Laura Allen

A new public health study released just in time for Global Handwashing Day (today!) offers not one but two gems of Science-Confirms-the-Obvious wisdom. Firstly: the gee-whizzer that men have poorer personal hygiene than women. Secondly, that people are more likely to wash their hands when others are watching.

Japanese biologists have made genetically modified primates that can pass the modification to their offspring -- a first for science. The researchers, reporting in Nature, introduced a jellyfish gene to marmosets that made their skin glow green under UV light, a quick, harmless test of the technique's success. The goal is for future marmosets to bear genes for human disease. Such colonies of research animals may model neurological disorders far better than lab mice.
 

Investigators at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research have unequivocally demonstrated that our parents often get on our nerves -- and we on theirs. "The parent-child relationship is one of the longest-lasting social ties human beings establish," said Kira Birditt, the study's lead. "This tie is often highly positive and supportive but it also commonly includes feelings of irritation, tension and ambivalence."

At the first-ever Ironman triathlon in 1978, the 15 competitors read these instructions in the race guidelines: "Swim 2.4 miles! Bike 112 miles! Run 26.2 miles! Brag for the rest of your life!" Well, sure -- unless you die trying. A study presented Saturday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology shows that the grueling triad of events is indeed particularly strenuous, with a risk of sudden death twice that of marathons.

Many millennia ago, man created dog. As the story goes, gray wolves in East Asia took to the comforts of human camp life somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago. People bred their new canine companions for docility and other favored traits. Dogs then accompanied humans crossing the Bering Strait into the Americas 12,000–14,000 years ago.