The World Health Organization reports that one in four pharmaceuticals are fake. The problem hits home in the developing world, where scant regulation lets useless and sometimes dangerous medicine land on store shelves. Some of the drugs most commonly faked are malaria medications. Such scamming can lead to drug resistance, scary side effects, and even death. Here to talk about his job using chemistry to ID fake pharmaceuticals is Facundo M. Fernandez, a Chemistry Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Duped. Tricked. Hornswoggled. Deceived. How can you tell if someone is fooling you? According to a new article out in today's Science Times, it's all in how they tell the story. The new focus on interview content grows in part out of a frustration with previous methods that studied behavior — averted eyes, fidgeting, or sweating—and a lack in helpful technological advances. The more important point: How much detail does someone give you when they tell their story? Joining The Takeaway with more on this story is New York Times science reporter Benedict Carey. Listen in, and then try the technique out on a con-artist (or first date) near you.

Benedict Carey's article is part of the Science Times' special Forensics section. Read his article, "Judging Honesty By Words, Not Fidgets," and check out the rest of The New Forensics issue.

Also, if lying appeals to you, listen to Radio Lab's show on Deception.

Beating a polygraph test may not get you in the clear if you're lying. But just in case, watch this video for pointers.

Ever since this whole "swine flu" thing erupted it's been nothing but talk about humans, humans, humans. But what's it been like to be a virus these last few weeks? Today, we shrink down to take a look at life from the point of view of one of the world's smallest biological toxins. How, really, do viruses get out of one organism and travel to another? (Warning: It's pretty gross.) What perils face a virus that ventures outside the human body? Our microscopic tour guide is The Takeaway's favorite virus hunter, Dr. Susan P. Fisher-Hoch, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas School of Public Health and co-author of Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC.

If you want to see the view of the body a virus sees, all you have to do is watch Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 classic in which "four men and a beautiful lady" were shrunk down and sent into the bloodstream on a submarine (it was not yellow):

Bullying causes more than tears, according to new research. Scientists reporting in the May issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry say that childhood bullying can lead to teenage psychotic episodes such as delusions and paranoia. Here to tell us more is study co-author Dieter Wolke, a professor of developmental psychology and individual differences at the University of Warwick, England.

To read the study for yourself, click here. To help someone you know is being bullied, check out the website Stop Bullying Now. Are you a target of workplace bullying? Here are some tips to stop bullying at work. For more on why bullies feel the need to target people, read Why Bullies Bully.

For more on the effects that childhood trauma has on our biological development, listen to The Takeaway's February 2009 conversation with Michael Meaney, Keep your hands to yourself: Child abuse affects our genes.

The world has found a new strain of flu, so now what? Enter the virus hunters. This pack of epidemiologists, virologists, and infectious disease experts (sounds like a fun party) are fast on the bug's tail, looking for answers that may help us control its spread. What are they trying to figure out? How long will it take to rustle up some answers? And when you're an epidemiologist chasing down a flu virus, what do you do in your lab all day? The Takeaway is joined by Dr. Susan P. Fisher-Hoch, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas School of Public Health and co-author of the book, Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC. ,br/>

Swine flu is continuing it's spread around the globe, and there's one word on everyone's lips: vaccine. Can researchers create a vaccine that will stop the virus with one quick jab of a needle? How quickly can a vaccine be created? And what can we do to prevent the spread of the flu before a vaccine is created? Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains.

We were lucky enough to be able to nab Dr. Fauci by phone before he heads to Capitol Hill this afternoon, where he will testify at an emergency Senate meeting about the federal government's response to swine flu.

For more from Dr. Fauci, read his commentary on MSNBC.com, Why there is no AIDS vaccine.

The last few days we've been inundated with numbers and swine flu facts. Eighty deaths in Mexico jumped to 100. Twenty sickened school children in Queens became 40. We know that pork's fine to eat, and that we might not want to travel south of border. But what about some of the contextual facts — are people getting sicker more quickly in this outbreak than they have in others? Will border security stations really help? Here to answer the Big Picture questions is Dr. Richard Wenzel, The Takeaway's go-to swine flu epidemiologist.
Miss President Obama's speech regarding swine flu? Watch it here:

Particularly these days, its easy to feel that our economic destiny is shaped by huge, impersonal forces beyond our control. Nonsense, says Alan Beattie, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times and author of False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World. Countries have choices, and these choices have largely determined whether they have succeeded or failed. Beattie joins The Takeaway to look at some examples of fateful economic choices, and what we can learn from them today.

What have you heard about clean coal? That it involves vats of liquid carbon dioxide annexed away underground? That it's dangerous? That it's never been done before? In an exclusive interview, Scientific American's energy and environmental editor David Biello sits down with The Takeaway to chat about the technology formally known as "carbon capture and sequestration" ("CCS"), carbon balloons, and carbon geysers— the newest Old Faithfuls.

Check out more of what Biello has to say on Scientific American, where he did a week's worth of carbon capture and sequestration coverage.

And for more coverage of what a "new energy economy" will look like, check out The Takeaway's Power Trip clean energy series.

When we drag our nails across a chalkboard, it's not pleasant. But dragging our nails across our skin often provides us nothing but relief from a prickly, tickly sensation know as The Itch. Just what is it about scratching an itch that causes the itchy sensation to go away? New research out this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience provides an answer. And we're itchin' to tell you about it: Glenn Geisler, one of the scientists involved with the work, joins The Takeaway with more.

Read Geisler's Nature Neuroscience paper here .

And have you ever wondered how deep into the skin a person can scratch? Read Atul Gawande's New Yorker article The Itch to find out. We won't spoil the ending for you, but it's pretty darn deep.

