‘I’ is actually ‘we’. Instead of our bodies constituting a single life-form, we are each comprised of complex and diverse ecosystems of microbes that have a profound influence on our existence. Our health and wellbeing is not just determined by what our own cells do, but what our trillions of invisible inhabitants do, too. And the genetic blueprints that govern our biology are partly carried in those microbial inhabitants, as well as in our own cells.

But, as it happens, the DNA in our own cells isn’t solely ours, either. More than eight percent of the human genome is not human at all—it’s from viruses. And scientists are still digging up yet more viral code from human DNA that may well influence our lives.

In a new study this week, researchers analyzed the genomes of more than 2,500 people and found 19 never-before-noticed segments of viral genetic code. Some of that viral DNA may have been traveling down human lineages for at least 670,000 years, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Today, two representatives from the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee sent a letter (PDF) to Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), asking him to discontinue any plans to expand the list of who the NSA shares certain information with.

In late February, the New York Times reported that the Obama Administration was working with the NSA to craft new rules and procedures to allow domestic law enforcement organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) access to the digital communications information that the NSA collects through programs like PRISM. Under the new rules, domestic law enforcement agencies would be able to access raw information that the NSA collects, without the so-called “minimization” process that the NSA has formerly employed to scrub surveillance information of identifying data pertaining to American citizens before handing it over to the requesting agency.

”We are alarmed by press reports that state National Security Agency (NSA) data may soon routinely be used for domestic policing,” Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Representative Blake Farenthold (R-TX) wrote. "If media accounts are true, this radical policy shift by the NSA would be unconstitutional, and dangerous.”

Microsoft has a new artificial intelligence bot, named Taylor, that tries to hold conversations on Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe. And she makes me feel terribly old and out of touch.

Tay, as she calls herself, is a chatbot that's targeted at 18- to 24-year-olds in the US. Just tweet at her or message her and she responds with words and occasionally meme pictures. Sometimes she doesn't, though. She's meant to be able to learn a few things about you—basic details like nickname, favorite food, relationship status—and is supposed to be able to have engaging conversations. She is intended to get better at conversations the longer they go on. But honestly, I couldn't get much sense out of her. Except for my nickname, she wasn't interested in learning any of these other details about me, and her replies tended to be meaningless statements that ended any conversation, rather than open questions that would lead me to say more about myself.

Maybe I was talking about the wrong things. I'm not entirely sure what 18- to 24-year-olds talk about, really. But she didn't seem interested in whether Taylor Swift or Katy Perry is better, she doesn't watch TV, and she expressed no interest in this year's election.

(credit: Andrew Cunnigham)

Apple's last two product events have spent time on the Apple Watch, the Apple TV, the iPad, and the iPhone, but the Mac has been conspicuously absent. Yet there's still work going on behind the scenes, as a tipster pointed out to 9to5Mac. A reference to a refreshed version of the 12-inch MacBook made it into the OS X Server 5.1 update that was released alongside all the other Apple software updates on Monday.

The NetBoot feature in OS X Server lets you offer network-based OS X images to Macs, and administrators can set up filters to let them serve specific images to specific Mac models—the entry for an Early 2016 version of the 12-inch MacBook is present in this filter list, as seen above. Unfortunately, we can't guess much else about the MacBook other than the fact that it exists and probably uses upgraded Skylake Core M chips from Intel. If there have been any external changes (more or different ports, for instance), we won't know about them until the official announcement.

Some rumors suggested that this MacBook could show up at Monday's event, though it ultimately never did. The mention in the OS X Server update may be a leftover from a time when the MacBook was still slated for a March introduction, and it may have survived because it's buried so far down in the software—model filtering is an obscure preference inside NetBoot, which is an obscure feature inside OS X Server, which is itself a relatively obscure piece of software.

The Arctic has seen the biggest proportion of our climate's warming. (credit: NASA GISS)

The climate is driven by a complicated interaction of factors. While greenhouse gases contribute to warming, other influences produce a cooling that may mask the full effects of greenhouse gases. We knew that aerosolized particulates produce a cooling effect, but it has been difficult to figure out how large this is, given the ongoing warming.

Research presented in Nature Geoscience now tries to put a number on the aerosol effect. Additional work on the same issue shows that recent changes to emissions regulations may have strongly accelerated the warming happening in the Arctic.

Aerosolized particles in the atmosphere scatter light and cool the planet by reflecting some of the Sun’s light back out into space. Additionally, these particulates may act as catalysts for the formation of clouds, allowing water droplets to accumulate around them. Clouds have a mixed impact on the climate, reflecting incoming sunlight while also insulating the planet to a degree. This particular interaction, between aerosols and clouds, remains a source of uncertainty in climate science.

(credit: Valentina Palladino)

As more and more companies develop smartwatches, we're starting to see which will stick around and which will fall behind. Pebble is hoping that it could become one of the former companies—but it's cutting costs to stay afloat. In an interview with Tech Insider, Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky revealed the company would lay off 40 employees, or about 25 percent of its entire workforce.

Migicovsky was slightly cryptic when explaining the reason for the layoffs, but he did say that Pebble would be carefully considering how to spend its money over the next year. "We've definitely been careful this year as we plan our products," Migicovsky told Tech Insider. "We got this money, but money is pretty tight these days."

According to the interview, Pebble has raised $26 million over the past eight months, which is in addition to its original $20 million raised back in February of 2015 when it launched its Pebble Time Kickstarter campaign. Migicovsky claims Pebble will focus its wearable device efforts on the health and fitness market going forward, and it will also start selling smartwatches in India via Amazon next month.