Brandon Keim has my favourite story of the week: a haunting tale of thousands of birds, trapped by the 9/11 memorial lights.

Four people contracted fatal brain amoebas through organ transplants. Maryn McKenna on a nightmare scenario.

“Those who get a lot of practice, say, killing zombies attacking from haphazard directions in a shifting, postapocalyptic landscape pump up their probabilistic inference powers”. Gamers are better at fast decision-making. They can tell you that Susan Greenfield is full of crap faster than you can say “mind change”.

“Offender profiles are so vague as to be meaningless…  At best, they have little impact on murder investigations; at worst they risk misleading investigators and waste police time.” Ian Sample reports.

A brilliant