EVOLUTIONARY STUDIES
Massospondylus 3D skull (top) and cranium
VACCINOLOGY/PUBLIC HEALTH
How big is the bacteria burden? Hundreds of thousands of deaths could be avoided if a vaccine was available for Group B Streptococcus bacteria. Decisions about developing such a vaccine can now be informed by the first proper estimate of how many people are affected worldwide. The Wits/Medical Research Council Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit contributed to the study. Group B Streptococcus infects pregnant women and can cause stillbirths and disease and death in infants. Wits’ Professor Shabir Madhi (MBBCh 1990, MMed 1999, PhD 2004) and his peers have filled an important gap in public health data by compiling information about disease, disability and death for pregnant women, stillbirths, preterm births, newborns and infants. Their work points to a number of 21.7-million pregnant women and 319 000 infants under three months old being at risk. A conservative estimate for stillbirths due to GBS disease is 57 000.
Suppose you wanted a dinosaur skull. Well, you could print one. Kimi Chapelle, a PhD student at the Evolutionary Studies Institute, published not only her scientific paper on the 200-million-year-old dinosaur, Massospondylus, but also a file that anyone can use to reproduce the skull with a 3D printer. Digital scans and online publishing have been described as enabling “a new golden age of anatomical description”. Open source publishing also means the work is available for the benefit of anyone. Though Massospondylus has been known for many years, its internal cranial anatomy had never been studied in great detail. Chapelle used the Wits MicroFocus X-ray computed tomography facility to scan and reconstruct the cranium, and then describe its features. This helps, for example, to work out how the creature held its head and how it moved and grew (to around four metres long). Massospondylus is one of the most famous dinosaurs from South Africa. Wits’ Prof James Kitching discovered fossil eggs and embryos in Golden Gate National Park in 1976.
Images: © 2018 Chapelle and Choiniere
Inside a herbivore’s head
Worldwide burden of Group B Streptococcus
319 000 infants under 3 months old at risk
21.7m pregnant women with GBS
57 000 stillbirths due to GBS
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