University of Notre Dame network physicists in collaboration with food scientists have recently published an analysis of the international food-trade network that claims to show a vulnerability to the fast spread of contaminants as well as the correlation between known food poisoning outbreaks and the centrality of countries on the network. The study is causing a new batch of fear mongers to reiterate what many others have already stated--specifically that all food should sterilized by 2030.

The primary claim by the food industry: As the world's population climbs past 7 billion, the sustainable production and distribution of food is balanced against the need to ensure its chemical and microbiological safety. The new paper maps the international agro-food trade network (IFTN) -- a highly complex and heterogeneous system formed around a core group of seven countries, each trading with more than 77 percent of the world's nations. Since any two countries in the IFTN have only two degrees of separation on the network, the fear is that the IFTN is capable of spreading a foodborne contaminant efficiently. They also claim it tends to mask the contaminant's origins once the system is compromised, since so many network paths run through the central nodes.

By 2030, food demand is expected to increase by 50 percent. Global food transport has been increasing at an exponential rate since the 1960s -- faster than food production itself.

What can be done? People will no longer be able to safely rely on the food industry to feed themselves. Food scientists are voicing from their petrified little minds that as the system grows, so will the need to pressure regulation and surveillance organizations to track contaminants and prevent deadly outbreaks, such as the 2011 events in the U.S. (Listeria monocytogenes) and Germany (Escherichia coli). Both these outbreaks initiated government action to promote the agenda of seizing more control over the food supply through expanded "food safety" regulations.

There is even some evidence to suggest that the Escherichia coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities.

Pigging out at McDonald's will be better in the future, now that America's top fast food chain has demanded that farmers let their pigs out of gestation crates by 2022.

McDonald's joined Wendy's, Hormel Foods Corps., and other pork power-brokers in demanding that their pork suppliers phase out gestation crates, which are 7-foot by 2-foot cages that hold pregnant sows before they give birth. In 2007, the largest U.S. pork producer, Smithfield Foods, announced that they would phase out gestation crates because of public opinion that the crates were inhumane, reported the Washington Post.

The goal of the cages is to prevent the animals from fighting with each other, but animal rights groups have noted that the cages don't allow the pigs room to move around and subject them to torturous amounts of boredom.

"Simply because animals may be raised for food is no reason to abuse them mercilessly," wrote Paul Shapiro of the Human Society of the United States, in the Globe Gazette. "And while most factory farm cruelty is hidden from the public, when Americans find out about routine abuses farm animals endure, they are appalled."

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish circumcision practice in which the circumciser places his mouth on a newborn's newly circumcised penis and sucks blood away from the wound carries a risk of transmitting the herpes virus to the baby, sometimes fatally, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report is based on researchers' investigation into the cases of 11 infants in New York City who were infected with the herpes virus after this procedure, known as metzitzah b'peh ("direct orogenital suction"), between November 2000 and December 2011. Ten of these infants were hospitalized, and two died.

Some of the infants' parents were not aware this technique would be a part of their child's circumcision, the researchers found. Parents should be aware of the risk of herpes in metzitzah b'peh, and should inquire in advance whether direct orogenital suction will be performed so the practice can be avoided, the CDC researchers said.

"Oral contact with a newborn's open wound risks transmission of herpes simplex virus and other pathogens," the researches wrote in their report. "Circumcision is a surgical procedure that should be performed under sterile conditions."

The virus that was found in most of the infants, called herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) - which is typically associated with cold sores, but does not always cause any symptoms - is highly prevalent in the general adult population, the report said. A 2004 study showed that 73 percent of adults ages 20 and older in New York City carried the virus.

I snapped this picture on the way to the grocery store the other day, and was struck by how perfectly the 'thousand words' it spoke matched up with my opinion on what people should do if ever they are tempted to visit a pharmacy for anything other than necessary items, such as a nail file or diapers, namely: STOP!

Why am I so repugnant to the concept of frequenting these dispensary institutions? The fact that they not only sell cigarettes, but feature them at the front counter, forcing those who may actually need a pill or two to hobble all the way to the back to fetch them, figures somewhere into my sentiment. The fact that they are proliferating like metastatic nodules in any area with a population sufficiently sick and/or over-medicated enough to support one (and sometimes two!) on each and every block, has something to do with the way I feel as well.

