With no special advertising or publicity, Splenda, the sugar replacement from Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Nutritionals Worldwide division, is riding the hottest trend in food today — low-carbohydrate eating popularized by the Atkins Diet.

A new system that helps cells stave off the ravages of time has been discovered by scientists. The find may help explain how some cancer cells live forever - and provide a new route of attack for up to one in 10 tumours, they say.

A truly extraordinary cure for some forms of blindness is being proposed. The idea is to add light-absorbing pigments from spinach to nerve cells in the retina, to make the nerve cells fire when struck by light.

The mass production of nanoscale devices could be a step closer following the construction of a nanoscale conveyor belt made of carbon nanotubes.