The Deadliest Animal in the World

What would you say is the most dangerous animal on Earth? Sharks? Snakes? Humans?

Of course the answer depends on how you define dangerous. Personally I’ve had a thing about sharks since the first time I saw Jaws. But if you’re judging by how many people are killed by an animal every year, then the answer isn’t any of the above. It’s mosquitoes.

When it comes to killing humans, no other animal even comes close. Take a look:

What makes mosquitoes so dangerous?
Despite their innocuous-sounding name—Spanish for “little fly”—they carry devastating diseases. The worst is malaria, which kills more than 600,000 people every year; another 200 million cases incapacitate people for days at a time. It threatens half of the world’s population and causes billions of dollars in lost productivity annually. Other mosquito-borne diseases include dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis.

There are more than 2,500 species of mosquito, and mosquitoes are found in every region of the world except Antarctica. During the peak breeding seasons, they outnumber every other animal on Earth, except termites and ants. They were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths during the construction of the Panama Canal. And they affect population patterns on a grand scale: In many malarial zones, the disease drives people inland and away from the coast, where the climate is more welcoming to mosquitoes.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year. Mosquitoes kill 50,000 times as many people, but if there’s a TV channel that features Mosquito Week, I haven’t heard about it.

That’s why we’re having Mosquito Week on the Gates Notes.

Everything I’m posting this week is dedicated to this deadly creature. You can learn about my recent trip to Indonesia to see an ingenious way to combat dengue fever by inoculating not people, but mosquitoes. (Somehow this story involved me offering up my bare arm to a cage full of hungry mosquitoes so they could feed on my blood.) You can read a harrowing account of what it’s like to have malaria and hear from an inspiring Tanzanian scientist who’s fighting it. And I’ve shared a few thoughts from Melinda’s and my recent trip to Cambodia, where I saw some fascinating work that could point the way to eradicating malaria, which would be one of the greatest accomplishments in health ever.

I hope you’ll have a look around. I can’t promise that Anopheles gambiae will be quite as exciting as hammerheads and Great Whites. But maybe you’ll come away with a new appreciation for these flying masters of mayhem.

ORIGINAL: GatesNotes

By Bill Gates 

April 25, 2014

Venter's New Goal: World's Largest Sequencing Operation

Dr. Venter is founder, chairman, and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute. [Industrial Biotechnology]


J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. and two co-founders today launched a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company that he vowed will assemble the world’s largest human gene sequencing operation, using $70 million in Series A financing.

Human Longevity Inc. (HLI) says it will compile the most comprehensive and complete human genotype, microbiome, and phenotype database – with plans to sequence up to 40,000 human genomes per year, then quickly scape up to 100,000 human genomes per year. HLI will sequence a variety of people, both healthy and ill, from children to centenarians.

Both the sequencing operations and the new company’s efforts to help develop cell-based therapeutics are aimed at addressing aging-related diseases.

HLI will initially focus its clinical sequencing efforts on cancer, and will look to identify therapeutic solutions for cancer as well as other aging-related diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, heart and liver diseases, and dementia.

“HLI is going to change the way medicine is practiced by helping to shift to a more preventive, genomic-based medicine model which we believe will lower healthcare costs,” D. Venter said in a statement. “Our goal is not necessarily lengthening life, but extending a healthier, high performing, more productive life span.”

HLI will operate from labs in San Diego, and has already purchased two Illumina HiSeq X Ten Sequencing Systems, with the option to acquire three additional systems.

The HiSeq X Ten is a set of ten ultra-high-throughput sequencers, purpose-built for large-scale human whole-genome sequencing.

Dr. Venter is the founder and CEO of Synthetic Genomics, as well as founder, chairman, and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). HLI said it is establishing a collaboration and research services agreement with JCVI covering proteomics, infectious disease diagnostics, and the human microbiome, with the new company agreeing to license intellectual property from the institute.

JCVI is one of three partners with which HLI has established strategic collaborations; the others are Metabolon and University of California, San Diego.

HLI and UCSD have agreed to develop protocols and procedures to enable whole genome, microbiome and tumor sequencing and analysis of consenting UC San Diego research patients. Collaboration has begun by the company with the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. HLI said it will seek to extend this type of agreement and program with UC San Diego to other clinical centers worldwide.

Joining the biotech research pioneer and entrepreneur as co-founders of HLI are Robert Hariri, M.D., Ph.D., and Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.

---

About Human Longevity, Inc.

Human Longevity Inc. (HLI) is a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company. Using advances in genomic sequencing, the human microbiome, proteomics, informatics, computing, and cell therapy technologies, HLI is building the world’s most comprehensive database on human genotypes and phenotypes to tackle the diseases associated with aging-related human biological decline. HLI I also leading the development of cell-based therapeutics to address age-related decline in endogenous stem cell function. HLI is concentrating on cancer, diabetes and obesity, heart and liver diseases, and dementia.

The market for healthy human longevity is enormous. Globally, total healthcare expenses run over $7 trillion, with nearly half of these funds being spent in the senior (65+) years of a person’s life to help keep them alive longer. Using the combined power of HLI’s core areas of expertise – genomics, informatics, and stem cell therapies, HLI is going to change the way medicine is practiced by furthering the shift to a preventive, genomic-based medicine model.

HLI revenue streams will be derived from database licensing to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic organizations, sequencing, and development of advanced diagnostics and therapeutics.

