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It’s bad enough that we have a missing bee mystery, as well as a major coral die off (which affects the fish population). Now it turns out we also have a mysterious wheat blight.

In New Scientist, Debora Mackenzie quotes Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, who is known as the father of the Green Revolution, as saying, “This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction” because wheat feeds more people on earth than any other plant.
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In our homes, we are aware of the need to recycle paper, plastic and glass. But agriculture has other problems, and one of the biggest is chicken feathers. We may be able to make clothes out of them. Now scientists are trying to figure out how to recycle these feathers into biodegradable plastic, which would solve OUR disposal problems as well!

In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner reports that chickens are related to the largest dinosaur that every roamed the earth: Tyrannosaurus rex. Rex died 68 million years ago, but some of its bones have been found that still contain soft tissue, which can be tested for DNA. A comparison with chicken genes showed that the two species are related.
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Before the evolution of photosynthesis, which produces chlorophyll, the first life on earth might have been purple, rather than the green that dominates today. The world is so very green because chlorophyll in plants absorbs red and blue wavelengths and reflects green ones. Before this, red and blue, which combine to form purple, may have predominated. This is especially important when we search for distant planets that may still be in that earlier stage of evolution.

In LiveScience.com, Ker Than quotes reseacher Neil Reid as saying, “We should make sure we don’t lock into ideas that are entirely centered on what we see on Earth.”
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The suicide of a friend of family member is always a great tragedy. Scientists now think that there might be a “suicide gene” that is handed down in our DNA. Despite this, there is one sure way to help prevent suicides: keep guns out of the house.

A new study has found evidence that a genetic tendency toward suicide has been linked to a particular area of the genome on chromosome 2 that has been implicated in two additional recent studies of attempted suicide. Psychiatrist Virginia Willour says, “We’re hoping our findings will eventually lead to tests that can identify those at high risk for attempting suicide.”
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