Scientists have not only identified a critical gene involved in heroin addiction relapse, but they have also successfully blocked it, eliminating cravings for the drug.

The study was conducted on heroin-addicted rats. But the researchers now think that, within a few years, better treatments will become available to human heroin users who cannot quit due to insidious cycles of relapse.

NewScientist

Wired reports that an herbicide resistant breed of the coca plant has been found in Columbia after years of government spraying. It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it’s an outside possibility that it was engineered. What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly. Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?

Wired via /.

via abuddha’s memes

Seven years ago, Joseph Barczak’s daily consumption of rum averaged half a gallon. Divorced and living in his parents’ basement, he says, he “couldn’t concentrate on anything, except getting the alcohol and drinking it.” One morning he had an unforgettable dream. “I saw my daughter’s godfather, who’d died six months prior to that, and God, standing over me, saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”

From Village Voice

Think about a piece of chocolate. Imagine it melting in your mouth. The sensation is delicious. Now think of the same image, but this time the chocolate is covered by a white film on its surface. This white film is produced when chocolate is poorly crystallised or when it is stored under the wrong conditions. We ?eat? also with our eyes, so such bad-looking chocolate seems less nice to the palate. Here is where scientists come into the picture. Researchers from The Netherlands working at the ESRF try to avoid this white layer, called fat bloom, by studying the structure of chocolate. Their aim is to optimise the pleasure of eating it. They publish this week in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B the structure of a component of cocoa butter and also the crystal structure of the most common form of cocoa butter in chocolate, a result that is of great importance for chocolate production. The ESRF synchrotron light was essential for this research.

Scientists have engineered a virus which may help addicts battle cocaine addiction.

Learn the ins and outs of safe nitrous oxide exploration.

Zlin – As soon as spring breezes turn warm, armies of Czech teenagers grab their sleeping bags and head to the wooded hills of the country’s Moravia region.