There's a polar bear meeting in Norway this week, where politicians are considering how to handle the dire predictions surrounding the fate of our arctic friend. And this meeting got us thinking: in the face of a warming globe, is extinction the only option? Are organisms, along with a little thing called natural selection, finding a way to beat this formidable foe? We hope Warren Allmon, a paleontology professor at Cornell who specializes in macroevolution, can shed some light on our queries. Mr. Allmon is also the director of the Museum of the Earth.

Polar Bear S.O.S. has enlisted children to spread the word about the animal's plight. Hear their message below.

Ants do it. (says E.O. Wilson)
Octopuses do it.
Humans...mmmm, not so much.

There's talk going around about the science of P-L-A-Y, and specifically, about what play means, how it lights up our brains, and why we feel like automatrons when we don't play. Today's prescription is written by Dr Stuart Brown, co-author of the new book, "Play," and founder of the National Institute for Play. He joins The Takeaway for a break from the real world.

Anyone who has watched wildlife documentaries may know that animal behavioral patterns are tracked by inserting microchips into the animals' bodies. This is tricky, because it requires tranquilizing the animal in order to place the chip. But new technology now allows for non-invasive research. Science journalist Jim Robbins joins The Takeaway to explain how scientists are using technology and animal products, like poop, to learn everything they can about wildlife without even touching the animals.

For more, read Jim's piece on DNA-powered wildlife research in the New York Times article, Tools That Leave Wildlife Unbothered Widen Research Horizons.

If you want to do your own wildlife surveys, you'll need to be able to match scat with the critter that created it. To bone up, watch this video.

For NASA, one earth isn't enough. On Friday, the agency is set to launch a giant telescope called Kepler into outer space. Kepler will orbit the sun and sweep it's camcorder-like lens across the Milky Way, looking for planets like Earth, that can sustain life. Here to tell us more is William Borucki, the principal science investigator for the Kepler Mission.

And it wouldn't be a normal week at The Takeaway if we didn't mention Battlestar Galactica at least once. For geeks like us, the Kepler Mission instantly calls Battlestar Galactica and the hunt for a new Earth to mind. In honor of the last three episodes ever of everyone's favorite SciFi series, we'd like to take you all the way back to the beginning. So here's the trailer for Battlestar Galactica, Season One:

Talk about turning a notion on its head. What if your coveted winter vacation—the time when you leave the bitter, snowy cold behind and head for a few days of palm trees—could actually add to your winter blues? New research in psychology shows that interruptions from things we dislike may make us detest them all the more, whereas interruptions from doing something we really adore say, watching an episode of Friday Night Lights may highlight our appreciation. Benedict Carey, a science reporter from the New York Times, joins The Takeaway to explain.

Read his story on the dreaded commercial break Liked the Show? Maybe It Was the Commercials in today's New York Times.

Winter, spring, summer, fall. It seems like no matter the season, it’s always time to get the newest version of the flu shot. Well, times may be achangin'. Scientists who were looking for a way to annihilate the Avian flu have stumbled upon a protein that halts both the Avian and seasonal flu. Are the consequent rumors of a universal flu vaccine justified? The Takeaway is joined by Wayne Marasco, M.D., one of the lead authors on the research article that appeared online just yesterday.

If you're in the mood for some dense reading (or if you want to get in touch with your inner molecular biologist), read the article abstract, Structural and functional bases for broad-spectrum neutralization of avian and human influenza A viruses

It doesn't sound nonsensical to say that what happens when we are younger stays with us the rest of our lives. But today, for the first time ever, scientists reveal that childhood abuse can affect our genes by altering the biology of our brains. Luckily these markers can be wiped clean in the next generation and the cycle can end. In this segment, John Hockenberry goes knee-deep into the brain with guest Michael Meaney, one of the lead researchers on the work, which appears online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

For more, read the very scientifically written and deeply wonky article abstract, Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse.

Have more questions? Michael Meaney is happy to answer your questions. Post here and he'll respond.

Anybody who knows anything about Harry Potter has drooled over the Marauder's Map — a handy little tool that shows Harry, in real time, the location of every person at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (see below for details). Today, that fantastical map seems to be turning into reality: GPS applications on our cell phones, like Amigo Mapper, allow us to track our friends via their cell phones. But are there people, or companies, other than our friends who would be interested in knowing where we are? Yes, says John Markoff, technology reporter for the New York Times and author of an article on geographical cell phone technologies in today's Science Times. He joins The Takeaway to talk about the implications around the rise of GPS technologies in handheld devices.

For more, read John Markoff's article, The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives in today's New York Times.

Just how power hungry is internet giant Google? The Takeaway's Power Trip heads to the Google campuses in Mountain View, California to find out. John Hockenberry sits down with Bill Weihl, the company's green energy czar (that's his title, no joke). On the interview agenda: the company's top picks for which alt-energy sources will rule the future clean energy economy, including solar with a twist. Plus, Weihl talks about the need for government energy subsidies, and why the company still ain't talking about the power consumed by a Google search

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President Barack Obama has pledged to reduce our carbon emissions by 80 percent come 2050, and that means saying goodbye to carbon-spewing coal and oil plants. But we can't wave a magic, rhetoric wand to change from black energy to green. So how do we move forward in establishing a new, clean power economy? To launch our Power Trip energy series, The Takeaway is joined by Garry Golden, a futurist and energy blogger who lays out the yellow brick road toward green energy.

Listen to more from Garry Golden in The Takeaway's Power Trip series:
More on the future of energy from Garry Golden and Introducing the new energy economy.