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Neanderthal dental tartar reveals evidence of medicine
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IN BRIEF Neanderthals had herbal know-how
After the Mississippi flood, let there be land… OUT of destruction comes creation. The devastating floods along the Mississippi river last year led to the formation of new land in the river’s delta. Generating more land there in the future, though controversial, could help shield the city of New Orleans from rising sea levels. As the flood moved downstream during April and May 2011, it quickly became apparent that it was threatening to inundate New Orleans. To prevent that, the US Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway to the west of the city, diverting much of the floodwater. Now we know that the diverted river dumped about
30 per cent of the sediment it was carrying – 5 million cubic metres of sand – and it became new land, says Jeffrey Nittrouer at the University of Illinois in Urbana– Champaign (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ ngeo1525). Researchers have suggested that altering a river’s course might create new land, but this has never been observed. “The diversion provided us with a brilliant natural experiment,” says Nittrouer. His team’s models suggest that such diversions could create hundreds of kilometres of land in the decades ahead, which would create a buffer against sea-level rise. Such projects are controversial since diverting the river to protect New Orleans would destroy property and swamp local fisheries with sediment.
Making arteries from sucked-out fat A BIT of bulge could one day save your life. Stem cells extracted from fat tissue after liposuction may one day be used to create blood vessels to replace faulty arteries in the heart. Fat tissue is a plentiful source of stem cells. Matthias Nollert at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and his colleagues coaxed liposuction-derived stem cells into forming smooth muscle 14 | NewScientist | 28 July 2012
cells found in arteries and veins. They then grew these cells along a thin collagen membrane, which was rolled into a tube the size of a small blood vessel. As the smooth muscle cells grew, the team subjected them to a battery of mechanical stresses that mimic the expansion and collapse that such a vessel would ultimately experience in the heart. The team hope that this will increase the
vessel’s robustness in the body. Unlike artificial stents, which restore blood flow through narrow or once-blocked arteries, vessels made from your own stem cells wouldn’t run the risk of being rejected by the immune system. Side effects that can occur when damaged vessels are replaced with those taken from other parts of the body would also be avoided. The work will be presented at the American Heart Association’s meeting in New Orleans this week.
CALL it the Neanderthal health service. Chemicals trapped in the tartar on Neanderthal teeth show they ate bitter-tasting plants with medicinal properties. The find is the earliest direct evidence of selfmedication in prehistoric times, although a few modern nonhuman primates are also known to self-medicate. Karen Hardy at ICREA, the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues used a scalpel to scrape tartar off the teeth of five Neanderthals from El Sidrón in northern Spain. One ate yarrow, an astringent, and camomile, an anti-inflammatory. (Naturwissenschaften, DOI: 10.1007/s00114-012-0942-0). “It’s very surprising that the plants we were able to securely identify were those with a bitter taste and no nutritional qualities – but known medicinal properties,” says Hardy.
What’s the most popular word? POOR old Pope. He has lost his standing in the written word. So says Matjaž Perc at the University of Maribor in Slovenia, who has identified the most common words used in 5.2 million books published over five centuries. The most popular words stayed the same. “The” was top in both 1520 and 2008. Common groups of words have changed, though. The most common three-word phrase in 2008 was “one of the”; in 1520, it was “of the Pope” (Royal Society Interface, DOI: 10.1098/ rsif.2012.0491). While changes in popularity of words were dramatic over the 16th and 17th centuries, rankings are more constant in recent centuries. “It seems English writing has reached a mature state,” says Perc.
IN BRIEF Neanderthals had herbal know-how
After the Mississippi flood, let there be land… OUT of destruction comes creation. The devastating floods along the Mississippi river last year led to the formation of new land in the river’s delta. Generating more land there in the future, though controversial, could help shield the city of New Orleans from rising sea levels. As the flood moved downstream during April and May 2011, it quickly became apparent that it was threatening to inundate New Orleans. To prevent that, the US Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway to the west of the city, diverting much of the floodwater. Now we know that the diverted river dumped about
30 per cent of the sediment it was carrying – 5 million cubic metres of sand – and it became new land, says Jeffrey Nittrouer at the University of Illinois in Urbana– Champaign (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ ngeo1525). Researchers have suggested that altering a river’s course might create new land, but this has never been observed. “The diversion provided us with a brilliant natural experiment,” says Nittrouer. His team’s models suggest that such diversions could create hundreds of kilometres of land in the decades ahead, which would create a buffer against sea-level rise. Such projects are controversial since diverting the river to protect New Orleans would destroy property and swamp local fisheries with sediment.
Making arteries from sucked-out fat A BIT of bulge could one day save your life. Stem cells extracted from fat tissue after liposuction may one day be used to create blood vessels to replace faulty arteries in the heart. Fat tissue is a plentiful source of stem cells. Matthias Nollert at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and his colleagues coaxed liposuction-derived stem cells into forming smooth muscle 14 | NewScientist | 28 July 2012
cells found in arteries and veins. They then grew these cells along a thin collagen membrane, which was rolled into a tube the size of a small blood vessel. As the smooth muscle cells grew, the team subjected them to a battery of mechanical stresses that mimic the expansion and collapse that such a vessel would ultimately experience in the heart. The team hope that this will increase the
vessel’s robustness in the body. Unlike artificial stents, which restore blood flow through narrow or once-blocked arteries, vessels made from your own stem cells wouldn’t run the risk of being rejected by the immune system. Side effects that can occur when damaged vessels are replaced with those taken from other parts of the body would also be avoided. The work will be presented at the American Heart Association’s meeting in New Orleans this week.
CALL it the Neanderthal health service. Chemicals trapped in the tartar on Neanderthal teeth show they ate bitter-tasting plants with medicinal properties. The find is the earliest direct evidence of selfmedication in prehistoric times, although a few modern nonhuman primates are also known to self-medicate. Karen Hardy at ICREA, the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues used a scalpel to scrape tartar off the teeth of five Neanderthals from El Sidrón in northern Spain. One ate yarrow, an astringent, and camomile, an anti-inflammatory. (Naturwissenschaften, DOI: 10.1007/s00114-012-0942-0). “It’s very surprising that the plants we were able to securely identify were those with a bitter taste and no nutritional qualities – but known medicinal properties,” says Hardy.
What’s the most popular word? POOR old Pope. He has lost his standing in the written word. So says Matjaž Perc at the University of Maribor in Slovenia, who has identified the most common words used in 5.2 million books published over five centuries. The most popular words stayed the same. “The” was top in both 1520 and 2008. Common groups of words have changed, though. The most common three-word phrase in 2008 was “one of the”; in 1520, it was “of the Pope” (Royal Society Interface, DOI: 10.1098/ rsif.2012.0491). While changes in popularity of words were dramatic over the 16th and 17th centuries, rankings are more constant in recent centuries. “It seems English writing has reached a mature state,” says Perc.