Should there be restrictions on the amount of sodium in processed and restaurant foods? Many public health advocates think so. They argue that people consume excessive amounts of sodium without even knowing it and mandatory restrictions would reduce the number of heart attacks, strokes, and even deaths that result from all that salty food.

But does the available research justify a population-wide restriction on sodium in food? Not quite, says Michael H. Alderman from the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Drilling firm Lapindo Brantas has denied that one of its gas exploration well was the trigger for the Lusi mud volcano, which killed 13 people and displaced thirty thousand in East Java, Indonesia on May 29, 2006. The firm instead blamed an earthquake that occurred 280 kilometers (174 miles) away and backed up their claims in an article published in Marine and Petroleum Geology.

In response, a group of scientists from the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Indonesia have written a discussion paper in which they claim to refute the main arguments made by Lapindo Brantas and document new data that provides the strongest evidence to date of a link between the well and the volcano. That paper will be published in the same journal.

When administered in lethal levels, antibiotics trigger a fatal chain reaction within  bacteria that shreds the cell's DNA. But, when the level of antibiotic is less than lethal the same reaction causes DNA mutations that are not only survivable, but actually protect the bacteria from numerous antibiotics beyond the one it was exposed to, says a new study recently published in Molecular Cell. The findings underscore the potentially serious consequences to public health of administering antibiotics in low or incomplete doses.

An analysis of available research on the topic (three studies) suggests that eating choclate may reduce your risk of stroke. Chocolate is rich in antioxidants called flavonoids, which may have a protective effect against stroke, but more research is needed, concluded the analysis that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010.

 The first study found that 44,489 people who ate one serving of chocolate per week were 22 percent less likely to have a stroke than people who ate no chocolate. The second study found that 1,169 people who ate 50 grams of chocolate once a week were 46 percent less likely to die following a stroke than people who did not eat chocolate.

Data collected on speleothem encrustations, a type of mineral deposit, in coastal caves on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca indicate that sea level was about one meter above present-day levels around 81,000 years ago. The finding challenges other data that indicate sea level was as low as 30 meters below present-day levels. Theories about the rates of ice accumulation and melting during the Quaternary Period may need to be revised as a result of the findings, which appear this week in Science.

The sea level high stand of 81,000 years ago was preceded by rapid ice melting, on the order of 20 meters of sea level change per thousand years and the sea level drop following the high water mark, accompanied by ice formation, was equally rapid.

Arizona State University researchers have developed the first versatile DNA reader that can discriminate between DNA's four core chemical components, the key to unlocking the vital code behind human heredity and health. If the process can be perfected, DNA sequencing could be performed much faster than current technology, and at a fraction of the cost.