Health & Science

A leper from 2000 B.C.

From ancient India to biblical Israel to medieval Europe, leprosy was one of humanity’s most feared scourges. A 4,000-year-old skeleton discovered in India represents the earliest known case of leprosy, and may provide clues to the disease’s origins, says The New York Times. Sanskrit hymns from 1550 B.C. and the Bible both describe people suffering from the disfiguring disease, leading scientists to wonder where leprosy began and how it traveled through the ancient world. The skeleton found in what is now Rajasthan shows evidence of leprosy, supporting the theory that the bacterial disease was present in Asia long before it made its way to Europe. As dreaded as it is, leprosy isn’t very easy to catch; a leper would have to be in very close contact with an uninfected person for some time to transfer the bacterium. Many experts argue that leprosy couldn’t have been a truly widespread problem until about 3000 B.C., when densely packed cities sprang up and long-distance trading became common. Some researchers think that Alexander the Great and his troops carried leprosy back to Europe; another theory is that the disease arrived on slave ships from India. Today, 90 percent of the global population has immunity to leprosy, which can be treated with antibiotics. Nonetheless, there were more than 200,000 new cases of the disease last year, mostly in Africa and Asia.

The bearded lady’s DNA

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She was called “the bearded lady.” Julia Pastrana, a Mexican-Indian woman born in the mid-19th century, was bought by a traveling circus and attracted large crowds all over Europe that were curious to see her hairy, ape-like face and arms. Pastrana later had a stillborn baby, who was similarly hirsute, and was mummified for display. After four years of searching through medical records for people like Julia, Chinese scientists have discovered the genetic reason for the extremely rare condition sometimes called “werewolf syndrome,” or congenital generalized hypertrichosis terminalis. The syndrome has always been hard to study because of its rareness, but the scientists found three Chinese families in which several members are afflicted. Geneticist Xue Zhang found that all those with the syndrome were missing pieces of four genes on one of their chromosomes. This genetic mutation, Zhang tells Sciencedaily.com, apparently enables a gene controlling hair expression to go wild, making the person look ape-like.

Neanderthals—the other white meat

Neanderthals, a sturdy hominid species closely related to Homo sapiens, lived in Europe for about 270,000 years until humans arrived on the continent, about 30,000 years ago, at which point they quickly disappeared. The latest theory for their puzzling extinction, says the London Guardian, is that humans exterminated, and maybe even ate, their Neanderthal cousins. French anthropologist Fernando Rozzi found a Neanderthal child’s jawbone in southwest France that appears to be scraped clean of its flesh by stone tools, suggesting that humans butchered the child as they would a deer. Rozzi points to particular marks that suggest the Neanderthal’s tongue was removed and eaten. He also found necklaces made of Neanderthal teeth and bones that he believes served as hunters’ trophies. “For years, people have tried to hide away from the evidence of cannibalism,” Rozzi says, “but I think we have to accept it took place.” The French study, says Chris Stringer of the London Natural History Museum, “does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction,” but doesn’t prove it was by dining on them.

Painting the world white

Here’s a novel idea for putting the brakes on global warming: Ask everyone in the world to paint their roofs white. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu raised the idea last week at a conference in London, noting that the proposal—first put forth by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California—would reflect enormous amounts of sunlight off the Earth’s surface, causing a cooling effect. Dark-colored surfaces absorb heat; white and other light colors reflect it. This “completely benign” geo-engineering scheme, Chu says, would be the global-warming equivalent of turning off every car on Earth for a decade. The idea’s supporters say it would also cut energy consumption by cooling buildings and reducing the need for air conditioners.

Identifying the gene for baldness

A gene linked to early hair loss in mice has been identified by Japanese scientists, raising the possibility of an eventual cure for baldness. Researchers in Tokyo believe that the hair-loss gene they discovered, which causes the mice to become completely hairless shortly after birth, is similar to the human gene. The hair loss was caused not by some problem with the hair itself but in the skin to which the hair is attached. Bald mice were missing a layered cuticle that held hair in place, preventing it from falling out. The same effect may be key to “curing” baldness in men and women. “It is entirely possible that the gene is also a cause of thinning hair among humans,” study author Yumiko Saga tells the London Daily Telegraph. In theory, people with the hair-loss gene could be identified and treated before baldness begins.