Funding

HLI has secured $70 million in its initial round of funding. Our investors are a diverse group of individuals and companies who share our common goal and passion of changing healthcare, tackling the diseases of aging, and extending the healthy human lifespan.

Founders

• J. Craig Venter, PhD
• Robert Hariri, MD, PhD
• Peter H. Diamandis, MD

ORIGINAL: Genetic Engineering News

Mar 4, 2014

Written all over your face: humans express four basic emotions rather than six, says new study

What if We Have Four Basic Emotions, Not Six? 

Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust might no longer be the simplest six.

Human beings are emotional creatures whose state of mind can usually be observed through their facial expressions.

A commonly-held belief, first proposed by Dr Paul Ekman, posits there are six basic emotions which are universally recognised and easily interpreted through specific facial expressions, regardless of language or culture. These are:

• happiness, 
• sadness, 
• fear, 
• anger, 
• surprise and 
• disgust.

New research published in the journal Current Biology by scientists at the University of Glasgow has challenged this view, and suggested that there are only four basic emotions.

In the news: BBC News Online

Their conclusion was reached by studying the range of different muscles within the face – or Action Units as researchers refer to them – involved in signalling different emotions, as well as the time-frame over which each muscle was activated.

This is the first such study to objectively examine the ‘temporal dynamics’ of facial expressions, made possible by using a unique Generative Face Grammar platform developed at the University of Glasgow.

The team from the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology claim that while the facial expression signals of happiness and sadness are clearly distinct across time, fear and surprise share a common signal – the wide open eyes – early in the signalling dynamics.
 

Disgust and anger, surprise and fear
Similarly, anger and disgust share the wrinkled nose. It is these early signals that could represent more basic danger signals. Later in the signalling dynamics, facial expressions transmit signals that distinguish all six ‘classic’ facial expressions of emotion.

Lead researcher Dr Rachael Jack said: “Our results are consistent with evolutionary predictions, where signals are designed by both biological and social evolutionary pressures to optimise their function.

“First, early danger signals confer the best advantages to others by enabling the fastest escape. Secondly, physiological advantages for the expresser – the wrinkled nose prevents inspiration of potentially harmful particles, whereas widened eyes increases intake of visual information useful for escape – are enhanced when the face movements are made early.

“What our research shows is that not all facial muscles appear simultaneously during facial expressions, but rather develop over time supporting a hierarchical biologically-basic to socially-specific information over time.”

In compiling their research the team used special techniques and software developed at the University of Glasgow to synthesise all facial expressions.

The Generative Face Grammar – developed by Professor Philippe Schyns, Dr Oliver Garrod and Dr Hui Yu – uses cameras to capture a three-dimensional image of faces of individuals specially trained to be able to activate all 42 individual facial muscles independently.

From this a computer can then generate specific or random facial expressions on a 3D model based on the activation of different Actions Units or groups of units to mimic all facial expressions.

By asking volunteers to observe the realistic model as it pulled various expressions – thereby providing a true four-dimensional experience – and state which emotion was being expressed the researchers are able to see which specific Action Units observers associate with particular emotions.

It was through this method they found that the signals for fear/surprise and anger/disgust were confused at the early stage of transmission and only became clearer later when other Action Units were activated.

Dr Jack said: “Our research questions the notion that human emotion communication comprises six basic, psychologically irreducible categories. Instead we suggest there are four basic expressions of emotion.

“We show that ‘basic’ facial expression signals are perceptually segmented across time and follow an evolving hierarchy of signals over time – from the biologically-rooted basic signals to more complex socially-specific signals.

“Over time, and as humans migrated across the globe, socioecological diversity probably further specialised once-common facial expressions, altering the number, variety and form of signals across cultures.”

The researchers intend to develop their study by looking at facial expressions of different cultures, including East Asian populations whom they have already ascertained interpret some of the six classical emotions differently – placing more emphasis on eye signals than mouth movements compared to Westerners.


Related links

• Research paper: Dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of signals over time (Current Biology)
• Dr Rachael Jack: research profile
• Professor Philippe Schyns: research profile
• Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience: Centre for Social Interactions
• Facial Expressions are not universal: research paper (Current Biology)

Find out more

• Research paper: Dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of signals over time (Current Biology)
• Dr Rachael Jack: research profile
• Professor Philippe Schyns: research profile
• Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience: Centre for Social Interactions
• Facial Expressions are not universal: research paper (Current Biology)

Further information: Stuart.Forsyth@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 4831
ORIGINAL: U of Glasgow

"Desarrollo a Escala Humana". Libro por Manfred Max-Neef

Por Manfred A. Max-Neef
con colaboraciones de:
Antonio Elizalde y Martín Hopenhayn

Conceptos, aplicaciones y algunas reflexiones

Este documento cristaliza un trabajo esencialmente transdisciplinario realizado por un equipo de investigadores de distintos paíse s de América Latina. El trabajo fue preparado a lo largo de un año y medio con la colaboración de profesionales provenientes de Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, México, Brasil, Canadá y Suecia, dedicados a disciplinas tales como economía, sociología, psiquiatría, filosofía, ciencia política, geografía, antropología, periodismo, ingeniería y derecho. Los participantes constituyeron un grupo estable de reflexión e investigación colectiva que se reunió, en el curso de los dieciocho meses de trabajo, en tres seminarios - talleres, manteniendo contacto intelectual es trecho y permanente desde el comienzo hasta el término del proyecto.

