Woody cover and hominin environments in the past 6 million years

The role of African savannahs in the evolution of early hominins has been debated for nearly a century. Resolution of this issue has been hindered by difficulty in quantifying the fraction of woody cover in the fossil record. Here we show that the fraction of woody cover in tropical ecosystems can be quantified using stable carbon isotopes in soils. Furthermore, we use fossil soils from hominin sites in the Awash and Omo-Turkana basins in eastern Africa to reconstruct the fraction of woody cover since the Late Miocene epoch (about 7 million years ago). (13)C/(12)C ratio data from 1,300 palaeosols at or adjacent to hominin sites dating to at least 6 million years ago show that woody cover was predominantly less than ～40% at most sites. These data point to the prevalence of open environments at the majority of hominin fossil sites in eastern Africa over the past 6 million years.     

Coulomb-blockade transport in single-crystal organic thin-film transistors

Coulomb-blockade transport--whereby the Coulomb interaction between electrons can prohibit their transport around a circuit--occurs in systems in which both the tunnel resistance, Rb between neighbouring sites is large (>h/e2) and the charging energy, E(C) (E(C) = e2/2C, where C is the capacitance of the site), of an excess electron on a site is large compared to kT. (Here e is the charge of an electron, k is Boltzmann's constant, and h is Planck's constant.) The nature of the individual sites--metallic, superconducting, semiconducting or quantum dot--is to first order irrelevant for this phenomenon to be observed. Coulomb blockade has also been observed in two-dimensional arrays of normal-metal tunnel junctions, but the relatively large capacitances of these micrometre-sized metal islands results in a small charging energy, and so the effect can be seen only at extremely low temperatures. Here we demonstrate that organic thin-film transistors based on highly ordered molecular materials can, to first order, also be considered as an array of sites separated by tunnel resistances. And as a result of the sub-nanometre sizes of the sites (the individual molecules), and hence their small capacitances, the charging energy dominates at room temperature. Conductivity measurements as a function of both gate bias and temperature reveal the presence of thermally activated transport, consistent with the conventional model of Coulomb blockade.     

Integration of cytogenetic landmarks into the draft sequence of the human genome

We have placed 7,600 cytogenetically defined landmarks on the draft sequence of the human genome to help with the characterization of genes altered by gross chromosomal aberrations that cause human disease. The landmarks are large-insert clones mapped to chromosome bands by fluorescence in situ hybridization. Each clone contains a sequence tag that is positioned on the genomic sequence. This genome-wide set of sequence-anchored clones allows structural and functional analyses of the genome. This resource represents the first comprehensive integration of cytogenetic, radiation hybrid, linkage and sequence maps of the human genome; provides an independent validation of the sequence map and framework for contig order and orientation; surveys the genome for large-scale duplications, which are likely to require special attention during sequence assembly; and allows a stringent assessment of sequence differences between the dark and light bands of chromosomes. It also provides insight into large-scale chromatin structure and the evolution of chromosomes and gene families and will accelerate our understanding of the molecular bases of human disease and cancer.     

Early Pliocene hominids from Gona, Ethiopia

Comparative biomolecular studies suggest that the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, lived during the Late Miocene-Early Pliocene. Fossil evidence of Late Miocene-Early Pliocene hominid evolution is rare and limited to a few sites in Ethiopia, Kenya and Chad. Here we report new Early Pliocene hominid discoveries and their palaeoenvironmental context from the fossiliferous deposits of As Duma, Gona Western Margin (GWM), Afar, Ethiopia. The hominid dental anatomy (occlusal enamel thickness, absolute and relative size of the first and second lower molar crowns, and premolar crown and radicular anatomy) indicates attribution to Ardipithecus ramidus. The combined radioisotopic and palaeomagnetic data suggest an age of between 4.51 and 4.32 million years for the hominid finds at As Duma. Diverse sources of data (sedimentology, faunal composition, ecomorphological variables and stable carbon isotopic evidence from the palaeosols and fossil tooth enamel) indicate that the Early Pliocene As Duma sediments sample a moderate rainfall woodland and woodland/grassland.