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Why is that fruit in the grocery store looks wonderful buttastes so dull and flavorless? Are you tired of buying amelon, waiting until it seems ripe, then cutting it openonly to find it’s tasteless? It’s hard to select good fruit,since we can’t tell whether or not it’s any good until weeat it. British scientists think we should leave it up to bees.

In a program backed by Sainsbury’s Grocery Stores, “sniffer”honey bees are being used to judge the ripeness and flavorof fruit before it arrives at the store. Bees have theability to detect airborne molecules in concentrations ofless than one part per billion. An earlier study using fruitflies proved that insects can tell if a single cherry tomatoin a large shipment is spoiled.
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Women have higher rates of obesity and eating disorders thanmen do, and now scientists think they know why. New studiesof brain scans show that different parts of men’s andwomen’s brains react to hunger, as well as to feeling full.

Angelo Del Parigi, of the National Institute of Diabetes andDigestive and Kidney Diseases, used PET scans to look at thebrains of 22 men and 22 women. A PET scan identifies areaswhere there are surges in blood flow that reflect brainactivity. Unlike X-rays, changes in the brain can beobserved on a PET scan while they are happening. Thescientists performed the scans after the participantsfinished a 36-hour fast and again after they drank a liquidmeal.
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Scientists have discovered a gene that provides a naturaldefense against the virus responsible for Aids. The gene,CEM15, stops HIV if it’s slightly modified. Normally, HIVovercomes CEM15 by producing a protein called Vif thatsuppresses its activity. If the HIV virus can be altered sothat it does not contain Vif, the CEM15 gene will interferewith its life cycle. It won’t get rid of the old HIV, but itwill stop it from progressing, since any new HIV particleswill not be infectious.
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Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds inLondon, has been told that Osama Bin Laden is still alive. He says bin-Laden was wounded in an attack on his Tora Boramountain base in Afghanistan last December. Atwan is one offew journalists who interviewed bin-Laden before theal-Qaeda attacks on September 11.

Atwan says he started looking for bin-Laden’s currenthideout after seeing the latest al-Qaeda video. He noticedthat bin-Laden, who is left-handed, hardly moved his left arm. “His people say he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel.He is in good health now,” Atwan says. ?They also saidbin-Laden would not appear in a video and just speak words.He will make another appearance only after his people attackthe Americans again.”
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