Además del grupo estable, cuya continuidad permitió profundizar la reflexión colectiva en torno a problemáticas específicas del desarrollo, hubo invitados especiales en cada una de las reuniones. Los principales insumos para este trabajo lo constituyen los relatorios de cada uno de los Seminarios, Talleres y distintos documentos producidos por lo participantes. La redacción final estuvo a cargo del equipo del CEPAUR y apunta más a integrar de manera coherente la diversidad de los aportes que a reflejar la opinión particular de cada uno de los participantes. El documento producido sobre la base de los tres talleres, fue discutido en un seminario de evaluación final, en el centro Dag Hammarskjöld en Uppsala.1

Prefacio 
La propuesta que aquí se contiene constituye un aporte para una filosofía del desarrollo. Pretende por lo tanto, ser un aporte sugerente, susceptible de ahondarse en cualquiera de los múltiples ámbitos que aborda. El proyecto fue realizado de manera conjunta por el Centro de Alternativas de Desarrollo (CEPAUR) de Chile y por la Fundación Dag Hammarskjöld de Suecia. Nació de la necesidad de situar en el contexto latinoamericano (y a la luz de los cambios de escenario ocurridos durante el último decenio) la propuesta contenida en el Informe Dag Hammarskjöld de 1975 «Qué hacer: Otro Desarrollo». El texto resultante aspira a tener como interlocutores a agentes del desarrollo regional, planificadores y políticos, grupos de desarrollo local, académicos de diferentes disciplinas relevantes para el desarrollo, foros internacionales y profesionales e intelectuales dedicados a pensar caminos de humanización para un mundo en crisis.

La propuesta contenida en este trabajo es, pues, un esfuerzo por integrar líneas de reflexión, de investigación y de acción que puedan constituir un aporte sustancial para la construcción de un nuevo paradigma del desarrollo, menos mecanicista y más humano. La primera parte de este libro, fue publicada en 1986 como número especial de la revista Development Dialogue con el título Desarrollo a Escala Humana: una opción para el futuro. A esta edición, se ha sumado una nueva sección: «Notas sobre Metodología», así como dos nuevos capítulos que constituyen la Segunda Parte de este libro. De éstos, el primero es una versión ampliada del ensayo «La poda del lenguaje» que fue publicado en 1988 en Development , la revista de la Sociedad para el Desarrollo Internacional. El otro capítulo incorporado, es una versión corregida de la conferencia que el autor dio en el marco de la Conmemoración de Schumacher, octubre de 1989 en Bristol, Inglaterra. Estas dos adiciones al libro, representan, aunque no sean productos terminados, al menos, caminos hacia campos nuevos y de la XII Región. Chile, por su apoyo entusiasta y la eficaz realización de varios seminarios regionales llevados a cabo durante el período de ejecución de este proyecto. Sin el apoyo intelectual y material de estas instituciones, no hubiera sido posible la terminación exitosa de este proyecto. abiertos de investigación y reflexión. Subrayan el carácter elusivo e interminable de la búsqueda de respuestas finales para la cuestión del mejoramiento humano a través del desarrollo. El Centro de Alternativas de Desarrollo - CEPAUR - es una organización no gubernamental de espectro internacional, dedicada, a través de la investigación de naturaleza transdiciplinaria y proyectos de acción, a una reorientación del desarrollo, a través de la promoción de formas de autodependencia local que satisfa gan las necesidades fundamentales de los seres humanos, y de una manera má s gener al, a promover el desarrollo a escala humana.

Las oficinas de CEPAUR están en la Avenida Santa María 349, Apto 42 - B, Santiago, Chile, y la dirección postal es :

CEPAUR, Casilla 27001, 

Santiago 27, Chile. 

Manfred Max - Neef
Director Ejecutivo, CEPAUR

1 El equipo encargado de este proyecto desea expresar su agradecimiento a los funcionarios y acádemicos de la Universidad de La Serena en Chile, la Universidad Federal de Pernambuco, Brasil y la Fundación para el Desarrollo


ORIGINAL: Manfred Max-Neef (Enlace para descarga del libro)

App Captures the Boston Bombing’s Psychological Effects

ORIGINAL: IEEE Spectrum
By Eliza Strickland
27 Aug 2013


Could psychological-monitoring apps become as common as fitness and activity gadgets?

Image: Cogito A Mind Minder: Cogito's mood-monitoring app can detect signals of psychological distress

In April, the software company Cogito was halfway through a clinical trial to see if it could detect symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through a smartphone app. All of the 100 participants in the study lived around Boston. Then, on 15 April, two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds. Suddenly, Cogito’s clinical trial was a lot more relevant.

The trial was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under its Detection and Computational Analysis of Psychological Signals program. To address the troubling number of psychological problems and suicides among active-duty military personnel and veterans, the U.S. Department of Defense is seeking technologies that can identify at-risk individuals so professionals can help them.

Cogito, a Boston-based MIT spin-off, developed an app that keeps track of a person’s social behavior and vocal characteristics. The app monitors the phone’s location and time of use and also logs phone calls and text messages. (It doesn’t look at the content of those calls and texts.) Finally, there’s an active component: Participants can choose to fill out questionnaires about their mood and can record audio diaries. Cogito’s expertise is in automated speech analysis, which it applies to those audio diaries; future iterations could mine phone conversations for information as well.

