In Brief

By DANIEL S. LEVY

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO According to a new study by researchers at Iowa State University at Ames, when parents smoke, drink too much alcohol, eat too much junk food and otherwise neglect their health, their kids often do the same. By the same token, kids whose moms and dads exercise and watch their diet tend to follow that example. In two-parent households, children seem to follow parents closely along gender lines, with boys mimicking Dad's lifestyle and girls copying Mom's.

I'LL TRADE YOU Last week a group of parents sued video-game maker Nintendo Co. and others, claiming that the popular Pokemon cards promote illegal gambling. Some kids have become obsessed with trading the cards, which contain images of monsters with names such as Wartortle and Blastoise. The suit states that Nintendo issues relatively few "premium" cards, thus forcing kids to buy many packets in hopes of securing them. Rare cards have sold for $50, and fights have broken out over them. Nintendo has declined to comment on the case.

FINAL CARE Doctors and health experts have long known that much of the help for patients with terminal and chronic illnesses comes from family members. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the burden is heaviest when the relative is suffering from a chronic illness like heart disease, which doesn't garner as much public attention or medical support as cancer. Such care, they note, disproportionately falls to women, who handle it in 72% of cases.

--By Daniel S. Levy