Short Science, March 31, 2013

Scientists have criticised an Italian government decree allowing a group of terminally ill patients to continue using an unproven stem cell treatment, saying such therapies may cause harm and risk exploiting desperate people. The treatment, created by the privately owned Stamina Foundation, was banned by Italian medicines regulator AIFA last year after it inspected their laboratories. Reuters

Pesticides used by farmers to protect crops or bee hives can scramble the brain circuits of honeybees, affecting memory and navigation skills needed to find food, scientists said. This in turn threatened entire colonies of bees whose pollinating functions are vital for human food production, they wrote in the journal Nature Communications. The team observed honeybee brains in the lab after exposing them to neonicotinoid pesticides used on crops, and organophosphates, the most widely used group of insecticides in the world - in this case coumaphos - sometimes used to control mite infestations in beehives. AFP