Put all the data together and you’re able to tell a lot about a person, says Cogito CEO Joshua Feast. Sometimes you even find signs of distress that people don’t want to admit to or haven’t recognized themselves. “We’re able to look at sleep, mood, social isolation, and physical isolation,” says Feast, all of which can serve as “honest signals” of psychological trouble. In the Boston trial, Cogito was only testing the sophisticated algorithms it developed to aggregate the data. If the trial works out, future versions of the software could provide these summaries to clinicians to allow them to intervene and could also give the information to the subjects themselves.

All of this can seem rather creepy—apps that get inside your head and reveal your emotional secrets. But Feast says that’s why his company places so much emphasis on privacy and trust. If Cogito’s system becomes a commercial product, there will be legal guarantees that a user will always own and control his or her own data. For example, a user could choose whether or not to share the data with a clinician. Feast says he doesn’t think users would have it any other way. “Morally it’s the right thing to do, and also for adoption it’s the right thing to do,” he says.

The participants in the Boston trial included veterans, civilians with histories of trauma or depression, and some healthy civilians. While the bulk of the data from the study is still being analyzed, Feast says the impact of the April bombing is already clear. The algorithms picked up more markers of stress in the participants, including decreased use of the app’s interactive components. “Fewer survey questions were being answered, and fewer audio diaries were being recorded,” he says.

Further study of the data will answer other important questions about the nature of depression and PTSD, says Feast: “What is resilience? What kind of people fared better after the bombing? What happens to people with vulnerability when things like this happen?” The company is still formulating its research questions, he says.

The Durkheim Project, another initiative funded by this DARPA program, focuses more narrowly on identifying veterans at risk of suicide. Chris Poulin, director of the project, explains that his system predicts suicide risk by analyzing veterans’ text messages and their posting on social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Poulin says he’s impressed with the scope of Cogito’s data collection and its incorporation of voice monitoring. “There are other people out there collecting mobile data and looking at activity metrics, but very few people have integrated voice data,” he says.

Cogito’s voice-analysis software, Cogito Dialog, monitors vocal characteristics such as level of excitement and fluidity of speech. Feast explains that it’s tricky to get clear data in this area because there’s so much natural variation in people’s speech habits. However, the system can detect changes to an individual’s speech patterns over time and can also be useful in telemedicine. For example, if a clinician calls veterans and asks them all the same series of questions, a monitoring system can flag people with unusual responses. “Speech analysis is well suited for looking at population norms and deviation from the norms,” says Feast.

Feast believes that the company’s experience with the Boston bombing provides a preview of a possible future where psychological monitoring apps are as common as the fitness and activity gadgets that proliferate today. “When there’s an earthquake or terrorist attack or traumatic event that hits a population center, this technology could support a rapid response team for psychological distress,” he says. “It would be like the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] responding to a flu outbreak.”

Extracting human DNA with full genetic data in minutes

ORIGINAL: KurzweilAI
May 13, 2013

Hand-held device for extracting DNA (credit: UW/NanoFacture/KNR)

University of Washington engineers and NanoFacture, a Bellevue, Wash., company, have created a device that can extract human DNA from fluid samples in a simpler, more efficient and environmentally friendly way than conventional methods.

The device will give hospitals and research labs a much easier way to separate DNA from human fluid samples, which will help with genome sequencing, disease diagnosis and forensic investigations.

Separating DNA from bodily fluids is a cumbersome process that’s become a bottleneck as scientists make advances in genome sequencing, particularly for disease prevention and treatment. The market for DNA preparation alone is about $3 billion each year.

Conventional methods use a centrifuge to spin and separate DNA molecules or strain them from a fluid sample with a micro-filter, but these processes take 20 to 30 minutes to complete and can require excessive toxic chemicals.

A close-up view of the portable device (credit: UW/NanoFacture/KNR)

UW engineers designed microscopic probes that dip into a fluid sample – saliva, sputum or blood – and apply an electric field within the liquid. That draws particles to concentrate around the surface of the tiny probe. Larger particles hit the tip and swerve away, but DNA-sized molecules stick to the probe and are trapped on the surface. It takes two or three minutes to separate and purify DNA using this technology.

“This simple process removes all the steps of conventional methods,” said Jae-Hyun Chung, a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering who led the research.

The hand-held device can clean four separate human fluid samples at once, but the technology can be scaled up to prepare 96 samples at a time, which is standard for large-scale handling.

The tiny probes, called microtips and nanotips, were designed and built at the UW in a micro-fabrication facility where a technician can make up to 1 million tips in a year, which is key in proving that large-scale production is feasible, Chung said.

Engineers in Chung’s lab also have designed a pencil-sized device using the same probe technology that could be sent home with patients or distributed to those serving in the military overseas. Patients could swab their cheeks, collect a saliva sample, then process their DNA on the spot to send back to hospitals and labs for analysis.

This could be useful as efforts ramp up toward sequencing each person’s genome for disease prevention and treatment, Chung said.

The market for this device isn’t developed yet, but Chung’s team will be ready when it is. Meanwhile, the larger device is ready for commercialization, and its creators have started working with distributors.

A UW Center for Commercialization grant of $50,000 seeded initial research in 2008, and since then researchers have received about $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

3D Printers On Track To Print Body Parts

ORIGINAL: Disrupt3D

by Disrupt 3D

May 4, 2013

Australian scientists say they have found a way to grow human body parts using 3D printing technology. Watch the news story here.

Professor Gordon Wallace explains the technology.

First Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found

ORIGINAL: Discovery

BY JENNIFER VIEGAS

MAR 27, 2013

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.

