Looking at the latest statistics, it’s hard to miss one compelling trend: The over-prescription of painkillers is slowly but surely eclipsing the problem of illegal drugs.

There are, of course, the usual culprits in this disturbing trend - from HMOs and their dependence on pills to keep patients out of doctors’ offices to our culture of quick-fixes and slick marketing by drug companies.

But the history of opioids’ medico-socio evolution also tells us the opioid has older sources as well.

You'd think European waters would be pretty well documented by now but nature always has surprises. Uroptychus cartesi is a crab in the 5-7 cm (including claws) size range that has been found at nearly a mile deep in the underwater mountains facing the Galician coast - Spain. 

Also intriguing: Its closest relative is in the Caribbean Sea.

MMS ( Miracle Mineral Solution) is getting some much needed attention in the skeptic community, as well as the autism community. Created by a man named "Bishop"Jim Humble, who runs his own Genesis Church, it is a potent industrial bleach which when used as recommended by Humble both orally and rectally can cause serious side effects, serious enough that the FDA has issued a strongly worded news release:

Should there be racial quotas in university admissions?  In jobs? What about gender quotas or political ones?

America has more equality than any country in the world and so many organizations and institutions have elected to further relegate racial issues to the past by deemphasizing race or remove it entirely from their decision-making processes.  People will be hired on qualifications so everyone who wins knows they won for the right reasons.

The two most common swimming strokes used by athletes training for the Olympic Games either pull the swimmer through the water like a boat paddle or whirl to the side like a propeller.

Which arm motion works best is a big argument among elite swimmers and their coaches but a university research study has picked a winner - which will be no comfort at at all to actual athletes and their coaches.

Plato and a platypus walked into a bar. The bartender gave the philosopher a quizzical look, and Plato said, “What can I say?

'Grey' literature, which led to the "Glaciergate" scandal of 2010 when it was revealed that the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are losing ice (gone by 2035!) was stated as fact even though it was not based on evidence, will no longer be a problem for  the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Because they have declared that grey literature will no longer be grey - any information they choose to use will be considered peer reviewed just by being posted on the Internet by the IPCC.  

Henry I. Miller, M.D., physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and was at the NIH and FDA from 1977 to 1994.

He is, basically, a longtime knowledgeable insider into How Things Work. And he isn't a fan of how things work at the National Science Foundation.

GBI Research, a business intelligence provider, has released its latest research, 'Bone Metabolism Therapeutics Market to 2018 - Hyperparathyroidism Sector to Decline in the Absence of New Product Launches and Increased Generic Erosion for Zemplar, Hectorol and Sensipar', which provides insights into bone metabolic disease therapeutics until 2018.  

Hundreds of millions of people in the world suffer from allergies, and it is estimated that 300 million have asthma. In some countries, one in three children has asthma, and 80% of them also have other allergies. There are many guidelines and consensus documents about how to treat this disease but the dissemination and implementation of these are still major challenges.