With the release of the 1940 census on April 2, The Orange County Register looks at how remarkably different Orange County, California was 72 years ago.

Ron Campbell put together a package that includes interviews with participants in the 1940 census, video, family photos, then and now, historic photos, a how-to-guide to researching the 1940 census and a chart comparing Orange County population in 1940 and in 2010.

"Sales of the nation's two most popular prescription painkillers, oxycodone and hydrocodone, have exploded in the US in the last decade, according to an Associated Press analysis provided by the Drug Enforcement Administration."

Use the interactive map to see how much painkiller sales have increased in your state.

Aly Van Dyke of The Topeka Capital Journal has found, using computer-assisted reporting, a startling connection between property values and the city of Topeka's, as well as any city's, health.

Using the data she collected, Van Dyke has included a slide-show of the 50 highest-valued homes in Topeka's county and a database to search residential properties with a map of the highest property values in the Topeka and surrounding areas.

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, along with the Miami Herald and Florida NPR, has found that "since the collapse of the economy in 2008, Florida’s student population has become poorer each year, with almost all school districts in the state experiencing spikes in the number of kids who qualify for subsidized meals."

"The Center also found that children have become homeless at an alarming rate as well, with an 84 percent increase since 2007."

"While a lack of resources has made news organizations increasingly less inclined to file freedom of information lawsuits, citizens have a growing interest in government transparency and are becoming more active in asserting their right to government information.

The rise of citizen interest and the decline of newsroom aggressiveness are among the findings of an informal open government status study by the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) and the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC)."

"Tucson's housing market has fallen so hard so fast that more than one in three homes sold last year went for less than $100,000.

Nearly 6,400 homes in Pima County, Arizona were sold for five figures in 2011 - that's more than 35 percent of the 18,000 homes sold last year, an Arizona Daily Star analysis shows."

Included in the report is an interactive map showing the areas of town with the most sales under $100,000 and under $25,000.

"In nursing homes, where life is already so fragile, a single lapse can be life-threatening. Yet neglect is all too common, according to a Free Press analysis of Michigan inspection reports.

Three out of four homes were cited in the last three years for serious violations that harmed residents or put them in immediate jeopardy. In fact, state inspectors handed out serious citations nearly twice as often as the national average."

This story is one of a three part series the Free Press on the state of nursing homes in Michigan. Included in the project is an interactive map of ...

"Cozy political connections, favorable tax treatment and little public oversight has allowed Miami charter school chain Academica to exploit Florida's laws, build a successful chain of schools, and profit off taxpayer dollars, a Miami Herald investigation has found.

Charter schools have grown into a $400-million-a-year business in South Florida, receiving about $6,000 in taxpayer dollars for every student enrolled but even when charter schools have been caught violating state laws, school districts have few tools to demand compliance."

Click here for the multi-part series; Cashing In On Kids

"For the past eight years Washington has steered people with state-subsidized health care — Medicaid patients, injured workers and state employees — to methadone, a narcotic with two notable characteristics. The drug is cheap. The drug is unpredictable.

The state highlights the former and downplays the latter, cutting its costs while refusing to own up to the consequences, according to a multi-series Seattle Times investigation that includes computerized analysis of death certificates, hospitalization records and poverty data." To view a map that pinpoints methadone deaths around the state click here.

"For most living in Washington, the state's economy has never been as bad as it is now. Since the mortgage bubble popped, they've lost more jobs faster, and recovered more slowly, than at any time since the Second World War. That includes iconic slumps such as the Boeing Bust, the early-'80's double-dip and the dot-com crash barely a decade ago.

The Seattle Times put together several interactive maps to look at how the longest and deepest economic slump since the end of World War II has affected people in the Puget Sound region."