Because nobody would buy "Baby Doofus" videos
Plunking your infant in front of the tube to watch one of those "Baby Einstein" videos may be a bad move. University of Wisconsin researchers surveyed 1,000 parents to gauge the vocabularies of their eight-to-16-month-olds and found that for every hour spent in front of such ostensibly educational videos, their kids knew six to eight fewer words than other children, perhaps because of a lack of real-time interaction with adults, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Older kids may be different,'' researcher Andrew Meltzoff said in a statement, "but the youngest babies seem to learn language best from people." (University of Washington)

The weekend forecast—in 2014
Putting meteorologist's 10-day forecasts to shame, climate researchers from England's weather service, the Met Office, claim to have created the first climate model that works for the next few years instead of decades out, by taking into account current atmospheric and ocean data. Their model predicts a brief leveling off of temperatures, followed by steady warming until 2014 that would make half of the years after 2009 warmer than it was in 1998, the steamiest year on record. (Met Office)

Foot-and-mouth outbreak
British biosafety workers sealed off an animal vaccine laboratory southwest of London suspected to be the source of an outbreak of footh-and-mouth virus that struck cattle last week on a farm near Guildford, four miles away, the AP reported. Health and safety officials cited a "strong probability" that people might have inadvertently carried the highly contagious animal virus to the farm from the high-security lab in Pirbright, home to vaccine-maker Merial Animal Health as well as a government animal research center. Although the disease does not normally affect people, it is debilitating to animals. The European Union banned British livestock, meat and dairy imports on Monday, two days after the U.K. culled the Surrey cattle in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading outside a containment area. At least one additional outbreak occurred at a neighboring farm on Monday after the controlled kill, according to the BBC. (AP; BBC)

Where the brain makes fever
The newest way to knock out a fever: remove a pinpoint cluster of brain cells just behind the eyes. Researchers report that mice are unable to spike a temperature unless a speck of gray matter no bigger than the head of a pin is pumping out certain receptors for the hormone prostaglandin produced by the body during an infection. The trigger is in a part of the hypothalamus called the median preoptic nucleus, near where the optic nerves cross. (Nature Neuroscience)

Women to macho men: Get lost
Good news for androgynous guys seeking long-term love: Women believe guys with more feminine features are better catches. In a British study, women rated male faces higher on scores of commitment and fidelity if the visages were digitally altered to have more of a Cilian Murphy look—finer features, wider eyes, fuller lips—than if they were more Russell Crowe-ish with square jaws, smaller eyes and larger noses. (University of St. Andrews)

Largest extrasolar planet has density of cork
Astronomers say they have found the largest and least dense planet yet—a gas giant twice the size of Jupiter—orbiting the star GSC02620-00648 in the constellation Hercules, 1,435 light-years away. Called TrES-4, the celestial whopper is the 19th extrasolar world found to transit between its star and Earth, allowing researchers to get a bead on its radius from the amount of starlight it blocks. (California Institute of Technology)

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