Can 'excited delirium' get cops off the hook?

THE stories are always similar: a crack addict is running through the streets, semi-naked and delirious, aggressively challenging anyone that gets in his way. It takes a dozen police officers to subdue and restrain him, at which point he collapses and dies.

Rare as these deaths are, more often than not police brutality is blamed and officers are taken to court, but researchers now think that such events are the result of a rare disorder called "excited delirium".

Anecdotally, physicians use the term to describe a state in which a person becomes agitated and combative, with superhuman strength and skyrocketing body temperature. However, the American Medical Association does not recognise the disorder, which has led to claims that it does not exist and is merely an excuse used by police.

GM maize has built-in SOS chemical

MAIZE has been genetically engineered to produce a chemical rallying cry for help against the plant's worst pest in the US.

The signal is an odorous chemical called (E)-beta-caryophyllene. It attracts nematodes that kill the larvae of the western corn rootworm, responsible for an estimated $1 billion in lost revenue in the US every year.

Ted Turlings of the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland and his colleagues inserted a gene from oregano that codes for caryophyllene into maize plants.

"We saw a 50 per cent drop in damage to the engineered plants, compared with the controls. It was quite dramatic," he says.

Turlings's team is now looking into creating super-resistant maize by inserting the gene for caryophyllene into plants that are already engineered to produce the Bt toxin against rootworms.

Dieting could lead to a positive test for cannabis

CANNABIS smokers beware: stress or dieting might trigger "reintoxication", resulting in a positive drug test long after you last used the drug.

The main psychoactive ingredient of cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and once in the body it is readily absorbed into fat cells. Over the next few days it slowly diffuses back into the blood. Since THC is taken up by fat more readily than it diffuses out, continual intake means some THC can remain in the fat cells.

It has been suggested that stored THC can be released at a later date in situations where the body's fat is rapidly broken down. This is based on anecdotal reports of spikes in blood cannabinoid levels in people who have not taken the drug recently but have experienced extreme stress or rapid weight loss.