On Amazon, you can shell out about $15 to buy pills made of cellulose, titanium dioxide, gelatin, and dye. None of these ingredients have any medical effect, but customers report taking these pills for pain relief, to reduce excessive sweating, and even to quit smoking. It’s not surprising, really. Medical quackery has a long and proud history, and so long as there’s gullible people, there will be somebody selling snake oil. But here’s the rub: Right on the bottle, in big, blue letters is the word “placebo.” The only claim the manufacturer makes about these pills is that they are guaranteed not to contain any kind of medicine.

Alterations in gut microbiota are postulated to be an etiologic factor in the pathogenesis of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). To determine whether IBS patients in China exhibited differences in their gut microbial composition, fecal samples were collected from diarrhea-predominant IBS (IBS-D) and healthy controls

Finding your everyday reason for living, or ikigai, could lead to a longer and better life.

Recent Tesla Autopilot crashes hold a lesson for the whole industry.

Xi Jinping wants to wrest control of global cyber governance from the market economies of the west.

MSU scientists have identified an early cause of intestinal inflammation, one of the first stages of inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome, which afflict around 11 percent of the world’s population.

We take a fair look at some of the best counter arguments for legalization and see how they hold up in review.

There’s a host of reasons why we won’t see 5G roll out in production anytime soon.

Explains how Bitcoin works for general audiences without skipping the key technical insight. Covers money, value, gold, blockchain & proof of work.

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact

From a childhood hallucination to the halls of theoretical physics. By Alan Lightman.

Exploring human diets in a different way.

Cloudflare is only the latest company to provide free, fast, and secure Domain Name System services. Here's how the major DNS resolvers perform on the internet race track.

 A new site jam packed with all manner of interesting tidbits on the human GI tract.

The disinformation campaign—and massive radiation increase—behind the 5G rollout.

In this extract from his new book, Johann Hari, who took antidepressants for 14 years, calls for a new approach

I have been using the open source Twitter competitor for almost a year, and I love it.

‘The Mists of Avalon’ changed my life—how do I reconcile that with what I now know about its author? By Jessica Jernigan.

Mathematics is full of weird number systems that most people have never heard of and would have trouble even conceptualizing. But rational numbers are familiar. They’re the counting numbers and the fractions—all the numbers you’ve known since elementary school. But in mathematics, the simplest things are often the hardest to understand. They’re simple like a sheer wall, without crannies or ledges or obvious properties you can grab ahold of.

Anyone who's ever bought a new electronic device or pair of shoes will be all too familiar with those little "DO NOT EAT" sachets that come in the box. These free sachets can be really useful.

Republicans are again sprinting toward an economic cliff.

Johann Sebastian Bach was 30 when he became head of music in Anhalt-Cöthen, in what is now Germany. Here he started an uncharted experiment in classical music: solo works for string instruments.

The Kodi box pitch is hard to resist. A little black plastic square, in look not much different from a Roku or Apple TV, and similar in function as well. This streamer, though, offers something those others never will: Free access to practically any show or movie you can dream of. No rental fees. No subscriptions. Just type in the name of a blockbuster, and start watching a high-definition stream in seconds.

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

Warning: Gross pics contained within. By Leanne Louie.

When you take a moment to reflect on the history of product development at Monsanto, what do you find? Here are twelve products that Monsanto has brought to market. (2011)

The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant by showing what the future of farming could look like.

This is a call for a public inquiry on the current situation regarding private debt. For almost a decade now, since 2007, we have been living a lie. And that lie is preparing to wreak havoc on our economy. If we do not create some kind of impartial forum to discuss what is actually happening, the results might well prove disastrous.

The Europeana Collections has over 50 million pieces of European history in its digital archive from more than 3,000 institutions. The Europeana Photography collection, which has over 2 million photographs. Music, art, fashion, sport, natural history, and maps and geography are some of the other collections. More than 3 million of the archives are openly licensed, meaning you can use them for any purpose, and many of the images are available in high resolution.

The rituals -- fasting, wearing a hospital gown, undergoing anesthesia -- foster an expectation that the procedure will provide relief.