Like adults, children and monkeys rationalize their decisions following a tough choice, Yale University researchers report in Psychological Science.

The tendency to rationalize after, for instance, deciding what job to take, which car to buy, or who to marry, is a way to resolve “cognitive dissonance”—a psychological state in which an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are at odds, said Louisa Egan, the lead author and doctoral student of psychology.

The dissonance—the anxiety over an appealing road not taken—is uncomfortable and people are driven to resolve these feelings by rationalizing their choices, she said. One way to do this is by downgrading, or denigrating, the option that wasn’t chosen.

An international team of scientists has published a new analysis showing that as plant species around the world go extinct, natural habitats become less productive and contain fewer total plants –– a situation that could ultimately compromise important benefits that humans get from nature.

“The process by which plants grow and produce more plant biomass is one of the most fundamental biological processes on the planet,” said Bradley Cardinale, lead author of the paper and assistant professor of biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A consistently high level of physical activity from young adulthood into middle age increases the odds of maintaining a stable weight and lessens the amount of weight gained over time, according to a new analysis from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

People who reported at least 30 minutes of vigorous activity a day such as jogging, bicycling or swimming were more than twice as likely to maintain a stable Body Mass Index (BMI) over 20 years. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. But even highly active people who gained weight, gained 14 pounds less over 20 years than those with consistently low activity.

Breastfeeding boosts infants’ IQs, but only if the babies have a genetic variant that enhances their metabolism of breast milk, according to a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It is this genetic variant in FADS2, a gene involved in the control of fatty acid pathways, that may help the children make better use of the breast milk and promote the brain development that is associated with a higher IQ score,” said Julia Kim-Cohen, assistant professor of psychology and a member of the research team.

“Children who do not carry the ‘helpful’ genetic variant have normal average IQ scores,” Kim-Cohen said. “Being breastfed for them is not associated with an IQ advantage.”

Malaria kills about one million people every year and most are young children living in Africa. The parasite responsible is transmitted to people when they are bitten (usually at night) by an infected mosquito. The World Health Organization now recommends a new form of treatment known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), which include the drug artemisinin – obtained from the sweet wormwood plant. ITNs (long-lasting insecticidal nets) are also strongly promoted.

Research in Zanzibar,Tanzania, where people with malaria have had free access to ACT since late 2003 and children under five years old and pregnant women have been given free ITNs since early 2006, has found a remarkable fall in the number of children dying from malaria.

Children who possess a gene known to increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease already show signs of reduced cognitive function, an Oregon Health & Science University study has found.

Scientists in the OHSU School of Medicine discovered that 7- to 10-year-olds with a member of a family of genes implicated in development, nerve cell regeneration and neuroprotection display reduced spatial learning and memory, associated with later-life cognitive impairments.

Results of the study, presented today at Neuroscience 2007, the 37th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, suggest that changes predisposing a person to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia might occur much sooner in the brain than previously thought.