Genetic Link to Schizophrenia

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, an estimated 51 million people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia. Although 80 percent of schizophrenia cases appear to be inherited, the specific genetic components underlying individuals’ susceptibility and pathology are largely unknown.

Gene mutations governing a key brain enzyme make people susceptible to schizophrenia and may be targeted in future treatments for the psychiatric illness, according to MIT and Japanese researchers.

The work, by scientists from MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute, will be reported in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Feb. 20.

More at Science Daily

Genetic Link to Schizophrenia

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, an estimated 51 million people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia. Although 80 percent of schizophrenia cases appear to be inherited, the specific genetic components underlying individuals’ susceptibility and pathology are largely unknown. Gene mutations governing a key brain enzyme make people susceptible to schizophrenia and may be targeted in future treatments for the psychiatric illness, according to MIT and Japanese researchers. More at the Villa

The mighty rowers

An Athenian trireme

In an article (‘When men were gods’ premium content) in New Scientist, British physiologist Henry Rossiter claims ancient Greeks were physically fitter than today’s endurance atheletes. A review of the article can be read here at Medical News Today. Excerpts:

Dr Rossiter measured the metabolic rates of modern athletes rowing a reconstruction of an Athenian trireme, a 37m long warship powered by 170 rowers seated in three tiers. Using portable metabolic analysers, he measured the energy consumption of a sample of the athletes powering the ship over a range of different speeds to estimate the efficiency of the human engine of the warship…By comparing these findings to classical texts that record details of their endurance, he realised that the rowers of ancient Athens — around 500BC — would had to have been highly elite athletes, even by modern day standards.

Says Dr Rossiter: “Ancient Athens had up to 200 triremes at any one time, and with 170 rowers in each ship, the rowers were clearly not a small elite. Yet this large group, it seems, would match up well with the best of modern athletes. Either ancient Athenians had a more efficient way of rowing the trireme or they would have to be an extremely fit group. Our data raise the interesting notion that these ancient athletes were genetically better adapted to endurance exercise than we are today.”

Dienekes disagrees:

I think that a more likely explanation may be that our modern reconstructions of a trireme as well as the way the ship is used are not really as good as they can be. It should be remembered that the trireme reconstruction is based primarily on literary and artistic evidence and a lot of guesswork. Still, this is an interesting piece of work. Also, the ancient literary accounts giving a measure of distance/time are not really exact, and it should also be remembered that the nautical feats that were recorded were exceptional when triremes had to cover distances in a hurry, and do not represent the average performance of the ancient sailors.

4300 year old wooden statues, mud tomb found in Egypt

Archaeologists have discovered a mud tomb and five wooden statues in the Saqqara complex south of Cairo. The Egyptian-Australian team said the tomb belonged to Ka-Hay, a keeper of divine records, and his wife Spri-Ankh. One of the wooden figures is a double statue of the seated couple.

The tomb was found in the necropolis of King Teti, near the step pyramid of Djoser. Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Awass said the tomb dates back to the Fifth or early Sixth dynasty. The tomb also contained a wooden false door and two offering tables. Egyptians believed that the soul of the dead could leave through the false doors.

Read the Reuters story

The step pyramid of Djoser, near which the tomb was found