White House Goes With Its Gut, Backs New Microbiome Project and other top stories.

• White House Goes With Its Gut, Backs New Microbiome Project

  They live in our guts and digest our food, make some of us love chocolate and may even control mood. They can help turn weeds into fuel and gobble up oil spills. Anyone who watched "The Martian" learned that crops cannot grow without partner organisms in the soil. Now the White House wants to encourage research into the microbiome: the microbes living in and on animals, the dirt, oceans and the atmosphere. Dozens of companies, foundations and universities have signed on to the National Mic..

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• Arctic Bird Shrinking as Planet Warms

  

  Just as canaries once warned miners of the lack of oxygen, an iconic shorebird that migrates from Siberia to West Africa is sending warning signals about the impact of climate change on the planet. In a new study published today in the journal Science, an international team details how the warming of the Arctic by climate change could be responsible for drops in the population of a sub-species of red knot bird (Calidris canutus canutus). As the Arctic has warmed, red knots — which breed in Sibe..

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• Swarm Intelligence Could Be Gamblers' Key To Betting: Here's How It Works

  

  Artificial intelligence UNU seems to have conquered not just the Super Bowl and the Oscars, but also the Kentucky Derby: it just made betters $11,000 richer with the correctly predicted derby winner. How does the so-called swarm intelligence work and arrive at a successful forecast? Swarm intelligence seeks to amplify, not replace, human intelligence, with the idea that large groups predict an event outcome better than just one individual can. According to UNU inventor and Unanimous AI chief ex..

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• Dung Beetles Navigate Poop-Pile Getaways Using Celestial 'Snapshots'

  

  Scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden have shown that dung beetles use mental "snapshots" of the Milky Way to navigate. E. Baird / Lund University hide caption toggle caption E. Baird / Lund University Scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden have shown that dung beetles use mental "snapshots" of the Milky Way to navigate. ..

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• India's Big Battle: Development Vs. Pollution

  

  Dr. Gita Prakash (left), who runs a family clinic from her home in New Delhi, examines 10-year-old Sonu Kumar Chaudhary as his father, restaurant deliveryman Dilip Kumar Chaudhary, looks on. Prakash sees more and more cases of illness caused by the city's polluted air. David Gilkey/NPR hide caption toggle caption David Gilkey/NPR Dr. Gita Prakash (left), ..

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• Newly Discovered Fetus Is Youngest Egyptian Mummy on Record

  

  This CT scan of the coffin, dating from 644 B.C. to 525 B.C., shows the mummy's upper limbs and skull. Credit: Copyright The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge A miniature coffin discovered more than a century ago holds the remains of the youngest Egyptian ever embalmed as a mummy on record, researchers in England said. A computed tomography (CT) scan of the coffin revealed that the coffin didn't hold mummified internal organs, as researchers had suspected, but instead contains the tiny ..

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• Ancient tools and bone found in Florida could help rewrite the story of the first Americans

  

  The researchers say the find is unequivocal proof that people were in Florida more than 1,000 years earlier than anyone had imagined. (FloridaState/YouTube) Thousands of years ago, some of the first Americans knelt beside a pond in what is now Florida. Clutching sharp stone knives, they hacked at the tusk of a slain mastodon, slicing meat away from the long bone. Then, with their work completed, they got up and walked away, leaving behind some tools and the stripped carcass . Centuries pas..

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• A child swallows a battery every 3 hours. This remarkable pill-sized origami robot could remove them.

  

  (Melanie Gonick/MIT) After 1-year-old Emmett Rauch ate a lithium battery, he began vomiting blood, prompting a visit to critical care and emergency surgery. A doctor would later compare the toddler’s throat to the scene of a detonated firecracker. It took years and dozens of procedures to reconstruct Emmett’s windpipe before he could breathe on his own. Across the United States, a child swallows a battery once every three hours, according to one pediatric estimate, equal to about 3,300 case..

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