2. 1386 21 JUNE 2013 VOL 340 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
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ONE, comes from a rare genetic anomaly
in which both incisors are missing from the
upper jaw. The incidence ranges from 0.5%
to 3.0% in today’s human populations, but it
was 35.7% in 28 buried skeletons with pre-
served upper jaws. Even in groups known
from their genealogy to have engaged in
intensive inbreeding, this proportion never
exceeds 20%, the team notes.
Many artifacts found at the site, includ-
ing stone tools and jewelry, came from other
farming sites in the Near East, a sign that
the inhabitants traded widely. That means
inbreeding was a deliberate social choice
rather than the result of geographic isolation,
the team concludes. Despite hints of inbreed-
ing at other sites, the researchers say that it’s
too early to tell if this social system helped
create the ties that bound other farming vil-
lages together. http://scim.ag/BastaInbreed
Random Sample
Ocean Models Help Swimmer
Navigate Florida Straits
Many endurance swimmers have an eye on the treacherous, tan-
talizing waters between Cuba and Florida. Australian swimmer
Chloe McCardel’s 12 June attempt to cross the Florida Straits
was not the first—but she had a secret weapon: oceanography.
In 2012, University of Miami meteorologist Villy Kourafalou
heard about a previous swimmer’s unsuccessful attempt to be
the first woman to swim the 170-kilometer distance unaided.
Penny Palfrey’s problem was clear, Kourafalou says: She was
thwarted by shifting swirls, called eddies, spawned by the Flor-
ida current as it flows through the straits. Success, Kourafalou
realized, may be all in the timing: Depending on ocean con-
ditions on a given day, the eddies can either give a swimmer a boost
or push her back. And that, Kourafalou adds, is how modeling could
help McCardel. “We wanted her to know the circulation she’s going to
encounter,” she says.
The Florida-based forecasting service ROFFS, which guides research-
ers, fishing expeditions, and commercial vessels through the straits, was
also interested. “The current dominates the course rather than the swim-
mer,” says founder Mitchell Roffer. “It’s like a snake trapped between
more attractive than the first set, the scien-
tists reported online last week in Transla-
tional Psychiatry.
Similar techniques, the researchers say,
could be used to treat disorders associated
with faulty ventral midbrain circuitry, such
as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia—
without drugs or invasive surgery.
Did Inbreeding Bind Early
Farmers Together?
About 10,000 years ago, roving hunter-
gatherers in the Near East began settling
down to form farming villages. What were
the social ties that bound them into com-
munities?A German team working at the
9500-year-old early farming site of Basta
in Jordan has one answer:The inhabitants
apparently engaged in inbreeding, although
not necessarily incest.
The evidence for this startling conclu-
sion, reported online last week in PLOS
Join us on Thursday, 27 June, at 3 p.m. EDT
for a live chat with experts on a hot topic in
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two walls, constantly wiggling and changing its shape.” ROFFS provided
McCardel’s team with high-resolution current models and streaming
satellite data of surface ocean conditions, including infrared and water
color imaging that show the density of plankton.
Using the models, the team selected a 12 June departure date,
and McCardel set out. But her swim was cut short just 11 hours later
—through no fault of physical oceanography, but after “debilitating”
stings from jellyfish.
>>FINDINGS
Tell-tale teeth. A high percentage of early farmers
from Basta are missing two of their upper incisors
(inset) due to inbreeding.
Published by AAAS
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