News has emerged of the latest threat to nature: drug-addled bees, hopped up on crack by crazed scientists. Some bee experts believe that cocaine could have "as devastating an effect on honey bee society as it does on human society".

The scientists in question are Andrew Barron of Macquarie University in Australia and Gene Robinson of the University of Illinois, and some fellow bee and narcotics experts. The men, for reasons that seemed good to them at the time, got some bees hooked on cocaine and then turned them out to find some sugar.

According to the boffins, cocaine turns good bees - productive members of the hive - into untrustworthy scumbags. The cocaine-addled insects would routinely exaggerate the quality of sugar or pollen they had found, lying to their fellow hive members through the medium of "waggle dancing", the standard method of describing one's work among bees.

But the bees' dance remained accurate in terms of where the food was, according to Robinson. The insect drug-slaves maintained a certain level of dignity.

"It's not like they're gyrating wildly on the dance floor out of control," he said. "This is a patterned response. It gives distance information, location information. That information is intact."

It also seems that honey bees experience withdrawal symptoms much as humans do when Mr Snowman suddenly cuts off his supply of treats. Bees who had their cocaine taken away hit the skids rapidly, losing even the ability to tell lemon and vanilla apart. (This is a sign of a bee who has really lost it, apparently.)

The scientists believe that their work indicates the presence of a reward system in the bee brain, something never shown so far. They also think that more bee study will have relevance to the problems of human addiction.

Hey, not sure if you've heard/posted this yet, but it's a really good 10 minute quickie by Hugh Downs of ABC news radio about the benefits of, and the conspiracy surrounding Hemp. I've found it's a nice little tool to use in helping change people's minds on the subject. I downloaded the vid, put it on my ipod and played it for my anti-pot mom in the car last year, and since then she's come around and smoked pot and even tripped on mushrooms!

Thanks Sandoz!

A group of revellers were rushed to hospital after taking a psychedelic drug rarely seen before by Nottingham's emergency services. The dealer who supplied them is awaiting sentence and the city's drug services are relaying the lessons learnt. REBECCA SHERDLEY and MICHAEL GREENWELL report

WHEN 10 people were rushed to hospital in the early hours of November 16 last year, medics found themselves dealing with something new.

They are trained to deal with overdoses and side-effects from a variety of drugs, but the symptoms exhibited by this group of people were different and alarming.

They were suffering vivid hallucinations, extreme anxiety and some of their heart rates were at worryingly high levels.

Some of the group – including six students from the University of Nottingham – said they had taken 2C-B, a drug "rarely seen" in the city.

It has been described as a cross between ecstasy and LSD, which propels users into an energetic state mixed with hallucinations and disorientation.

It is often dealt in capsules containing a dose of the drug, but the 10 people, who would eventually be hospitalised, may have taken 2C-B in an unmeasured, powder form.

Inspector Nigel English, of Notts Police drugs directorate, said: "2C-B is a synthetic drug, and one that we have rarely come across in the last few years.

"It could be that those who took it were unfamiliar with the drug and unaware of its potential side-effects or safe dosage levels.

"It may be that they mistook it for another more common drug, like ecstasy or amphetamine, and assumed it could be taken in a similar quantity."

Authorities say an 18-year-old patient high on psychedelic mushrooms stabbed a nurse in the chest with a pocket knife during an examination at a central New York hospital.

Alex Stephens of Freeville was charged with felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon after the incident at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday at Cortland Regional Medical Center. He was arraigned in Cortland City Court and jailed without bail.

Police say the 53-year-old male nurse is in guarded condition with internal bleeding.

Police say Stephens had ingested hallucinogenic psilocybin (sy-luh-SY'-buhn) mushrooms while visiting friends at Tompkins Cortland Community College.

In the basement of a university in Lausanne, Switzerland sit four black boxes, each about the size of a refrigerator, and filled with 2,000 IBM microchips stacked in repeating rows. Together they form the processing core of a machine that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second. It contains no moving parts and is eerily silent. When the computer is turned on, the only thing you can hear is the continuous sigh of the massive air conditioner. This is Blue Brain.

The name of the supercomputer is literal: Each of its microchips has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. “This is the first model of the brain that has been built from the bottom-up,” says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue Brain project. “There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there.”

Thanks Phyllis and Jeff!

Another pointless brouhaha about drugs has erupted, this time between Wired magazine, the New York Times, and a reporter's blog...

Reporter Mat Honan... created a table of eight drugs which affect your thinking for last month's Wired — seven prescription or over-the-counter drugs, plus methamphetamine. And that's when the tabloid-esque headlines started.

"Is Wired Pushing Illegal Drug Use?" read one headline, linking to a New York Times article by reporter Lia Miller. In the Times' "Media and Advertising" section, she'd asked disingenuously "does Wired magazine really mean to promote drugs?" calling their eight-drug table "somewhat disarming."

First of all, the idea that Wired promotes drug use goes way beyond this chart. Their name is 'Wired', remember? Secondly, the 'cognitive enhancement' story of students using drugs to boost performance has hit many major outlets (Time, NPR, Guardian, local news, etc.) and the NYT has no problem with these. This is because corporate publications and radio shows never mention meth in their reports, only Adderall, Ritalin, and other corporate prescription drugs. Wired puts meth in the same category as these patent amphetamines and NYT throws a fit and says Wired promotes illegal drug use. Anyone else see the hypocrisy and corporate protectionism here?

Thanks to Lou Cabron for sending this our way. Check the story for links to all the articles.

While much has been made of the nutritional value of hemp in the past few years, Johnson, a Saskatchewan hemp farmer and chief technical officer of Canada’s Lifespan Pharma, Inc., believes that the plant has rare properties that can dramatically increase the lifespan of humans. His work with Hemp for Horses is the first step in providing a scientific basis for eventual human clinical trials.

I spoke with Johnson recently about longevity, hemp and salad dressing, as well as the hurdles faced by the plant’s proponents in the scientific community and the biases and stigma that flourish within it.

h+: What is so great about hemp?

MORRIS JOHNSON: It is one of the superfoods supplying a cornucopia of oils, proteins, fiber and phytonutrients. Nutritional density is a key aspect. As you consume your basic proteins and carbohydrates and oils, you want a food that also delivers nutritional supplementation in both quality and quantity. Hemp has gamma-linolenic acid, arginine, caryophyllene, functional terpenes, cannabidiol in high enough concentrations to accomplish anti-aging functions as detailed in scientific papers.

Thanks Destiny Land!

Thanks Bobby!

Haupt-RC has added 2C-B-FLY as a new product to its assortment on Monday September 28th and the operator of the company died from consuming it on Saturday October 3rd. Between those dates Haupt-RC has sent out an unknown number of orders around the world.

Some of Haupt-RC's customers have been warned and thereby may have been saved from fatal ingestion. Unfortunately others have not been reached in time and have been hospitalised and died.

Unconfirmed sources have stated that this 2C-B-FLY was sourced from a Chinese producer. This Chinese producer may be selling to other Research Chemical vendors.