Children's Health: Premature birth appears to weaken brain connections ♦ What to do to prevent food allergies in infants, ♦ Childhood infections associated with increased risk of early heart attack

Premature birth appears to weaken brain connections Babies born prematurely face an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric problems that may be due to weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions.

Childhood infections associated with increased risk of early heart attack Infections in childhood are associated with an increased risk of early heart attacks, according to new research. Unhealthy lifestyles in adulthood appear to compound the risk of early heart attack.

What to do to prevent food allergies in infants With food allergies in children on the rise, parents often ask the question, How do I prevent food allergies in my baby? A new review, based on the latest evidence, interprets new evidence to guide physicians and families regarding food introduction and allergy prevention

Young babies don't experience tickles in the way you think they do When you tickle the toes of newborn babies, the experience for them isn't quite as you would imagine it to be. That's because, according to new evidence, infants in the first four months of life apparently feel that touch and wiggle their feet without connecting the sensation to you

Heavy TV watching leads to unhealthy perceptions of fast food health risks The amount of TV adolescents watch is likely to bias their views about the consequences of eating fast food, suggests new research. Investigators surveyed over 1,000 teenagers who reported hours of TV viewing, beliefs about the consequences of eating fast food, and their frequency of fast food consumption.

Fast Food Walkout: Lack of Sick Days Affects Public Health

Thousands of fast-food workers in dozens of U.S. cities are reportedly set to stage a one-day national strike on Thursday to protest the industry’s low wages and predominant lack of basic benefits. Organizations representing restaurant employees say they expect it to be the largest-ever strike within the fast-food industry, which employs an estimated 4 million Americans.

Protest organizers have already held rolling one-day strikes starting this past November in cities such as New York, Chicago and Seattle, but Thursday will mark the first nationwide day of protest. Employees are asking for a minimum wage of $15 an hour up from the current federal minimum of $7.25, or around $15,000 a year full-time.

Protests by workers at fast-food chains are expanding, with employees in 50 cities expected to walk off the job today. Currently, fast-food workers earn well below the poverty level. Workers will picket during lunchtime at McDonald's, Burger King, KFC , and Wendy's restaurants.

Shaniqua Davis, 20, lives in the Bronx with her boyfriend, who is unemployed, and their 1-year-old daughter. Davis has worked at a McDonald’s a few blocks from her apartment for the past three months, earning $7.25 an hour. Her schedule varies, but she never gets close to 40 hours a week. “Forty? Never. They refuse to let you get to that (many) hours.”

Her weekly paycheck is $150 or much lower. “One of my paychecks, I only got $71 on there. So I wasn’t able to do much with that. My daughter needs stuff, I need to get stuff for my apartment,” said Davis, who plans to take part in the strike Thursday.

Raising wages and supplying basic benefits such as paid sick leave would not only boost worker well-being, but directly improve food safety and public health as well, said Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC).

In 2010, ROC released a report titled “Serving While Sick,” which surveyed more than 4,000 restaurant workers. The survey found that 88 percent of those workers did not have paid sick days and 63 percent reported cooking and serving food while sick.

In turn, those sick workers have been linked to outbreaks of norovirus, hepatitis A and typhoid fever among customers.

In a similar study, 48 percent of restaurant employees reported working shifts while ill, while 11 percent said they had experienced diarrhea or vomiting during a restaurant shift. Workers who did not have paid sick leave were found to be twice as likely to work while sick compared with their counterparts who did receive paid sick time.

Restaurant workers cannot afford to take time off from work, even if they are severely ill. Of those who worked while sick, 74 percent said they could not afford to take the day off without pay, and 27 percent said they coughed or sneezed while handling food.

“Even if you’ve got hepatitis A, if you’re living on minimum wage or living off your tips and don’t get paid to stay home, you’re going to go to work regardless of your condition,” Jayaraman said

The cities of San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle have ordinances in place that require employers to provide paid sick leave to their workers, including those in the restaurant industry.

Low wages also equate to poor living conditions for fast-food employees, Jayaraman added. A portion of workers report being homeless or home-insecure, meaning that they may not have access to showers or other necessities for personal hygiene.

Restaurants found to have shortchanged employees or committed overtime pay violations were also found more likely than restaurants without labor violations to put the safety of employees and customers at risk.

When asked in an ROC survey if they had ever been pressured to cut corners in a way that might have risked public health, 44 percent of workers who experienced wage violations said yes, while 13 percent of workers at non-violating restaurants did. Similarly, 37 percent of workers at wage-violating restaurants said they did not receive health and safety training, while 17 percent of those without violations did.

President Obama has recently asked Congress raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. A July 2013 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 73 percent of Americans favored raising the minimum wage to $10.

Those who oppose raising the minimum wage say it would hurt job creation and lead to higher rates of unemployment.

Historically the economy has improved after a minimum wage hike due to the workers ability to buy things. If Minimum wage workers salary increases at the same rate as top executives they would be making over $28.00 dollars an hour.

Robots Working in Fast Food

Fast food chains in Japan, China and Great Britain have begun piloting the use of robots to cook meals. And while robots have been emerging as a boon for completing menial tasks like dispensing medicines in hospitals, these fast food robots are capable of preparing full sushi rolls or noodle dishes for Asian food outlets. In many cases, customers complete their orders through a touchscreen, which then alerts the robot how to prepare the meal. No humans needed.

It stands to reason that American fast food companies will adopt the robots at some point. One new fast food robot is the noodle-slicing "Chef Cui" in China, which as the Associated Press reports, costs restaurateurs 30,000 Chinese Yuan to buy, or $2,000. Comparatively, a human noodle chef is paid about $4,700 a year in China,

For Liu Maohu, a noodle restaurant owner in Beijing, the choice of hiring a robot over a human is easy. "The robot chef can slice noodles better than human chefs," he told the AP. "And it is much cheaper than a real human chef."

Robots also are being used in the agricultural process. A group of dairy farmers in NY are using European-made robots and putting them to work milking herds. Robots are entering the fruit and vegetable field work. Previously, robots were not used for such work, because they weren't sensitive enough with the produce, which led to undesired bruising. The new robots, are now endowed with advanced sensors and high-precision GPS location technologies to ensure the food isn't damaged.

My question is can the robots wash their hands and what is going to happen to unskilled laborers?