Since we're coming to the end of National Adoption Month, also known as National Adoption Awareness Month, the news is full of related stories, many local reports of adoptions finalized in group ceremonies marking the occasion.

Adoption stories strong on the positives dominate ... stories like this one, "Adoption gives children loving, stable homes", aimed toward getting the word out that Missouri has about 2,000 children waiting for adoption.

One family's happy encounter with adoption is the focus, while an adoption "checklist" is added for anyone who might be thinking of beginning the journey.

"Adoption, a two-way street of love, learning" is another. This one written by an adoptive parent in Alaska who grew up with adopted siblings, is about the joys and blessings adoption can bring. Added is a proclamation from the Seward City, Alaska city council honoring Adoption Awareness Month.

And from Indiana, this story about local families who have adopted internationally and their efforts to help children access their roots.

Almost every day this month has brought coverage of some of the positives of adoption, and I am going to miss this rosier-than-usual tinge to the subject.

In other news, the first steps have been taken toward a convention ... this one also out of the Hague ... that should make it easier for parents to collect child support from ex-partners who live in other countries.

The convention creates "a comprehensive system of cooperation among child support authorities which we believe will result in more children receiving more support more quickly," said Margot Bean, Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement, after signing the convention. Organizers hope the new pact will come into force within three years.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this is small potatoes, as stats from Canada and Australia alone figure there's one international child support case for every 1,000 people.

You may have thought me off my rocker back in January when I wrote about men being able to make milk and breastfeed their children, but it looks like that may end up being a better idea than anyone thought.

Yes, it looks like milk is getting scarce, and expensive in the world, so we may have to resort to ever more desperate measures, and MANmaries may be just the answer.

... rising demand for biofuels is pushing up the price of corn and other grains, which is what farmers in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan use to feed their cows instead of grass. Rising feed costs are therefore helping to push milk prices even higher. Production is growing in emerging markets like China, but demand there is growing even faster.

And if milk isn't a problem, perhaps water is.

A new study out of MIT has found that babies born to mothers whose water supply was contaminated with arsenic during pregnancy may have had gene changes that can lead to cancer and other problems later in life.

This is big, because it's the first time "such genome-wide changes resulting from prenatal exposure has ever been documented from any environmental contaminant."

The team found a collection of about 450 genes whose expression had been turned on or turned off in babies who had been exposed to arsenic while in the womb. That is, these genes had either become significantly more active (in most cases) or less active than in unexposed babies.

The study subjects were mothers and children in an area of Thailand with heavy contamination through tin mining, but the same levels are found in lots of places ... the US Southwest, for example.