JOHN HAWKSResearchers described Homo naledi, a new species of ancient human that may have buried its dead, in two papers published in eLife this week (September 10). While the scientists have yet to date the fossilized bones of H. naledi, unearthed from a cave in South Africa, the team is convinced that its find “will be probably one of the best known hominin species discovered,” as study coauthor Lee Berger of University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg told The Scientist.
Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, who was not involved in the work, would like to see more data. “There’s nothing we can use to make our own judgments about the validity of what they are saying,” she said. And William Jungers threw water on the authors’ suggestion that H. naledi buried its dead in the cave where the fossils were found. “Dumping conspecifics down a hole may just be better than letting them decay around you,” said Jungers, who also was not involved in the work.
FLICKR; NIAIDHIV can be passed from one CD4+ T cell to the next, scientists from Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and the University of California, San Francisco, and their colleagues published in Cell Reports last month (August 27). The findings could open up new avenues for research on how the virus depletes the immune system.
The results “could explain the progression of HIV to AIDS,” said Deborah ...
