Blog Posts by Sarah B. Weir, Yahoo! blogger

How clean is your toothbrush? "If you have your toothbrush too close to the toilet," microbiologist Charles Gerba, PhD, tells WebMD, "you are brushing your teeth with what's in your toilet." He explains that when you flush with the lid open, contaminated water vapor settles on surfaces in your bathroom. And that's not the only way germs pollute your toothbrush.

Health Tip: Don't Spread Germs at Work

Brushing your teeth removes bacteria, food debris, and blood and saliva that might be infected with a virus. If you don't rinse the bristles properly, you will be putting these contaminants right back into your mouth the next time you brush. Many families store their toothbrushes jammed together in a cup or holder, which can also cause cross contamination.

Related link: America's Dirtiest Cities

The average toothbrush harbors 10 million microbes, including germs like influenza viruses, herpes simplex I, streptococcus, staphylococcus, as well as bacteria that cause gum disease and cavities. Because of the

The girls vs. the boysWho is smarter, girls or boys? It's a perennial battle of the sexes that rages in schoolyards and over dinner tables across the nation. According new research by James Flynn, a world-renowned expert on IQ testing, the answer is that women are starting to edge out their male counterparts in the brains department.

Watch: Do Women Have Themselves to Blame for Work-Family Imbalances?

Flynn examined data from western European countries, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and Estonia and found that for the first time in a century of testing, women are scoring higher than men on IQ examinations. Until recently, women's scores lagged behind men's by as much as five percent leading some scientists to claim that men were inherently more intelligent than women. Over the decades, men's and women's scores have both improved, but women's have surged more dramatically. "The full effect of modernity on women is only just emerging," Flynn told the Sunday Times of London.

"Everybody has eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken, and if they tell you they haven't, they are lying," James Boyce, chef/owner of Commerce Kitchen in Huntsville, Alabama, tells Yahoo! Shine. "The crust is perfect every time." Although Boyce has dug into his share of buckets, especially during his teens and early twenties (he remembers the coleslaw and biscuits as "winners"), when he first opened his clubby chophouse, Commerce Kitchen, he wasn't planning on serving fried chicken. But, being Alabama, "every one asked for it."

Related: Healthy Fast Food Options

Boyce started researching how to make classic Southern fried chicken at the local library. "They have an amazing archive of recipes," he explains. As everyone knows, the KFC recipe, developed by Colonel Harland Sanders, is still a mystery, and supposedly locked in a safe at company headquarters. Although some food sleuths claim to have identified the eleven secret herbs and spices used in the original, others say that KFC

Looking (and feeling!) OztasticEvery Friday Shine editors road-test unusual products and unbelievable promises to find out what lives up to the hype and what doesn't. Warning: don't try any of this at home until we do.

It's never a good sign when the stretchy waistband of your lounge pants starts to pinch. I recently returned from vacation feeling a little bloated and stepped on the scale to discover I had gained ten pounds. Huh!? A couple of pounds, I can cope with. But 10 pounds is a bobsled ride down a slippery dulce de leche slope. My doctor once admonished me, "You can't keep gaining three pounds every year. That means in a decade you will have put on…." Well, you can do the math.

Yes, I admit I see vacation as a free pass to corn chips and girlie cocktails. However, I should have thought twice about my daily double scoop when I mused to my family that whoever coined the phrase "muffin top" was a genius and my younger daughter replied with utter sincerity, "Mommy, you don't have one of those, yours

Sarah AttarIt's been a huge week for women and the Olympics. On Thursday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Saudi Arabia would be sending two women to the Olympics--a first for the conservative Muslim country. The decision means that every nation in the world with a team will be sending female representatives to the London Games. This follows the news on July 11 that, for the first time ever, more women than men had made it onto Team USA. The Gulf nations, Qatar and Brunei will also be breaking an historic gender barrier by sending female competitors.

Related: Olympics are Redemption Games for Women

"This is very positive news and we will be delighted to welcome these two athletes in London in a few weeks time," IOC president Jacques Rogge said in a statement. The IOC had been negotiating with Saudi Arabia over this issue for weeks.

The two Saudi athletes are Sarah Attar, an 800-meter runner, and judo competitor Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani. Attar, who

Teen VogueInspired by the successful campaign to get Seventeen to stop airbrushing its models, two New York City girls, backed by other young activists, staged a protest outside of Teen Vogue's offices in Times Square today. Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar tell Shine the morning's mock fashion show and photo shoot were received enthusiastically by crowds and journalists on the street, but when then the two were invited up to meet representatives from the magazine, the empowered mood tanked. "It was crushing," says Cruz.

Related: Teenage Girl Wins Victory in Seventeen Photoshop Battle

"We were so excited," says Stydahar. "We were asking for something that is good for girls and we thought we'd be successful." She continues, "Our meeting lasted for about five minutes. They didn't ask us our names or introduce themselves." "We felt like we were at the principal's office," adds Cruz.

Carina CruzThe girls launched their own petition to demand Teen Vogue to stop using photo retouching in May. It now

Shine's spotlight of the most jaw-dropping photo from today's news

Leave it to Martha Stewart to take the concept of "Tiger Mom"-or some might say, "alpha bitch"--to a whole new level. According to the domestic diva's blog, in late June she added two arrivals to her menagerie of Chow dogs, horses, exotic chickens, and Persian cats--boy kittens named "Kublai Kahn" and "Ch'in."

Anyone who has ever encountered a Persian (or seen the movie 'Babe') knows how bossy and demanding they can be, but please, we're talking about Martha Stewart here, this is the lady who taught hardened criminals to crochet.

"As with all my new pets, I gently bit each kitten on the face," she writes. While Animal Behavior expert Nicholas Dodman, PhD, tells Shine, "As far as I know there is no [scientific] explanation for this lesson."

Stewart claims, "This is how I let my animals know that I am now their mother."

Soccer injuries on the rise for girlsThe statistics about girls' sports injuries can be scary for parents: girls suffer from up to 10 times as many anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries as boys, and in comparable sports (such as basketball, hockey, and soccer), they sustain nearly 30 percent more serious injuries than boys do. Perhaps most alarmingly, sports-related concussion rates are twice as high for women and girls and researchers don't know why.

Part of the reason for the overall increase in and visibility of girls' injuries is simply because of the sheer numbers of females participating in organized sports today. In the mid-1970s, only about 1 in 27 young women played high school sports; now that number has soared to 1 in 3, according to Nicole LaVoi, assistant director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport.

Related: Study: 1 in 3 kids gets badly injured while playing sports

Researchers also point out that athletic training has traditionally been developed for male bodies and