Study says near extinction threatened people 70,00 years ago

WASHINGTON – Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

“This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history,” Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. “Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.”

Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through mothers — have traced modern humans to a single “mitochondrial Eve,” who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: “Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.”

Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, IBM, the Waitt Family Foundation, the Seaver Family Foundation, Family Tree DNA and Arizona Research Labs.

Black holes reveal more secrets

Scientists say they have unlocked some of the secrets behind black holes, the gravitational fields known for sucking up light and stars from the Universe.

In a report in the journal Nature, US researchers say they have worked out how black holes emit jet streams of particles at close to light speed.

The University of Boston team say the streams originate in the magnetic field near the edge of the black hole.

They say it is within this region that the jets are accelerated and focused.

Despite the fact that it is probable that a black hole lurks at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers still know very little about these celestial monsters which vacuum up almost everything in their path, even light.

Professor Alan Marscher of the University of Boston and his colleagues claim they have delved deeper than ever into their heart.

Using almost every type of telescope known to humankind, Prof Marscher believes he has worked out where and how the jets – or blazars – are formed.

Using an array of 10 powerful radio telescopes, aimed at the galaxy BL Lacertae, the researchers studied a black hole just as it was sending forth a blazar jet.

The astronomers had suspected that the supermassive black hole was spewing out plasma jets in a winding corkscrew, and they say that their observations have now confirmed just that.

“We have gotten the clearest look yet at the innermost portion of the jet, where the particles actually are accelerated,” Prof Marscher said in a statement.

University of Michigan astronomy professor Hugh Aller, who worked on the project, told Reuters news agency that the process of accelerating the material to nearly the speed of light was similar to what happened in a jet engine.

“We think it is focused by a nozzle of sorts and it comes out at us,” he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

However, the BBC’s science correspondent Neil Bowdler says despite this breakthrough, scientists are no closer to finding what lies within the black hole – beyond what is called the event horizon

In fact, if the theoretical physicists are right, our correspondent says, then we will never be able to see inside these strange phenomena.

Oil painting ‘invented in Asia, not Europe’

The idea that oil painting was invented in Europe is overturned today by a remarkable discovery made as a result of one of the worst examples of cultural vandalism in recent years.

In 2001 the Taliban destroyed two ancient colossal Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan, around 140 miles northwest of Kabul, which were hewn out of sandstone cliffs in the sixth century and, measuring up to 55 metres, were the biggest of their kind.

Although caves decorated with precious murals from 5th to 9th century A.D. also suffered from Taliban attacks on this World Heritage Site, they have since become the focus of a major discovery, revealing Buddhist oil paintings that predate those in Renaissance Europe by hundreds of years.

Scientists have proved, thanks to experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, that the paints used were based of oil, hundreds of years before the technique was “invented” in Europe, when artists found they could use pigments bound with a medium of drying oil, such as linseed oil.

In many European history and art books, oil painting is said to have started in the 15th century in Europe. But the team that used the ESRF, an intense source of X rays, found the Bamiyan paintings date back to the mid-7th century AD

The murals show scenes with Buddhas in vermilion robes sitting cross-legged amid palm leaves and mythical creatures. Other motifs show crouching monkeys, men facing one another or palm leaves delicately intertwined.

A dozen out of the 50 caves were painted with oil painting technique, using perhaps walnut and poppy seed oils, conclude Ms Yoko Taniguchi from the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo, working with the Centre of Research and Restoration of the French Museums-CNRS, France, the Getty Conservation Institute.

“This is the earliest clear example of oil paintings in the world, although drying oils were already used by ancient Romans and Egyptians, but only as medicines and cosmetics”, explains Ms Taniguchi, leader of the team.

“My European colleagues were shocked because they always believed oil paintings were invented in Europe. They couldn’t believe such techniques could exist in some Buddhist cave deep in the countryside.”

A combination of techniques to study the paintings was crucial to conclude that oils were used, says Dr Marine Cotte, one of the team. “We needed different techniques to get the full picture”.

The results showed a high diversity of pigments as well as binders and the scientists identified original ingredients and alteration compounds. Apart from oil-based paint layers, some of the layers were made of natural resins, proteins, gums, and, in some cases, a resinous, varnish-like layer.

