Health & Science news

Proof that breast-feeding makes babies smarter

Any doubt about the superiority of breastfeeding is now gone. Nine out of 10 babies get extra IQ points when they are breastfed, a new study has found. It turns out that breast milk contains important fats that foster brain-cell growth, and that 90 percent of babies carry the gene required to digest those fats. Researchers in England and New Zealand tested the effects of breast milk versus bottled formula on more than 3,000 children. Breast-fed children with the gene were found to have IQs seven points higher than those of both bottle-fed children and breast-fed children without the gene. Babies born with the gene are able to turn milk fats into polyunsaturated fatty acids that accumulate in the brain, stimulating its development. The study ends the debate over breast-feeding that has divided scientists for decades. While many scientists championed the health benefits of mother’s milk, others argued that the IQ differences were the result of breast-feeding being more common among women from educated, upper-middle-class families. But this study proves that genetics and breastfeeding work together to improve a baby’s smarts. “The argument about intelligence has been about nature versus nurture for at least a century,” professor Terrie Moffitt tells BBC News. Now, “we have shown that in fact nature works via nurture to create better health outcomes.”

... but what about my boobs?

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Contrary to popular belief, breast-feeding is not the cause of sagging breasts, says plastic surgeon Brian Rinker. “A lot of times, if a woman comes in for a breast-lift or a breast augmentation, she’ll say ‘I want to fix what breastfeeding did to my breasts,’” Rinker tells LiveScience.com. So the University of Kentucky physician set out to study breast-feeding’s deflating consequences. His findings were surprising: The choice to breast-feed or bottle-feed had almost no effect on how mom looked later. It was the pregnancy itself, not the postnatal feedings, that caused breasts to lose their fullness. The swelling of breasts during pregnancy stretches tissue and decreases elasticity, making them sag when they return to normal size after the birth. That effect is worsened in women who smoke, because smoking also breaks down elasticity in the skin.

It’s all in the eyes

You don’t need to look like Brad or Angelina to lure a mate, says a new study. Being attractive is easy: Just make eye contact and smile. Scottish researchers asked hundreds of university students to rate the attractiveness of people in photos. The photo sets contained images of the same faces, either smiling or looking disgusted, with eyes looking toward the viewer or away. In all cases, especially when viewing photos of the opposite sex, the students rated the smiling, forward-looking faces as the most attractive. We usually try to judge beauty based on facial characteristics alone, study author Ben Jones tells the London Guardian. But this study shows that the assessment of another person’s beauty is really “a narcissistic thing. People are attracted to people who are attracted to them.” This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, because there’s a better chance you’ll get to mate with someone who also finds you interesting. “It takes quite a lot of effort to attract a mate,” Jones says. “What you want to do is allocate that effort in a more efficient way.”

The girl with eight limbs

An Indian girl born with four arms and four legs is recovering after surgeons removed the extra limbs. The 2-year-old girl was born joined at the pelvis with a parasitic twin that stopped developing in the mother’s womb, with the surviving fetus absorbing the extra limbs and some internal organs. At birth, the girl was named “Lakshmi,’’ after a four-armed Hindu goddess, and some people in her rural district revered her as a reincarnation of the goddess. Doctors said she had little chance of surviving into adulthood, so they performed the complex operation to remove the extra limbs. She came through it well, doctors said, and her father, a laborer who goes by the name Shambhu, said she was conscious and moving her fingers and toes. “They say she is going to be back to normal,’’ he told the Press Trust of India. “It is a debt I could never repay.’’

A solar system like ours

The discovery of a fifth planet circling a not-so-distant star means that the universe is packed with viable solar systems, say astronomers. The 55 Cancri system, located just 41 light-years away, has at least five planets, new observations reveal, and bears a passing resemblance to our own solar system. “This discovery of the first ever quintuple planetary system has me jumping out of my socks,” astronomer Geoffrey Marcy tells Scientific American. “We now know that our sun and its family of planets is not unusual.” The newest planet spotted isn’t terribly exciting in itself—it’s a gaseous “mini-Saturn” and probably has no liquid water that could support life. But the fact that such a nearby solar system has a group of planets like ours suggests that such planetary groups are common—and that there may be millions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone. If that’s the case, say scientists, it’s highly likely that we not alone in the universe.