资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Pyrethroid-impregnated bed nets have driven considerable reductions in malaria-associated morbidity and mortality in Africa since the beginning of the century(1). The intense selection pressure exerted by bed nets has precipitated widespread and escalating resistance to pyrethroids in African Anopheles populations, threatening to reverse the gains that been made by malaria control(2). Here we show that expression of a sensory appendage protein (SAP2), which is enriched in the legs, confers pyrethroid resistance to Anopheles gambiae. Expression of SAP2 is increased in insecticide-resistant populations and is further induced after the mosquito comes into contact with pyrethroids. SAP2 silencing fully restores mortality of the mosquitoes, whereas SAP2 overexpression results in increased resistance, probably owing to high-affinity binding of SAP2 to pyrethroid insecticides. Mining of genome sequence data reveals a selective sweep near the SAP2 locus in the mosquito populations of three West African countries (Cameroon, Guinea and Burkina Faso) with the observed increase in haplotype-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms mirroring the increasing resistance of mosquitoes to pyrethroids reported in Burkina Faso. Our study identifies a previously undescribed mechanism of insecticide resistance that is likely to be highly relevant to malaria control efforts.

Education is a key dimension of well-being and a crucial indicator of development(1-4). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) prioritize progress in education, with a new focus on inequality(5-7). Here we model the within-country distribution of years of schooling, and use this model to explore educational inequality since 1970 and to forecast progress towards the education-related 2030 SDG targets. We show that although the world is largely on track to achieve near-universal primary education by 2030, substantial challenges remain in the completion rates for secondary and tertiary education. Globally, the gender gap in schooling had nearly closed by 2018 but gender disparities remained acute in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and North Africa and the Middle East. It is predicted that, by 2030, females will have achieved significantly higher educational attainment than males in 18 countries. Inequality in education reached a peak globally in 2017 and is projected to decrease steadily up to 2030. The distributions and inequality metrics presented here represent a framework that can be used to track the progress of each country towards the SDG targets and the level of inequality over time. Reducing educational inequality is one way to promote a fairer distribution of human capital and the development of more equitable human societies.

The cranium from Broken Hill (Kabwe) was recovered from cave deposits in 1921, during metal ore mining in what is now Zambia(1). It is one of the best-preserved skulls of a fossil hominin, and was initially designated as the type specimen of Homo rhodesiensis, but recently it has often been included in the taxon Homo heidelbergensis(2-4). However, the original site has since been completely quarried away, and-although the cranium is often estimated to be around 500 thousand years old(5-7)-its unsystematic recovery impedes its accurate dating and placement in human evolution. Here we carried out analyses directly on the skull and found a best age estimate of 299 +/- 25 thousand years (mean +/- 2s). The result suggests that later Middle Pleistocene Africa contained multiple contemporaneous hominin lineages (that is, Homo sapiens(8,9), H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis and Homo naledi(10,11)), similar to Eurasia, where Homo neanderthalensis, the Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis and perhaps also Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus(12) were found contemporaneously. The age estimate also raises further questions about the mode of evolution of H. sapiens in Africa and whether H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis was a direct ancestor of our species(13,14).