• A Dalmatian named Button gave birth to a litter of 18 puppies, which puts her total number of offspring in the thirties. • And yet another study shows that virginity pledges don't really work. Someone better tell Jordan Sparks. • A mother used lifeguard training to save herself and her two young daughters after their family car slid off the road into a freezing pond. • Male cyclists, triathletes, and skiiers may be at greater risk for developing eating disorders. • Older women who are more physically fit are less likely to have decreased cognitive function as they age, study says. • Just what we need: a new injectable treatment named Reloxin claims to be better than Botox. • A Nebraskan woman faked labor pains when she was caught shoplifting. After arriving at the hospital, police were informed that the woman was not even pregnant. • A cat wandered onto the set of a live weather forecast in Germany. The meteorologist scooped up the cat and let it help point helpfully toward the weather map. • Twitter uses raise $12,000 to help an abused woman leave her husband. • Washington Attorney General Rob will ask lawmakers to raise the sentencing for domestic violence felonies. • New research finds that black women face greater challenges when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder. • A study has found that men who do not find curvy woman more attractive than athletic women are more likely to father children with autism. • Something else to be paranoid about: the germs that live on doctor's scrubs and lab coats could kill you. • The cosmetics industry is facing serious reform, as the Obama administration looks to change the current standards of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) •

As the Washington Post reports, a new study conducted by Janet E. Rosenbaum of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that teens who take "virginity pledges" are not less likely to engage in premarital sex than their non-pledging peers.

The study compared teens who take "virginity pledges" — who tend to come from families that are more religious and conservative and less sex positive — with teens who did not take a pledge but who come from similar backgrounds. In the past, studies of abstinence programs compared religious and conservative teens with more liberal and sex positive teens, which Rosenbaum says is like comparing "apples to oranges." By comparing pledgers with peers who come from a similar backgrounds, Rosenbaum was able to test how effective the "virginity pledge" was in reaching its desired audience... and discovered that the pledge was ineffective: by 2001 she found that 82 percent of those who took the pledge had retracted their promises and there was no significant difference in sexual activity from their peers. In fact more than half of both of the groups studied engaged in fairly typical sexual behavior: they had engaged in different types of sexual activity, had an average of three partners and had sex before they were 21, even if they were unmarried.

The most disturbing part of the study was that it found that teens who took the pledge were less likely to use protection when they eventually did have sex. (This morning on the Today show, Meredith Vieira discussed the study with psychotherapist Laura Berman.)

Ultimately, the study suggests that abstinence programs are ineffective since, as Rosenbaum notes, abstinence is more of an "individual conviction rather than participating in a program." Unfortunately, abstinence programs like "virginity pledges" can create poor sexual practices by not educating teens about different forms of contraception, yet our government spends more than $176 million annually on funding similar, abstinence-focused programs. As Dr. Berman said to Vieria, this is exciting news for the sex education-positive incoming Obama administration.

Study: Teenage 'Virginity Pledges' Are Ineffective [Washington Post, via MSNBC]