But are the pharmacies really to blame? They largely fill orders placed by.....

Increasing the spacing between characters and words in a text improves the speed and quality of dyslexic children's reading, without prior training. They read 20% faster on average and make half as many errors. This is the conclusion reached by a French-Italian research team, jointly headed by Johannes Ziegler of the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université).

These results were published 4 June 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). In parallel, the team has developed an iPad/iPhone application, available under the name "DYS." It allows both parents and children to modify the spacing between letters and thus test the benefits of these changes on reading. This will enable researchers to collect large-scale, real time data, which they will then analyze and study.

Dyslexia is a learning disability that impairs an individual's capacity to read and is linked to difficulty in identifying letters, syllables and words -- despite suitable schooling and in the absence of intellectual or sensorial deficiencies. Dyslexia, which often causes writing problems, affects on average one child in every class and 5% of the world's population.

China faces a "serious epidemic" of drug-resistant tuberculosis according to the first-ever nationwide estimate of the size of the problem there, said a US-published study on Wednesday.

"In 2007, one third of the patients with new cases of tuberculosis and one half of the patients with previously treated tuberculosis had drug-resistant disease," said the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Even more, the prevalence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB in new cases (5.7 percent) was nearly twice the global average, said the study.

Using World Health Organization figures as a basis for comparison, "China has the highest annual number of cases of MDR tuberculosis in the world -- a quarter of the cases worldwide," it added.

"China has a serious epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis."

The data came from a survey of more than 4,600 Chinese people who were recently diagnosed or treated for TB.

• Just traces of drugs appear to bring on disorder
• Scientists test fish swimming in water contaminated with low levels of medication
• Disorder appears to be combination of environmental and genetic factors

Autism in genetically vulnerable people could be triggered by very low levels of chemicals found in the water supply, researchers have discovered.

Experts from the University of Idaho in the US were 'astonished' to find that just traces of common medication such as anti-depressants can bring on the disorder.

They made the discovery by observing the changes in the genetic pathways of fish swimming in water contaminated with psychoactive drugs.

As I'm sure you've seen, eyes raise and questions arise when you order a burger wrapped in lettuce or discard a "wrap" and eat the contents. And then, when you answer with "Oh, I don't eat grains," minds boggle and mouths gape as they stumble to grasp the notion of someone who doesn't eat bread or pasta. Eventually, though, they fire off responses, challenges, questions, and proclamations. This isn't right, this isn't possible, this doesn't agree with their idea of how people should eat. It just isn't normal. You're not normal, and you should be ashamed of yourself for introducing a new paradigm. But not all are personally offended by your decision. Some are honestly curious and flabbergasted. Some just want to know why someone would give up grains and how they get along without them.

So, what kind of stuff do we hear out there in the wild?

Rather than just linking to yet another MDA post, maybe on why grains are unhealthy or how to give them up, let's take a look at the eight most popular and prevalent questions and then try to come up with some good responses to them. I'll give both longer ones and succincter ones (that you can fire off in an elevator).

Regular meditation could decrease the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in teens who are most at risk, according to Georgia Health Sciences University researchers.

In a study of 62 black teens with high blood pressure, those who meditated twice a day for 15 minutes had lower left ventricular mass, an indicator of future cardiovascular disease, than a control group, said Dr. Vernon Barnes, a physiologist in the Medical College of Georgia and the Georgia Health Sciences University Institute of Public and Preventive Health.

Barnes, Dr. Gaston Kapuku, a cardiovascular researcher in the institute, and Dr. Frank Treiber, a psychologist and former GHSU Vice President for Research, co-authored the study published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Half of the group was trained in transcendental meditation and asked to meditate for 15 minutes with a class and 15 minutes at home for a four-month period. The other half was exposed to health education on how to lower blood pressure and risk for cardiovascular disease, but no meditation. Left ventricular mass was measured with two-dimensional echocardiograms before and after the study and the group that meditated showed a significant decrease.

"Increased mass of the heart muscle's left ventricle is caused by the extra workload on the heart with higher blood pressure," Barnes explained. "Some of these teens already had higher measures of left ventricular mass because of their elevated blood pressure, which they are likely to maintain into adulthood."