If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.

The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.

PHOTOS: Faces of Our Ancestors

“From the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the Mezzena individual would have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who present a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin,” co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist, told Discovery News.

Condemi is the CNRS research director at the University of Ai-Marseille. She and her colleagues studied the remains via DNA analysis and 3D imaging. They then compared those results with the same features from Homo sapiens.

The genetic analysis shows that the individual’s mitochondrial DNA is Neanderthal. Since this DNA is transmitted from a mother to her child, the researchers conclude that it was a “female Neanderthal who mated with male Homo sapiens.”

NEWS: Neanderthals Lacked Social Skills

By the time modern humans arrived in the area, the Neanderthals had already established their own culture, Mousterian, which lasted some 200,000 years. Numerous flint tools, such as axes and spear points, have been associated with the Mousterian. The artifacts are typically found in rock shelters, such as the Riparo di Mezzena, and caves throughout Europe.

The researchers found that, although the hybridization between the two hominid species likely took place, the Neanderthals continued to uphold their own cultural traditions.

That's an intriguing clue, because it suggests that the two populations did not simply meet, mate and merge into a single group.

NEWS: Neanderthals Died Out Earlier Than Thought

As Condemi and her colleagues wrote, the mandible supports the theory of "a slow process of replacement of Neanderthals by the invading modern human populations, as well as additional evidence of the upholding of the Neanderthals' cultural identity.”

Prior fossil finds indicate that modern humans were living in a southern Italy cave as early as 45,000 years ago. Modern humans and Neanderthals therefore lived in roughly the same regions for thousands of years, but the new human arrivals, from the Neanderthal perspective, might not have been welcome, and for good reason. The research team hints that the modern humans may have raped female Neanderthals, bringing to mind modern cases of "ethnic cleansing."

Ian Tattersall is one of the world’s leading experts on Neanderthals and the human fossil record. He is a paleoanthropologist and a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History.

Tattersall told Discovery News that the hypothesis, presented in the new paper, “is very intriguing and one that invites more research.”

Neanderthal culture and purebred Neanderthals all died out 35,000-30,000 years ago.

Faces of Our Ancestors

Back In The Begining

Back in the Beginning. To put a human face on our ancestors, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute used sophisticated methods to form 27 model heads based on tiny bone fragments, teeth and skulls collected from across the globe. The heads are on display for the first time together at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. This model is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, also nicknamed "Toumai," who lived 6.8 million years ago. Parts of its jaw bone and teeth were found nine years ago in the Djurab desert in Chad. It's one of the oldest hominid specimens ever found. WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY; SVEN TRAENKNER

Australopithecus Afarensis

Australopithecus afarensis. With each new discovery, paleoanthropologists have to rewrite the origins of man's ancestors, adding on new branches and tracking when species split. This model was fashioned from pieces of a skull and jaw found among the remains of 17 pre-humans (nine adults, three adolescents and five children) which were discovered in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 1975. The ape-man species, Australopithecus afarensis, is believed to have lived 3.2 million years ago. Several more bones from this species have been found in Ethiopia, including the famed "Lucy," a nearly complete A. afarensis skeleton found in Hadar. MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY; SVEN TRAENKNER

Australopithecus Africanus

Australopithecus africanus. Meet "Mrs. Ples," the popular nickname for the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus, unearthed in Sterkfontein, South Africa in 1947. It is believed she lived 2.5 million years ago (although the sex of the fossil is not entirely certain). Crystals found on her skull suggest that she died after falling into a chalk pit, which was later filled with sediment. A. africanus has long puzzled scientists because of its massive jaws and teeth, but they now believe the species' skull design was optimal for cracking nuts and seeds. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

Paranthropus Aethiopicus

Paranthropus aethiopicus. The skull of this male adult was found on the western shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya in 1985. The shape of the mouth indicates that he had a strong bite and could chew plants. He is believed to have lived in 2.5 million years ago and is classified as Paranthropus aethiopicus. Much is still unknown about this species because so few reamins of P. aethiopicus have been found. SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM; SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFA

Paranthropus Boisei

Paranthropus boisei. Researchers shaped this skull of "Zinj," found in 1959. The adult male lived 1.8 million years ago in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania. His scientific name is Paranthropus boisei, though he was originally called Zinjanthropus boisei -- hence the nickname. First discovered by anthropologist Mary Leakey, the well-preserved cranium has a small brain cavity. He would have eaten seeds, plants and roots which he probably dug with sticks or bones. SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFARI ZUM URMENSCHEN"

Homo Rudolfensis

Homo rudolfensis. This model of a sub-human species -- Homo rudolfensis -- was made from bone fragments found in Koobi Fora, Kenya, in 1972. The adult male is believed to have lived about 1.8 million years ago. He used stone tools and ate meat and plants. H. Rudolfensis' distinctive features include a flatter, broader face and broader postcanine teeth, with more complex crowns and roots. He is also recognized as having a larger cranium than his contemporaries. MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY; SVEN TRAENKNER

Homo Ergaster

Homo ergaster. The almost perfectly preserved skeleton of the "Turkana Boy" is one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology. Judging from his anatomy, scientists believe this Homo ergaster was a tall youth about 13 to 15 years old. According to research, the boy died beside a shallow river delta, where he was covered by alluvial sediments. Comparing the shape of the skull and teeth, H. ergaster had a similiar head structure to the Asian Homo erectus. SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFARI ZUM URMENSCHEN"