Protein-based material can indicate the use of hide glue or egg. Within the various pigments, the scientists found a high use of lead whites. These lead carbonates were often used, since antiquity up to modern times, not only in paintings but also in cosmetics as face whiteners.

The paintings are probably the work of artists who travelled on the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China, across Central Asia’s desert to the West. Other early civilisations including those in current-day Iran, China, Turkey, Pakistan and India may have used similar techniques as well but their ruins have not been subject to the same battery of studies.

The results were presented in a scientific conference in Japan last January, but are only published today in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

Adopted children: sometimes you can’t mend them

 

 

Modern parenting lore has it that if you are kind and loving to children, if you listen and explain and give them time, all will be well. We are all psychologically attuned these days and communication is the key.

But what if you pour all this love into a child and meet only resistance? This is the experience of a significant number of parents who adopt traumatised children, though only recently have they begun to publicly express their hurt, bewilderment and sense of failure. It is estimated that a third of adoptions don’t succeed, and as a parent who has experienced this crippling sense of loss, Melanie Allen hopes that by telling her story in a book, The Trouble with Alex, she can alert professional carers to the need to give more support to damaged children who are adopted. Their needs are not always understood, she believes, and if you have adopted such a child and then realise that no amount of care and love can heal them, you need expert support too.

Melanie and her husband Rob are professional people who live in a quiet English suburban street. They decided to adopt when they were unable to conceive a second baby and, when asked if they would consider a special-needs child, they happily ticked all the boxes. Their first meeting with Alex, then 5, was a delight. She was adorable, angelic and affectionate, and immediately called them Mummy and Daddy.

“She was perfect,” Melanie recalls. “Though on the second day we told her that she couldn’t do something and I remember the unsettling look she gave us. She didn’t shout and scream. She took hold of my hand and wouldn’t let it go and I thought, ‘God, that’s strong’. It didn’t quite feel normal.”

To protect Alex’s identity, Melanie is using pseudonyms and it is for this reason that she speaks slowly and with care. As they soon discovered, Alex had phenomenal charm. With their friends and family she was utterly engaging, yet at home she was remote, mechanical and disruptive without ever displaying anger. No matter how loving Melanie and Rob were towards her, slowly they recognised that they were getting nothing back. Day after day she stared, tapped, shuffled, and she shadowed Melanie from the moment she woke to the moment she went to sleep. She couldn’t dress herself or distinguish colours. Initially, on professional advice, the family put her problems down to learning difficulties and it took Melanie about a year to rumble that Alex was much brighter than she admitted. Watching her set the table one day she realised that she was deliberately misplacing cutlery. Something was wrong, but because Alex never spoke of what she was thinking, it was impossible to know what it was.

“If she had wiped poo over the walls, we’d know what we were dealing with,” she told a friend. “With Alex we haven’t a clue.”

It was some years before Melanie found a reference to attachment disorder, and realised that this explained Alex’s behaviour. If a child’s early life is dominated by fear, she becomes unable to trust another person, and if she can’t attach she can’t love, or be loved. Instead her behaviour revolves around a regime of control: by controlling her environment and the people around her she feels safe; by seeking attention in social situations she is controlling them too. It is a survival mechanism and the more Melanie learnt about Alex’s early life, the more this made sense.

Alex’s mother, who had grown up in care, was an alcoholic and drug addict. When Alex was 18 months old her mother was found unconscious in a flat that stank of decaying food, soiled nappies, damp and rot-infested towels. Alex was underweight, malnourished and lying in her own faeces. Yet after some time in hospital and with a foster carer, she was returned to her mother, who then had a new boyfriend. Unknown to social services he was schizophrenic and regularly responded to the voices that he heard by beating Alex. In her first three years she knew only neglect and abuse.

“This is why she sought negative attention,” says Melanie. “Because she was angry she wanted to make us angry. She was on her guard all the time. The staring was making sure she was in control all the time, safe. And the child who can bounce from one adult to another, flinging herself into a new set of arms, displays a classic sign of a child who can’t attach. Yet the more time we spent with her the more she was worth fighting for.”

