On:

Here’s a possible cause of the aflockalypse: The company that makes Scotts Miracle-Gro fertilizer for your lawn could also be killing your songbirds.

Scotts pled guilty to charges that they illegally put insecticides into its "Morning Song" and "Country Pride" brands of bird seed. In 2008, Scotts distributed 73 million packages of bird seed coated with the insecticide Storcide II that was intended to keep insects from destroying the seed when it was broadcast onto your lawn or put into a feeder.
read more

On:

The recent killing of Afghan civilians by an American soldier who undoubtedly had post traumatic stress disease–as well as the shooting of a black kid by a patrol officer here in the US–points out the need to identify soldiers and police who are vulnerable to PTSD BEFORE they are hired–but is this possible? It may be: scientists have identified specific genetic risks that make people more vulnerable to this condition.

Neuroscientist Joseph Boscarino says, "We found that individuals with these ‘at-risk’ genetic variants were more likely to develop PTSD, especially those that had higher exposure to traumatic events. Those without these four genetic variants appeared to be highly resilient to PTSD, regardless of trauma exposure history."
read more

On:

The Pentagon is planning to build a spacecraft that can travel outside our solar system on a hundred-year trip, reporting on what it finds along the way. Why would a financially-strapped military pursue such a project–are they searching for hostile ETs?
read more