Today's Globe: sleep woes and obesity, platypus genome

People who sleep fewer than six hours a night - or more than nine - are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies.

When the British naturalist George Shaw received a weird specimen from Australia in 1799 - one with a mole's fur, a duck's bill, and spurs on its rear legs - he did what any skeptical scientist would do: He looked for the stitching and glue that would reveal it to be a hoax. Now, more than 200 years later, scientists have determined the entire genetic code of the creature he named "platypus." And it turns out the platypus continues to strain credulity, bearing genetic modules that are in turn mammalian, reptilian, and avian.