The discovery of a 530,000-year-old misshapen skull in Spain suggests that early humans may have nurtured children with severe birth defects, a team of researchers reported this week.
Pieces of a child's skull were found eight years ago in a cave filled with the bones of early humans who were closely related to Neanderthals. When scientists pieced the fragments together, they found evidence of a severe case of craniosynostosis, a rare condition in which parts of the skull fuse too early. It can impede the development of the brain.
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reported that the child lived at least five years, and possibly 12 and probably would have required special care to have survived so long.
This challenges the assumption that early humans, like many other mammals, including the great apes, rejected babies with severe deformities.
Guppies hold clues in
scoliosis research
Scoliosis, which causes a lateral curve in the spine, tends to run in families. But researchers haven't been able to pin down the genes involved or what they do.
Guppies may provide some answers, say two biologists in British Columbia who have discovered that the colourful fish suffer from a spine-curving disease very much like scoliosis. It is the first animal model for the disease.
Scoliosis is usually diagnosed in childhood, and doctors don't know why it is more severe in girls than boys or why it is so variable. Some young people with the condition require no treatment, while others need a brace or surgery. It sometimes stabilizes after puberty.
The disease follows many of the same patterns in guppies, say Simon Fraser University's Felix Breden and Kristen Fay Gorman. They have been awarded $275,000 (U.S.) from the National Institutes of Health in the United States to pursue their work isolating the genes that contribute to crooked spines in the fish.
In cool countries,
more babies in blue
Women who live in cooler climates give birth to more boys than women in the tropics do. The University of Georgia's Kristen Navara analyzed 10 years of data collected from 202 countries. On average, 106 males per 100 females are born around the world, or 51.5 per cent boys. But in countries closer to the equator, fewer males are born annually, 51.1 per cent compared with 51.3 per cent at temperate or subarctic latitudes. She isn't sure why, but says it could be that climate affects miscarriage rates or the quality of sperm.
Flying on Omega-3s
If only training for a marathon were this easy. Feasting on shrimp rich in omega-3 fatty acids gives tiny semipalmated sandpipers the stamina for a 4,500-kilometre non-stop flight that is part of their annual migration. Now, University of Ottawa biologist Jean-Michel Weber has found that feeding supplements containing the same nutrient to much less athletic birds - bobwhite quails - dramatically increases their aerobic capacity after six weeks, even if they are sedentary.
"They are animals that don't fly much. They walk around and feed and whenever there is danger, they hide," Dr. Weber says. He is planning a similar study in humans, but isn't expecting to see such striking increases in endurance in volunteers who eat more of the fat, which is found in nut oils and fish species including salmon, tuna and halibut.
He meant to do that!
When someone cuts you off on the highway, do you think he did it on purpose? We often assume that other people's behaviour is intentional unless we have proof that it isn't, says Evelyn Rosset, a psychologist at Boston University.
She asked 90 volunteers if statements like "She broke the vase" or "The boy knocked over the sandcastle" concerned accidents or deliberate acts.
Their answers, she says, suggest that many of us don't completely outgrow the childish tendency to think that accidents or mistakes were intentional.
Anne McIlroy is The Globe and Mail's science writer.