Blog Posts by Sarah B. Weir, Yahoo! blogger

undefinedCheap costume jewelry contaminated with toxic chemicals is not a new story, but what's incredible is that despite warnings, recalls, and regulations, the danger still hasn't gone away.

Researchers from the Ecology Center recently released their findings that out of ninety-nine items of jewelry purchased from stores across the nation, 57% contained harmful chemicals such as lead, cadmium, and chromium. "There is no excuse for jewelry, especially children's jewelry, to be made with some of the most well studied and dangerous substances on the planet," said Jeff Gearhart, Research Director at the Ecology Center and founder of HealthyStuff.org, in a press release. "We urge manufacturers to start replacing these chemicals with non-toxic substances immediately."

The larger retailers included H&M, Claire's, Walmart, and Kohl's.

The study's key findings were:

• Twenty-seven percent of the jewelry tested contained greater than 300 parts per million (ppm) lead in one or more

How healthy is "baby fat"? It's no secret that childhood obesity is epidemic in the United States. The Centers for Disease reports that the percentage of obese kids has tripled over the last thirty years and that one-third of American children and adolescents are obese or overweight. The risks of being overweight are well documented, but how to actually tackle the problem is far less clear to most families.

Related: Disney's Epcot Re-tooling Childhood Obesity Exhibit

Writing for the April 2012 "Shape" issue of VOGUE, mom Dara-Lynn Weiss touches on many of the obstacles facing parents who try to help their kids achieve a healthy weight. When Weiss's daughter, Bea, was seven, her pediatrician diagnosed her as seriously overweight. With the help of a childhood-obesity specialist, Weiss put her on a diet. Other parents were shocked at the idea of restricting a child's eating and even her daughter's grand parents (who eventually came around) begged to give her larger servings of pasta and junk food. Weiss

Did you ever dream of living in a tree house? Well, sit back and enjoy an armchair architectural tour of the most extravagant, creative, and quirky homes built during the first ten years of the 21st Century. Taschen's recent two volume tome 100 Contemporary Houses features the designs of established "starchitects" such as Richard Meier, John Pawson, Daniel Libeskind, and Zaha Hadid as well as a host of up-and-comers.

Related: Amazing Treehouse Homes

Although many of the abodes are lavishly tricked out, there are also mini-masterpieces such as the Lucky Drops House, which is slotted into a sliver of land about the size of a parking space in crowded Tokyo. A number of the buildings are made from sustainable materials and a few are completely off the grid.

Some of the featured abodes, such as the Wall-Less House (in which even the bathroom is freestanding), push the boundaries of what might be considered a typical shelter. Nonetheless, all were built with the owner's

Yahoo! editors have selected this article as a favorite for 2012. Yahoo! Shine wrote about the Tutu Project back in February, in a story that had immediate response with readers and was disseminated widely on social media. Six months later, photographer Bob Carey and his whimsical breast-cancer fundraising idea won a contract with the NFL--an exec saw the Shine story--to perform during at least four games this season, and raise even more money for breast cancer.

For photographer Bob Carey and his wife Linda, a man-sized pink tutu has taken on incredible meaning in their fight against breast cancer. The Tutu Project started in 2003 when Carey donated a picture of himself wearing a custom-made ballet skirt as part of a fund raiser for the Arizona Ballet. Soon after, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer. "It wasn't about her when I started," Carey tells Shine. But when she was recovering from surgery, he found it was the one thing he could do to take break. "It takes a lot of love

courtesy Alexander EsguerraRemember all that fun you used to have finger painting? Now you can relive kindergarten arts and crafts period, but naked and with your lover.

Artist Alexander Esguerra's "manifesto" proclaims: "We are all equal when it comes to the act of love. These expressions of passion and adoration can only exist in one singular moment, never to be exactly replicated or fully relived." And he means to freeze that moment in time by using the bodies of love-making couples to create Jackson Pollock-esque works of art.

Having slippery sex covered with water-based paint isn't for everybody, but so far more then 50 couples have participated in Esguerra's "Love & Paint" project. He says he is less of an artist-since couples get to choose the colors and go to work on the canvas without him in the room-and more of a composer. Caroline and Tom Law, a 60-something couple from Manhattan, bought their own painting to display in their apartment. "It's beautiful," Tom told the NY Daily News. "The

Do you have sideline rage? Plenty of research shows how great it is for girls to participate in athletics. They avoid drugs and alcohol, have higher self-esteem, lower rates of teen pregnancy, and are less prone to obesity. Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the Wharton School, has studied how female athletes tend to succeed in life in general. "It's not just that the people who are going to do well in life play sports, but that sports help people do better in life," she told the New York Times in 2010.

There is always an exception to the rule, and I suspect that the daughter of Indiana man Shelley Miller won't be reaping all the benefits of participating on her elementary school's basketball team. According to nwi.com, Miller showed up at basketball practice, punched assistant coach Jeffrey Yackus in the face and then proceeded to pummel him until he was unconscious. The reason? Yackus had made the girl run laps around the court because she had been fighting with another player. Yackus sustained a

Is Mercury messing with you? Have you noticed that your carefully mapped out plans are going awry or your computer has been crashing at the worst possible moment lately? Maybe your credit card payment really did get lost in the mail. Have you and your best friend's daily e-mails suddenly turned sour? This spring's Mercury retrograde began on March 12 – so you could blame it all on your horoscope being out of whack.

And you could have an excuse for more annoyances. The planet doesn't do a U-turn until April 4.

Astrologists describe planet Mercury as the ruler of communication and transportation. Three to four times a year, it appears to stop in the sky and travel backward through the constellations of the zodiac for approximately three weeks. This retrograde motion spells bad news for all of us tech dependent, over-sharers who live, labor, and love in the age of high-speed connectivity.

Related: Good Heavens! Oldest Known Astrologer's Board Discovered

Now would be a good time to send your inner control freak

An unnamed sophmore at Lynn English Highschool near Boston, Massachusetts sparked a real-life civics lesson when she wore her "All The Cool Girls Are Lesbians" to class.

Related: Urban Outfitters St. Patrick’s Day Merchandise Offends Irish

According to the The Daily Item, a teacher saw her in the lunchroom and sent her to show her shirt to school vice principal, John O'Hagan. O'Hanagan deemed it inappropriate and told her she needed to cover up the slogan and refrain from wearing it again. When the girl asked why, he replied, "Because it's political and offensive to some people."

In a letter to the town mayor and the school committee, the student reportedly wrote, "Well, frankly, I'm the one who feels offended." She continued, "I'm a young lady who stands up for what I believe in…It makes me a little uneasy that being myself and being proud of that I was scrutinized and disciplined like a girl who as wearing a shirt too low."

The student also contended that a