INFORMATION:
Africa's oldest human burial site uncovered
2021-05-05
(Press-News.org) The discovery of the earliest human burial site yet found in Africa, by an international team including several CNRS researchers1, has just been announced in the journal Nature. At Panga ya Saidi, in Kenya, north of Mombasa, the body of a three-year-old, dubbed Mtoto (Swahili for 'child') by the researchers, was deposited and buried in an excavated pit approximately 78,000 years ago. Through analysis of sediments and the arrangement of the bones, the research team showed that the body had been protected by being wrapped in a shroud made of perishable material, and that the head had likely rested on an object also of perishable material. Though there are no signs of offerings or ochre, both common at more recent burial sites, the funerary treatment given Mtoto suggests a complex ritual that likely required the active participation of many members of the child's community. Though Mtoto was a Homo sapiens, the child's dental morphology, in contrast with that observed in human remains of the same period, preserves certain archaic traits connecting it to distant African ancestors. This apparently confirms that, as has often been posited in recent years, our species has extremely old and regionally diverse roots in the African continent where it arose.
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Black and Latinx surgeons continue to hit glass ceiling in America
2021-05-05
Among the upper echelons of academic surgery, Black and Latinx representation has remained flat over the past six years, according to a study published today in JAMA Surgery by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and University of Florida Health.
The study tracked trends across more than 15,000 faculty in surgery departments across the U.S. between 2013-2019. Although the data revealed modest diversity gains among early-career faculty during this period, especially for Black and Latina women, the percentage of full professors and department chairs identifying as Black or Latinx continued to hover in the single digits. ...
Biologists discover a trigger for cell extrusion
2021-05-05
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- For all animals, eliminating some cells is a necessary part of embryonic development. Living cells are also naturally sloughed off in mature tissues; for example, the lining of the intestine turns over every few days.
One way that organisms get rid of unneeded cells is through a process called extrusion, which allows cells to be squeezed out of a layer of tissue without disrupting the layer of cells left behind. MIT biologists have now discovered that this process is triggered when cells are unable to replicate their DNA during cell division.
The researchers discovered this mechanism in the worm C. elegans, and they showed that ...
Medicaid enrollment during COVID-19 pandemic
2021-05-05
What The Study Did: This study analyzed changes in Medicaid enrollment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia during the first nine months of last year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Authors: Peggah Khorrami, M.P.H., of the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health in Boston, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.9463)
Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other ...
Stem cells create early human embryo structure in advance for fertility research
2021-05-05
Exeter scientists have discovered a simple, efficient way to recreate the early structure of the human embryo from stem cells in the laboratory. The new approach unlocks news ways of studying human fertility and reproduction.
Stem cells have the ability to turn into different types of cell. Now, in research published in Cell Stem Cell and funded by the Medical Research Council, scientists at the University of Exeter's Living Systems Institute, working with colleagues from the University of Cambridge, have developed a method to organise lab-grown stem cells into an accurate model of the first stage of human embryo development.
The ability to create artificial ...
A new window to see hidden side of magnetized universe
2021-05-05
New observations and simulations show that jets of high-energy particles emitted from the central massive black hole in the brightest galaxy in galaxy clusters can be used to map the structure of invisible inter-cluster magnetic fields. These findings provide astronomers with a new tool for investigating previously unexplored aspects of clusters of galaxies.
As clusters of galaxies grow through collisions with surrounding matter, they create bow shocks and wakes in their dilute plasma. The plasma motion induced by these activities can drape intra-cluster magnetic ...
Fast changing smells can teach mice about space
2021-05-05
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL (University College London) have found that mice can sense extremely fast and subtle changes in the structure of odours and use this to guide their behaviour. The findings, published in Nature today (Wednesday), alter the current view on how odours are detected and processed in the mammalian brain.
Odour plumes, like the steam off a hot cup of coffee, are complex and often turbulent structures, and can convey meaningful information about an animal's surroundings, like the movements of a predator or the location of food sources. But it has previously been assumed that mammalian brains can't fully process these temporal ...
New bonobo genome fine tunes great ape evolution studies
2021-05-05
Chimpanzees and bonobos diverged comparatively recently in great ape evolutionary history. They split into different species about 1.7 million years ago. Some of the distinctions between chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and bonobo (Pan paniscus) lineages have been made clearer by a recent achievement in hominid genomics.
A new bonobo genome assembly has been constructed with a multiplatform approach and without relying on reference genomes. According to the researchers on this project, more than 98% of the genes are now completely annotated and 99% of the gaps are closed.
The ...
Like a Trojan horse, graphene oxide can act as a carrier of organic pollutants to fish
2021-05-05
Graphene is a two-dimensional nanomaterial composed of carbon and formed by a single layer of densely packed carbon atoms. The high mechanical strength and significant electrical and thermal properties of graphene mean that it is highly suited to many new applications in the fields of electronics, biological, chemical and magnetic sensors, photodetectors and energy storage and generation. Due to its potential applications, graphene production is expected to increase significantly in the coming years, but given its low market uptake and the limitations in analysing its effects, little information on the concentrations of graphene nanomaterials in ecosystems ...
Many patients with cancer are experiencing loneliness and related symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic
2021-05-05
Loneliness and social isolation, which can have negative effects on health and longevity, are being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of surveyed adults with cancer have been experiencing loneliness in recent months, according to a study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
Studies conducted before the pandemic reported that 32 percent to 47 percent of patients with cancer are lonely. In this latest survey, which was administered in late May 2020, 53 percent of 606 patients with a cancer diagnosis were categorized as experiencing loneliness. Patients in the lonely group reported higher levels of social isolation, as well as more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, ...
3D bioprinting technique controls cell orientation
2021-05-05
WASHINGTON, May 5, 2021 - 3D bioprinting can create engineered scaffolds that mimic natural tissue. Controlling the cellular organization within those engineered scaffolds for regenerative applications is a complex and challenging process.
Cell tissues tend to be highly ordered in terms of spatial distribution and alignment, so bioengineered cellular scaffolds for tissue engineering applications must closely resemble this orientation to be able to perform like natural tissue.
In Applied Physics Reviews, from AIP Publishing, an international research team describes its approach for directing cell orientation within ...