Women Aren't Good in Math . . . or Are They?

Harvard researchers studied 120,680 children younger than 6 and found that the prevalence of overweight children jumped 59 percent from 1980 to 2001.

The number of overweight infants up to 6 months old also ballooned a whopping 74 percent during the 22-year study period, said Matthew Gillman, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

One Way to Cure Depression

Feeling blue? Get married.

Graduate student Adrianne Frech and sociologist Kristi Williams of Ohio State University found that depressed single people were far more likely to benefit emotionally from marriage than better-adjusted men and women.

The researchers used data collected by the National Survey of Families and Households, which interviewed a representative sample of Americans in 1987-1988 and then re-interviewed them in 1992-1994, including 3,066 people who were single at the time of the first interview. The researchers presented their study at the recent meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Frech and Williams suggested that depressed people may benefit more from marriage because they may be in more need of emotional closeness and social support. Then again, happy people are already feeling good about themselves, Williams suggested.

Who Would Have Thought?Sunspots and Creative Inspirations

· "Correlations for Number of Sunspots, Unemployment Rate, and Suicide Mortality in Japan" by Akiko Otsu, et al., Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol. 102. A Japanese research team headed by a Kyoto University professor of health found that an increase in the number of sunspots was associated with a decline in unemployment and a drop in the suicide rate among Japanese men.

· "Peacocks, Picasso, and Parental Investment: The Effects of Romantic Motives on Creativity" by Vladas Griskevicius, et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 91, No. 1. A team of Arizona State University psychologists found that men performed better on tests of creativity after viewing photos of attractive women, imagining short-term liaisons or long-term relationships, but that women were more creative only when they imagined devoted long-term partners.

Richard Morin is a senior editor at the Pew Research Center. Versions of this column appear at washingtonpost.com and www.pewresearch.org.