Between 2001 and 2010, there were dramatic increases in Emergency Room prescriptions of opioid analgesics, such as Percocet, Vicodin, oxycodone and Dilaudid.

No surprise there, America is increasingly over-medicated, be it on supplements, homeopathy or legitimate treatments.

And it's going to get worse. If current trends under the Affordable Care Act persist, fewer and fewer doctors will accept government plans, and that means even more people will go to the ER, at far higher cost. ER doctors have to treat a lot of people and 'pain' is an entirely subjective claim, one of the last vestiges remaining of symptom-based diagnosis in the field.

Gluten-free foods are all the rage.

What was once the plight of celiac patients has become the latest health fad and a $5 billion annual industry. Companies like General Mills and others have taken advantage of the 200 percent higher prices people are willing to pay for the illusion of health and have released lots of new products.

It was only a matter of time before gluten-free functional foods rode that wave. The food processing industry has lots of left-over garbage and those antioxidants, phenols, fibers and proteins are all functional ingredients, which means they can be sold for profit and even claim it helps with global sustainability.

It's difficult to be certain yet but, based on information obtained on the Voyager and Galileo missions, scientists suspect that inside Europa, one of the icy moons of Jupiter, there exist reservoirs of liquid.

The Voyager and Galileo missions also registered fractures and `chaotic´ terrains associated to reddish materials, which contrast with the glacial white of the dominant water ice of the surface.

No one wants to tell someone they can't drive. America was founded on the pioneer spirit and unless we cramp everyone into urban concrete jungles, which are implicated in any number of health, pollution and crime issues, America's vast expanses mean we are a car culture.

But a diagnosis of hemianopia, blindness in one half of the visual field in both eyes, usually as the result of strokes, tumors or trauma, often means the end of driving. But it isn't required in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Switzerland and Canada if people can pass a specialized road test.

A survey conducted by researchers from the University of Chicago's Program on Medicine and Religion delves into the relationship between attitudes toward organ donation and the Islamic faith.

Previous surveys have found that Muslims are less likely than other religious groups to believe in organ donation and that religious values may be the obstacle. 

The American Muslims surveyed who interpret negative events in life as punishment from God are less likely to be organ donors than those with a more positive outlook. Overall levels of religiosity among American Muslims did not influence attitudes toward organ donation.  

New technology developed by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne allows them to detect facial expressions and identify which of the seven universal emotions a person is feeling: fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, surprise, or suspicion.

This could be useful for marketing and video game development, of course, but obviously in driver safety. Fatigue is a risk factor but so is the emotional state of the driver. 

Irritation, in particular, can make drivers more aggressive and less attentive. EPFL researchers, in collaboration with PSA Peugeot Citroën, have developed an on-board emotion detector based on the analysis of facial expressions. Tests carried out using a prototype indicate that the idea could have promising applications.

The modern world has a problem. We are undergoing spontaneous mutations caused by radiation, even at low levels. This radiation can break chromosomes into pieces that reattach randomly and sometimes create genes that didn't previously exist.

Actually, that's happening because of nature.  Deep space cosmic rays have been doing that to everything on earth for as long as the planet has existed. Even organic food.

The results of a small clinical trial intervention found that mindfulness-based meditation could lessen some symptoms associated with cancer in teens.

Mindfulness-based meditation sounds fuzzy, because it claims to focus on the 'present moment' and the connection between the mind and body.  But whatever works, works.

Adolescents living with cancer face not only the physical symptoms of their condition, but also the anxiety and uncertainty related to the progression of the disease, the anticipation of physical and emotional pain related to illness and treatment, the significant changes implied in living with cancer, as well as the fear of recurrence after remission. 

I would like to nominate Arvind Mahankali to be the next head of the USDA.   Why? He is obviously very smart, has an outstanding work ethic, and a superb vocabulary. He may have even reached puberty. And if he hasn’t, give it a year or so. Arvind is 13. 

But if you are concerned that he may not yet have what it takes to run an agency with a $24 billion budget and the responsibility of protecting us from unsafe foods, fear not. Last May, Arvind won the 86th National Spelling Bee championship. The word that gave him the championship was knaidel. For fans of irony, a knaidel is a type of Jewish dumpling.   

An analysis of 100 million US medical records published in PLOS Computational Biology concludes that autism rates are correlated (at the county level) with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males - and the authors say that may be due to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides. They even say that more regulations can fix it.

The authors found that after adjusting for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors, autism rates jumped by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Intellectual disability rates increase 94 percent. Slight increases in autism and ID rates are also seen in wealthier and more urban counties.