Two research articles were published in the last week which may be interesting to others with biological or non-biological children or furbabies.

1. "Older siblings have higher IQs" - I've linked the Yahoo news article but I'm planning to dig down deeper into the actual article published in Science (June 22nd issue).

Negative associations between birth order and intelligence level have been found in numerous studies. The explanation for this relation is not clear, and several hypotheses have been suggested. One family of hypotheses suggests that the relation is due to more-favorable family interaction and stimulation of low-birth-order children, whereas others claim that the effect is caused by prenatal gestational factors. We show that intelligence quotient (IQ) score levels among nearly 250,000 military conscripts were dependent on social rank in the family and not on birth order as such, providing support for a family interaction explanation.

2. "The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication" - I've linked the Nature news article here, as the Science article (June 28th) gets a little bit too confusing.

The world's domestic cats carry patterns of sequence variation in their genome that reflect a history of domestication and breed development. A genetic assessment of 979 domestic cats and their wild progenitors (Felis silvestris silvestris - European wildcat; F. s. lybica - Near Eastern wildcat; F. s. ornata - Central Asian wildcat; F. s. cafra - sub Saharan African wildcat; and F. s. bieti - Chinese desert cat) indicated that each wild group represents a distinctive subspecies of Felis silvestris. Further analysis revealed that cats were domesticated in the Near East, likely coincident with agricultural village development in the Fertile Crescent. Domestic cats derive from at least five founders from across this region, whose descendents were subsequently transported across the world by human assistance.