In the 1980s, environmentalists and epidemiologists began to statistically correlate attention problems in children and lower scores on tests with flame retardants used in furniture, chemicals that had become popular because parents and fire departments wanted to prevent "flashover" events during house fires - explosions in closed rooms.

Though countries like the United States and Ireland have far more forest than they did a century ago, professional environmentalists insist there needs to be more. From butterflies to bees, some groups insist more of the modern world must be reverted to nature, even when it comes to formerly ecologic wins like hydroelectric dams. 

Large ecosystems bring stability, they insist. But that isn't really true. Instead, stability and diversity happen when the ecosystem is complex, not just because it is large. And he branching complexity of rivers are absolutely vital in affecting regional population stability and persistence in nature.

The Attorneys General of Democratic states Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Maryland, New York (plus the District of Columbia) are filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to block the open source distribution of materials that enable the printing of guns using 3-D printers.

A recent study in European Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that picky eaters are healthier.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't encourage kids to try new things, but they are not going to end up unhealthy if they sat at the dinner table for an hour and still didn't eat that cabbage. And it debunks claims that picky eaters are at higher risk of being underweight, with poor growth, or being overweight.

The National Nature Reserve of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands is home to the world's biggest colony of king penguins and if satellite images are being interpreted accurately, they have seen a massive 88% reduction in the size of their colony, located on Île aux Cochons, in the Îles Crozet archipelago. If so, the causes of the colony’s collapse remain a mystery but the blame will likely fall on climate change.

Impulse control is associated with larger cognitively advanced animals like humans and other primates, but there are exceptions, like ravens. Now a recent study shows that the great tit, a common European songbird, has a tremendous capacity for self-control - almost the same as chimpanzees. 

Biologists learned this by placing food in a small translucent cylinder. The great tits that started pecking at the cylinder to get to the food failed the test as the behavior was considered an impulsive act. Those that, on the other hand, moved to an opening in the cylinder and thereby were able to access the food without pecking at the cylinder wall passed the test.