Homo Heidelbergensis

Homo heidelbergensis. This adult male, Homo heidelbergensis, was discovered in in Sima de los Huesos, Spain in 1993. Judging by the skull and cranium, scientists believe he probably died from a massive infection that caused a facial deformation. The model, shown here, does not include the deformity. This species is believed to be an ancestor of Neanderthals, as seen in the shape of his face. "Miquelon," the nickname of "Atapuerca 5", lived about 500,000 to 350,000 years ago and fossils of this species have been found in Italy, France and Greece. SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFARI ZUM URMENSCHEN"

Homo Neanderthalensis

Homo neanderthalensis. The "Old Man of La Chapelle" was recreated from the skull and jaw of a Homo neanderthalensis male found near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in France in 1908. He lived 56,000 years ago. His relatively old age, thought to be between 40 to 50 years old, indicates he was well looked after by a clan. The old man's skeleton indicates he suffered from a number of afflictions, including arthritis, and had numerous broken bones. Scientists at first did not realize the age and afflicted state of this specimen when he was first discovered. This led them to incorrectly theorize that male Neanderthals were hunched over when they walked. SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFARI ZUM URMENSCHEN" 

Homo Floresiensis

Homo Floresiensis. The skull and jaw of this female "hobbit" was found in Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia, in 2003. She was about 1 meter tall (about 3'3") and lived about 18,000 years ago. The discovery of her species, Homo floresiensis, brought into question the belief that Homo sapiens was the only form of mankind for the past 30,000 years. Scientists are still debating whether Homo floresiensis was its own species, or merely a group of diseased modern humans. Evidence is mounting that these small beings were, in fact, a distinct human species. SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFARI ZUM URMENSCHEN"

Homo sapiens

Homo sapiens. Bones can only tell us so much. Experts often assume or make educated guesses to fill in the gaps in mankind's family tree, and to develop a sense what our ancestors may have looked like. Judging from skull and mandible fragments found in a cave in Israel in 1969, this young female Homo sapien lived between 100,000 and 90,000 years ago. Her bones indicate she was about 20 years old. Her shattered skull was found among the remains of 20 others in a shallow grave. SVEN TRAENKNER (C), "SAFARI ZUM URMENSCHEN" 

Who Didn't Have Sex With Neanderthals?

Did Volcanoes Wipe Out Neanderthals?

The origins of the first immortal human cells

ORIGINAL: ScienceDump

by Jur on

11/14/2012

In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research—though their donor remained a mystery for decades.

The first immortal human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though the donor has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings.

HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Photo of the donor: Henrietta Lacks and her husband

Estudio muestra que los perros sienten el dolor de las personas y buscan aliviarlo

ORIGINAL: PijamaSurf

Autor: pijamasurf

Publicación: 10/06/2012 2:28 pm

El altruismo emocional de los perros: estudio sugiere que los perros son capaces de detectar el sufrimiento de las personas y reaccionan ante este brindando comfort.

La intuición que tienen las personas que conviven con perros de que estos animales son sensibles a sus sentimientos parece confirmarse por un reciente estudio. Los perros reaccionan al dolor humano de una manera sumisa que se ajusta a proveer alivio –comio si el verdadero entrenamiento biológico de esta especie fuera la empatía.

Un experimento realizado por psicólogos de la Universidad de Goldmisths en Londres probó a 18 perros en distintas situaciones, con sus dueños y extraños, en las que los voluntarios aparentaron llorar, susurrar o tararear y hablar. Los perros reiteradamente reaccionaron a los simulacros de llanto, acercándose a estas personas y buscando iniciar contacto físico.

“El tarareo fue diseñado paar ser un comportamiento relativamente nuevo, que podría provocar la curiosidad de los perros. El hecho de que los perros diferenciaron entre el llanto y el tarareo indica que su respuesta no fue meramente motivada por la curiosidad”, dijo la Dra Deborah Custance.

Los perros respondieron al llanto de una persona no obstante que no fuera su dueño, lo que parece mostrar que su respuesta fue genuinamente empática y o el resultado de la búsqueda de una recompensa o de sus propias necesidades. El hecho de que los perros reaccionen a una emoción fingida no significa que no sepan percibir nuestras emociones, ya que nuestro mismo cerebro no hace distinción entre si una emoción es simulada o la experimentamos espontáneamente, de la misma forma que no distingue del todo si vemos algo o imaginamos eso mismo.

Hace algunas semanas reportamos sobre una interesante investigación que sugería que las ratas son capaces de sentir y actuar dirigidas por la empatía (y que ésta podría ser la emoción universal). Por otro lado el biólogo de la Universidad de Cambridge, Rupert Sheldrake, ha realizado numerosos experimentos que parecen mostrar que las mascotas tienen una capacidad telepática para saber cuándo sus dueños van a regresar a casa. No hay duda que los animales domésticos, y especialmente los perros, cumplen una admirable función servicial, como si estuvieran entre nosotros para expiar nuestras penas.

[Daily Mail]

The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck - by @JasonSilva

ORIGINAL: Vimeo

por Jason Silva PLUS

This video was created by @JasonSilva and shot and edited with my friends at Bravo Media, and is non-commercial and for educational and inspirational purposes only. Full credits and clip attributions can be found below. This video was inspired by three big ideas:

1) The ideas of psychologist Nicholas Humphrey who has written of "THE BIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGE OF BEING AWESTRUCK". Basically, our ability to awe was biologically selected for by evolution because it imbues our lives with sense of cosmic significance that has resulted in a species that works harder not just to survive but to flourish and thrive...

