With Big Pharma allegedly “cooperating” with President Obama’s health care reforms, and Congress wanting to limit drug advertising, might it pay to refresh our memories about how we got here in the first place?

It's time for a quiz.  

The first to get all answers correct - via posted response - will receive a free copy of my book, Generation Rx, and a free sample of Adderall (*).

When the ancient Japanese art of origami first came about, it consisted of one piece of paper folded to form cranes, flowers, and other shapes. Now, however origami has been revised and resized a bit. All the way down to the nanometer (1/1000000000 meters).

Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and Harvard University have have taken a new approach to building nanoscale structures out of DNA with its complex twisting and curving shapes. In the journal Science, they report a series of experiments in which they folded DNA, "origami-style," into three dimensional objects including a beachball-shaped wireframe capsule just 50 nanometers in diameter.

A new process that cleans wastewater, generates electricity, and can remove 90 percent of salt from brackish water or seawater, was reported by an international team of researchers from China and the U.S.

Clean water for drinking, washing, and industrial uses is a scarce resource in some parts of the world. Its availability in the future will be even more problematic. Many locations already desalinate water using either a reverse osmosis process -- one that pushes water under high pressure through membranes that allow water to pass but not salt -- or an electrodialysis process that uses electricity to draw salt ions out of water through a membrane. Both methods require large amounts of energy.