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You probably haven't spent a lot of time lately thinking about the element, nickel. Talk about boring. Well, guess what? It is very far from boring, especially when you learn some cool stuff. Here is some cool stuff.

Yelp is a very popular source of recommendations for food, activity, physicians and now the people weigh in on Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Centers. Patients have different expectations for these facilities and it influences their "satisfaction."

We don't know if probiotics are a good idea during antibiotic therapy. So eat plenty of fiber -- such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains -- instead.

Food labels serve one purpose, and one purpose only: To provide nutritional information to consumers. The process by which a food is produced is not relevant to its nutritional content or safety profile. Therefore, products made using animal cell culture techniques absolutely should not require special labeling.

We asked three straightforward questions about the integrity of the organic certification process. Program officials refused to answer them. It seems clear that this agency is less of a regulatory body and more of a taxpayer-funded cheerleading squad. It should be eliminated.

There aren't many things today that unite both sides of the political aisle, but leave it to some environmental activists to achieve the impossible. There's bipartisan opposition to a proposed Colorado law that would severely curtail fracking in the state.

After years, countless hours and dollars spent you'd think doctors could readily share a patient's records. However, you would be wrong. The latest excuse: sharing patient data may be an anti-trust violation, since after all, patient data is valuable. But when did we lose ownership of our most personal of information?

How can we move scientific research in directions that are felt to be "socially optimal"? While there is no stick to get science redirected, government funding can supply the carrot. How big a carrot is needed? That depends. Let's take a look.

Bundled care, paying and calculating costs for an episode of care rather than fee-for-service, was thought in theory to be able to bring substantial cost savings. But as Yogi Berra said, "In theory, there is no difference in theory and practice. In practice there is."

The superfood phenomenon is likely the result of (1) Our cultural obsession with quick fixes and easy answers to complex questions; and (2) Marketing gimmicks that take advantage of widespread scientific illiteracy.

Instead of paying taxes, non-profit health systems give back to the community. But how much, to which community and who actually benefits is increasingly a divisive issue. Here, the spotlight finds Sutter Health, the seventh largest health system in the United States.

When bundled with enforcement, reducing the legal limit on a driver's blood alcohol level is considered a best practice. However, on its own, the tactic doesn't seem to have much of an impact.

Plenty of bad papers are accepted as true because the academic who wrote it is famous. On the flip side, many good papers are never written out of the fear that it could cost an academic his job. So, how about we just eliminate real names and publish papers under fake ones instead? That's the fundamental idea behind a new journal, not-so-subtly called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, set to launch next year. This idea is so good, I wish I'd thought of it first.

What a medical doctor sees in social media posts can tell an entirely different picture than the one intended to be told. As the saying goes "the devil is in the details."

The deadliest occupational group for men was "construction and extraction," with a suicide rate of 53.2 per 100,000 in 2015. For women, the deadliest group was "arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media," with a suicide rate of 15.6 per 100,000.

The October DEA National Drug Assessment, which claimed that opioid analgesic pills were doing most of the killing was pure BS. Now there is even more evidence of this, courtesy of New Hampshire. Only 9% of OD deaths were from pills, the rest for heroin and fentanyl. More lies put to rest.

Only about 37% of American adults bothered to get a flu shot this past flu season. That's actually a decrease from the previous season, when about 43% got one. Partially as a result, 80,000 Americans died from the flu. On the flip side, we did buy more organic food than ever before.

One sure way to damage your wine business is to overdose the soil on chemicals. Yet that's what growers must do if they rely on copper sulfate, a heavy metal that accumulates in soil – and is certified by organic marketing groups.

Imagine if Dr. Oz -- who peddles all sorts of pseudoscientific, nonsensical miracle cures on his daytime TV show -- proposed an environmental policy. That's the Green New Deal.

While we await a more comprehensive report, the preliminary findings imply nothing of consequence was discovered during the examination that would impede the president doing his job now, or in the foreseeable future.

Scientists from Mexico have discovered a very clever way of getting rid of HPV, the most common of all sexually transmitted infections. It's done using a simple chemical and a laser -- and there's no harm to normal cells. This method could represent a big advance in eradicating the virus and reducing HPV-related cancers, especially cervical cancer.

The editorial board of the New York Times came out in favor of revising FDA regulations of cosmetic products. This is a reasonable suggestion since such a review has not taken place since 1938. But sound science, especially toxicology, is essential for any change in regulations to be meaningful. Unfortunately, on the science itself, the newspaper's proposal misses the mark.

One wonders how the anti-GMO movement could oppose something like this. But given its hostility to Golden Rice, which has been genetically modified to contain a vitamin A precursor to prevent blindness, it usually finds a way.

Kolodny, the self-appointed (but thoroughly unqualified) opioid czar, repeatedly uses the made-up phrase "heroin pills." It's an apparent attempt to demonize opioids like oxycodone. In a way, he's succeeded. To fill the void left by the oxycodone shortage, the Southwestern U.S. is being flooded by "real" heroin pills called "Mexican Oxy." But the pills aren't actually heroin; they're fentanyl copies of oxycodone, which kill when consumed. Nice going, once again.

Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, have some 'splaining to do. It would seem as if the company is using some unsavory marketing tactics to boost sales of its product. How so? For starters, the company has informed us that Tylenol is not an opioid. Who knew? What's the reason behind this odd claim? Better keep reading.