The Allens fought, seeking help from social services and psychologists. They believe Alex saw the country’s leading child experts yet invariably their daughter was calm and composed when she met professionals, and invariably the Allens were told either that there was no problem, or that the difficulties lay with them. Even when Alex admitted to Melanie that her behaviour was controlled by a voice inside her head, professionals refused to accept that Alex was capable of being manipulative.

“She couldn’t shout and scream like other children, she couldn’t get her anger out because she had a voice in her head that said everything was secret, no one was allowed to know,” says Melanie. “I’m sure she’d learnt at a young age that shouting was futile and the punishment meted out was horrendous. Her secrecy was very powerful and when the professionals she met at 3 decided that her inability to communicate was down to learning difficulties she had found a way of getting attention without having to communicate. It was a way of manipulating that was much more powerful than screaming and shouting. It’s not a malicious way, she’s not evil and when she has behaved badly, I don’t think she has any control. She knows what is right and what is wrong but she doesn’t feel it, she has no sense of conscience, and I think that’s because the first thing she learnt in her life was anger.”

It was five years before the Allens told social services that they could no longer cope. By this time their marriage had fallen apart and Melanie, exhausted, desperate with guilt that she had let Alex down, had been prescribed antidepressants.

Alex was placed with a foster carer who found herself as frustrated as the Allens had been by the child’s disturbing behaviour. Yet only when she caused emergencies did social services intervene. She now lives in a unit for disturbed children where, at 15, her charisma is intact, but she remains remote. Melanie continues to believe that Alex has a serious mental health disorder, but she has yet to be treated for it.

“The system can’t cope, there’s not enough money to help children unless they’re playing up and she always presents beautifully to professionals. This unit isn’t going to press her buttons because it doesn’t expect her to fit into a family. So she’s left alone and she feels safe. She’s a loner there, the only child who doesn’t want a mobile phone. If she was ever to admit to anyone that she was bright her story would fall apart.”

Alex will stay in the unit until she is 18; after that Melanie has no expectations. “I see her going from relationship to relationship, never happy. She’s very adept at being what people want her to be but I don’t think she will ever want to rely on people. My best wish for her is that she can charm her way through life detached and in control. The reality is that that won’t happen.

“Until you’ve lived with a child who is terrified of attaching you can’t grasp that sometimes you can’t mend them. The medical profession needs more awareness of the complexity of attachment disorder.”

N.J. Officer Allegedly Performed Sex Acts On Cows

MOORESTOWN (CBS 3) ― More charges have been filed against a Burlington County police officer who was recently charged with sexually assaulting three girls.

Authorities announced Moorestown Officer Robert Melia Jr., 38, has been charged with four counts of animal cruelty after allegedly engaging in sex acts with cows between June and December of 2006.

Melia and his former girlfriend, Heather Lewis were previously charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of criminal sexual contact with three girls in his Pemberton home from 2003 until 2006.

Melia is being held on $510,000 bail.

Anne Frank greetings card found

The card was sent from Aachen, where Anne had visited her grandmother

A greetings card signed by the Jewish diarist Anne Frank has been found in an antiques shop near Amsterdam.

The card was sent in 1937, when Frank was eight, and was addressed to one of her best friends, Sanne Ledermann.

The Anne Frank museum has authenticated the card, which shows a clover-covered bell above a snowy field, and wishes “good luck for the New Year”.

Frank, who wrote her diary while in hiding from the Nazis, died in Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

Paul van den Heuvel, a school teacher, was looking through items in his father’s antique shop in Naarden, near Amsterdam, when he came across the card.

“I just found it in a box, which probably came from an Amsterdam flea market,” he told Dutch television.

The card had been sent from Aachen, in Germany, where Frank was visiting her grandmother.

A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank museum, Maatje Mostard, said she had seen another similar card, posted on the same day from the same town, and she was sure it was authentic.

“I don’t know what he will do with it,” she said. “We hope we can get it for our collection.”

Frank, her family and four other Jewish friends hid from the Nazis in a small Amsterdam apartment, until their arrest in 1944.

They were sent to Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps. Anne died in Belsen of typhus shortly before the end of the war.