"Humphrey refers to consciousness as a magic show that you stage for yourself inside your head, which lights up the world and makes you feel special and transcendent... this magical theater provides a reason to live, a love of occupying the present moment, and a desire to sustain it into the future, that over time has proved stronger than anything else, and accounts for humanity’s swift and triumphant success--

Humphrey says “being enchanted by the magic of experience, rather than being just an aid to survival, provides an essential incentive to survive.”

"We relish just being here. We feel “the yen to confirm and renew, in small ways or large, our own occupancy of the present moment, to go deeper, to extend it, to revel in being there, and when we have the skill, to celebrate it in words..”

Our desire to understand brings exquisite pleasure... and feeds our exploratory voyage, our scientific inquiry, our technological development, and even our poetic self-regard..

More: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703858404576214771893335998.html

2) The Stanford study that found that AWE is clinically good for you, expanding perception of time, increasing compassion and empathy and promoting well being:

More: theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/study-awe-inspiring-experiences-change-our-perception-of-time/260138/

3) Ross Andersen's rapturous meditation on the ontological awakening of our psyches provided by the Hubble Space Telescope: "At first glancing the Deep FIELD “one might mistake it for gemstones scattered across black velvet, but a closer look reveals that each smudge of light, 2,600 in all, is a galaxy dense with billions of star-fired worlds, pinwheeling in deep time. … To that point, astronomy had imaged objects only four billion light years away, and poorly at that. Here a telescope reached 11 and a half billion light years into space and delivered an image legible to the layman: an unprecedented expansion of human vision."

More: lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=331

**Music by John Murphy - "Kaneda's Death Pt 2" from Sunshine Soundtrack

itunes.apple.com/us/album/sunshine-music-from-motion/id297702863

**Featuring Stock Footage from Shutterstock

Still images courtesy of THE IMAGINARY FOUNDATION - imaginaryfoundation.com/

And clips from Knate Myers' "ISS at Night" featuring NASA images: vimeo.com/45878034

Camera: Liam O' Sullivan

Edited by Jess Betz and Jason Silva 

Shot and edited at BRAVO MEDIA - bravomediainc.com/

Most Mutations Come from Dad: New Insights Into Age, Height and Sex Reshape Views of Human Evolution

ORIGINAL: Science Daily

Humans inherit more than three times as many mutations from their fathers as from their mothers, and mutation rates increase with the father's age but not the mother's, researchers have found in the largest study of human genetic mutations to date. (Credit: © yanlev / Fotolia)

ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2012) — Humans inherit more than three times as many mutations from their fathers as from their mothers, and mutation rates increase with the father's age but not the mother's, researchers have found in the largest study of human genetic mutations to date.

The study, based on the DNA of around 85,000 Icelanders, also calculates the rate of human mutation at high resolution, providing estimates of when human ancestors diverged from nonhuman primates. It is one of two papers published this week by the journal Nature Genetics as well as one published at Nature that shed dramatic new light on human evolution.

"Most mutations come from dad," said David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a co-leader of the study. In addition to finding 3.3 paternal germ line mutations for each maternal mutation, the study also found that the mutation rate in fathers doubles from age 20 to 58 but that there is no association with age in mothers -- a finding that may shed light on conditions, such as autism, that correlate with the father's age.

The study's first author is James Sun, a graduate student in Reich's lab who worked with researchers from deCODE Genetics, a biopharma company based in Reykjavik, Iceland, to analyze about 2,500 short sequences of DNA taken from 85,289 Icelanders in 24,832 father-mother-child trios. The sequences, called microsatellites, vary in the number of times that they repeat, and are known to mutate at a higher rate than average places in the genome.

Reich's team identified 2,058 mutational changes, yielding a rate of mutation that suggests human and chimpanzee ancestral populations diverged between 3.7 million and 6.6 million years ago.

A second team, also based at deCODE Genetics (but not involving HMS researchers), published a paper this week in Nature on a large-scale direct estimate of the rate of single nucleotide substitutions in human genomes (a different type of mutation process), and came to largely consistent findings.

The finding complicates theories drawn from the fossil evidence. The upper bound, 6.6 million years, is less than the published date of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a fossil that has been interpreted to be a human ancestor since the separation of chimpanzees, but is dated to around 7 million years old. The new study suggests that this fossil may be incorrectly interpreted.

Great Heights

A second study led by HMS researchers, also published in Nature Genetics this week, adds to the picture of human evolution, describing a newly observable form of recent genetic adaptation.

The team led by Joel Hirschhorn, Concordia Professor of Pediatrics and professor of genetics at Boston Children's Hospital and HMS, first asked why closely-related populations can have noticeably different average heights. David Reich also contributed to this study.

They examined genome-wide association data and found that average differences in height across Europe are partly due to genetic factors. They then showed that these genetic differences are the result of an evolutionary process that acts on variation in many genes at once. This type of evolution had been proposed to exist but had not previously been detected in humans.

Although recent human evolution is difficult to observe directly, some of its impact can be inferred by studying the human genome. In recent years, genetic studies have uncovered many examples where recent evolution has left a distinctive signature on the human genome. The clearest "footprints" of evolution have been seen in regions of DNA surrounding mutations that occurred fairly recently (typically in the last several thousand years) and confer an advantageous trait, such as resistance to malaria. Hirschhorn's team observed, for the first time in humans, a different signature of recent evolution: widespread small but consistent changes at many different places in the genome, all affecting the same trait, adult height.

