Gain Weight, Get a Boy? A new study of 220,889 women who had successive pregnancies between 1992 and 2004 finds that an increase in body weight from the beginning of one’s first pregnancy to the beginning of a second seems to increase the chances that the second pregnancy will produce in a boy baby. “The results are provocative because few biological factors are known in humans to influence the chances of either conceiving or carrying to term a baby boy or girl. Our study suggests that maternal nutritional factors might play a role,” said Eduardo Villamor, assistant professor of international nutrition at HSPH and lead author of the study. However, the researchers caution against gaining weight in order to try to influence the sex of a baby. “Weight gain before pregnancy carries significant risks to the mother and the baby, and should not be practiced to influence the odds of having a boy,” said Villamor. “Other factors of which weight gain is only an indicator could be at play here.”

Good News for Barry White: A new study published in the journal Biology Letters finds that men with low-pitched voices have more offspring than those with higher-pitched voices. Previous studies have shown that men with low voices have more “reproductive success” because women tend to find them more attractive, dominant, and healthy-sounding. Men, meanwhile, have generally been found prefer women with higher-pitched voices, finding them to sound younger, more subordinate (hmmmmm…), and healthy than women with low-pitched voices. For this current study, the researchers looked at the Hadza of Tanzania, who have no birth control. Of these people, the men with low-pitched voices had more children than their high-talking peers.

Dumb Move: Former Australian cricket champion Shane Warne reportedly blew his last chance to save his newly-reconciled marriage because of an errant text message. Mr. Warne sent the following electronic missive out from his cell phone: “Hey beautiful, I’m just talking to my kids, the back door’s open.” The message that came back: “You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person.” It was from his wife.