The state of Indiana has issued an outbreak alert due to E. coli due to the sickening of about 10 people in an Indiana elementary school (seven schoolchildren included), although school cafeteria food has now been ruled out as a possible cause.

With the Topps meat recall still fresh on the minds of millions after this past week's E.coli situation, Indiana officials made an adamant statement that its recall did not originate in the suspect school's cafeteria.

So far, at least three of the cases appear to have been caused from exposure to a sick family member -- but what about the others? This may be a case of spreading through human contact (direct or indirect) instead of food contamination.

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When motivation fails, is punishment the next logical step? One Indiana corporation thinks so, and recently announced their newest "incentive" program to lower health costs. Starting in 2009, employees who fail to live up to BMI standards and other health benchmarks will be charged up to $30 per month. The program, says Clarian Health Partners, is in response to rising health care costs and too few employees taking advantage of company sponsored prevention services.

So if you were previously unmotivated to shed those pounds, stop smoking, or lower your cholesterol, would $30 a month finally urge you into action? Critics say that these sort of programs are punitive and raise privacy concerns, and could even lead to lawsuits down the road. What do you think? Too invasive? Or a necessary kick in the pants?

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I'm not so sure that I would call it a vacation, per se, but I did recently take a ten day road trip with my husband and new baby to see both our families. We rented a car and went from Brooklyn, New York to Cleveland, Ohio, down to Louisville, Kentucky (my home town), back up to Delphi, Indiana, on to somewhere in Pennsylvania and then back to New York City.

The entire event was mind-boggling. Trying to juggle dealing with an infant, spotty directions, managing an SUV (and gas) and seeing all our friends and family really put a damper on our efforts to exercise.

That said, I did get a few runs in, all of them in Louisville. There is a one mile track all the way around my parents' neighborhood that I ran around over and over and over. It was so repetitive that at one point I forget where I was and thought I'd gone a lot farther than I had; turned out I had just decided to go the other way for a bit of variety. Sheesh.

I knew going into it that it would be difficult to find time--and places--to run on this trip. Since we were spending so much time in a car, which we're not used to doing, we got less time in walking as well. We sat and sat and sat and sat some more. We tried not to eat too poorly but there were times when we had to eat something and the only thing around was fast food joints.

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2005 saw 66 measles cases in the US -- nearly double that of 2004. Health officials can now trace 33 of those cases back to a 17 year-old from Indiana.

The girl had recently traveled to Romania without getting vaccinated, and unknowingly carried the disease back to the United States. The subsequent outbreak put three people in the hospital, including one health-care working who was treated in intensive care.

Out of the 34 people that contracted the disease, only two had been vaccinated. Despite assertions from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the measles-containing vaccine is safe, many parents still chose not to vaccinate their children due to safety concerns.

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