"This paper offers the first proof and clear example of a new kind of human evolution for a specific trait," said Hirschhorn, who is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute. "We provide a demonstration of how humans have been able to adapt rapidly without needing to wait for new mutations to happen, by drawing instead on the existing genetic diversity within the human population."

Average heights can differ between populations, even populations that are genetically very similar, which suggests that human height might have been evolving differently across these populations. Hirschhorn's team studied variants in the genome that are known to have small but consistent effects on height: people inheriting the "tall" version of these variants are known to be slightly taller on average than people inheriting the "short" versions of the same variants.

The researchers discovered that, in northern Europe, the "tall" versions of these variants are consistently a little more common than they are in southern Europe. The combined effects of the "tall" versions being more common can partly explain why northern Europeans are on average taller than southern Europeans. The researchers then showed that these slight differences have arisen as a result of evolution acting at many variants, and acting differently in northern than in southern Europe.

"This paper explains -- at least in part -- why some European populations, such as people from Sweden, are taller on average than others, such as people from Italy," Hirschhorn said.

The researchers were only able to detect this signature of evolution by using the results of recent genome-wide association studies by the GIANT consortium, which identified hundreds of different genetic variants that influence height.

500-MILLION-YEAR-OLD 'MISTAKE' LED TO HUMANS

ORIGINAL: http://news.discovery.com/animals/dna-mistake-evolution-120724.html

By Jennifer Viegas

Tue Jul 24, 2012

A spineless creature experienced two doublings in DNA, triggering the evolution of humans and other animals.

THE GIST

• A genetic process that went wrong 500 million years ago led to the evolution of humans and other vertebrates.
• The event, which resulted in doublings of genes, also led to proteins responsible for many of today's diseases.
• Studying these proteins could help researchers learn more about human evolution and the inner workings of diseases.

An amphioxus (also called a lancelet), which is a very distant cousin to humans and other vertebrates. It is the creature most similar to the original spineless organism that existed before a major genomic event occurred. Carol MacKintosh

Over 500 million years ago a spineless creature on the ocean floor experienced two successive doublings in the amount of its DNA, a "mistake" that eventually triggered the evolution of humans and many other animals, says a new study.

The good news is that these ancient DNA doublings boosted cellular communication systems, so that our body cells are now better at integrating information than even the smartest smartphones. The bad part is that communication breakdowns, traced back to the very same genome duplications of the Cambrian Period, can cause diabetes, cancer and neurological disorders.

"Organisms that reproduce sexually usually have two copies of their entire genome, one inherited from each of the two parents," co-author Carol MacKintosh explained to Discovery News. "What happened over 500 million years ago is that this process 'went wrong' in an invertebrate animal, which somehow inherited twice the usual number of genes. In a later generation, the fault recurred, doubling the number of copies of each gene once again."

PHOTOS: Evolution Before Your Eyes

MacKintosh, a professor in the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, said that such duplications also happened in plant evolution. As for the progeny of the newly formed animal, they remarkably survived and thrived.

"The duplications were not stable, however, and most of the resulting gene duplicates were lost quickly -- long before humans evolved," she continued. But some did survive, as MacKintosh and her team discovered.

Her research group studies a network of several hundred proteins that work inside human cells to coordinate their responses to growth factors and to insulin, a hormone. Key proteins involved in this process are called 14-3-3.

For this latest study, the scientists mapped, classified and conducted a biochemical analysis of the proteins. This found that they date back to the genome duplications, which occurred during the Cambrian.

The first animal to carry them remains unknown, but gene sequencing shows that a modern day invertebrate known as amphioxus "is most similar to the original spineless creature before the two rounds of whole genome duplication," MacKintosh said. "Amphioxus can therefore be regarded as a ‘very distant cousin’ to all the vertebrate (backboned) species."

WIDE ANGLE: Ready, Set, Evolve!

The inherited proteins appear to have evolved to make a "team" that can tune into more growth factor instructions than would be possible with a single protein.

"These systems inside human cells therefore behave like the signal multiplexing systems that enable our smartphones to pick up multiple messages," MacKintosh shared.

The teamwork may not always be a good thing, though. The researchers propose that if a critical function were performed by a single protein, as in amphioxus, then its loss or mutation would likely be lethal, resulting in no disease.

If multiple proteins are working as a team, however, and one or more becomes lost or mutated, the individual may survive, but could still wind up with a debilitating disorder. Such breakdowns could help to explain how diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, are so entrenched in humans.

HOWSTUFFWORKS: How Evolution Works

"In type 2 diabetes, muscle cells lose their ability to absorb sugars in response to insulin," MacKintosh said. "In contrast, greedy cancer cells don't await instructions, but scavenge nutrients and grow out of control."

Chris Marshall, a professor of cell biology at the Institute of Cancer Research at Royal Cancer Hospital, told Discovery News that he thinks the research "gives new insights into the evolution of signaling mechanisms that control cell behavior."

MacKintosh and her team are now focusing on the protein families whose upset causes melanoma and neurological disorders. Because of the likely connection to ancient genetic events, the research could shed light on human and other animal evolution while also helping to unravel diseases.

Tags: Animal Evolution, Animals, DNA, Evolution, Genes