An international team, led by Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found that the study subjects ‹ who averaged 97 years of age ‹ had all inherited a gene that appears to slow the aging of cells.

Their study found that the 86 partipants and their children had relatively high levels of the enzyme telomerase, which is known to protect the body's DNA from degrading, The Daily Telegraph reported.

There is no evidence, however, that telomerase reduces age-related kvetching.

Better barter

A new Web site, www.barterwithyid.com, is modernizing an ancient business practice that's as old as the Bible itself.

Barter With Yid supplants dusty marketplaces and instead enables home computer users to electronically trade and sell a cornucopia of items and services ‹ ranging from landscaping services to music lessons to bar mitzvah lessons to kosher cookbooks.

This is war!

The rise in human infertility cannot be traced exclusively to pollution, junk food or even warm laptop computers sitting on men's laps, according to Dr. Oren Hasson, an evolutioinary biologist at Tel Aviv University. The main reason, he contends, is an evolutionary battle between the sexes.

Over thousands of years of evolution, women's bodies have forced sperm to become more competitive, rewarding the strongest, fastest swimmers with penetration of the ovum.

However, the first sperm to enter and bind with the egg triggers biochemical responses to block other sperm from entering. This blockade is necessary because a second penetrating sperm would kill the egg. But in just the few minutes it takes for the blockade to be completed, today's overcompetitive sperm may be penetrating the egg, terminating fertilization just after it's begun.

Women's bodies, too, have been developing defenses to this condition, known as "polyspermy." To counteract the effects of polyspermy, female reproductive tracts have evolved to become formidable barriers to sperm," said Hasson. "They eject, dilute, divert and kill spermatozoa so that only about a single sperm cell gets into the vicinity of a viable egg at the right time."

Any small improvement in male sperm efficiency is matched by a response in the female reproductive system, Hasson contends. "This fuels the 'arms race' between the sexes and leads to the evolutionary cycle going on right now in the entire animal world."

Family, uh, bigot?

The animated sitcom Family Guy often traffics in bad taste, but its creator, Seth MacFarlane, appears to have plumbed new depths of offensiveness, according to the Forward.

A Nov. 8 variety special titled 'Family Guy' Presents: Seth and Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show included one bit sprinkled with arguably anti-Semitic references and another that mocked Jewish actress Marlee Matlin, who is deaf.

MacFarlane already has a history of airing Family Guy episodes that are laden with cringe-worthy Jewish stereotypes. Given his clumsily cartoonish view of a certain ethnic group, one could argue that MacFarlane himself conforms to a stereotype that bears the name of a certain body part that shall remain unspecified.

Unmentionables, part II

Shmutz is making a comeback thanks to a pair of childhood pals from the Bronx who wrote a book in the mid-1970s that featured more than 200 potty-mouthed Yiddish sayings that were discovered in a rare turn-of-the century manuscript.

Due to popular demand, the co-authors ‹ Marvin Zuckerman and Gershon Weltman ‹ have resurrected their signature work, Yiddish Sayings Mama Never Taught You, which had gone through five printings before bootleg versions began circulating on the Internet.

"My mother was shocked that we would undertake such a low-life endeavor," Weltman, an engineer and lecturer recently told the Forward, adding that "many of the sayings are as rank and funny now as they were originally."

‹ compiled from reports filed by JTA News and Features, The Jerusalem Post and other sources