An obstetric dilemma may have been a persistent characteristic of human evolution, in which the bipedal female's pelvis is barely large enough to accommodate the birth of a large-brained neonate. Evidence in the archaeological record for mortality risk associated with childbirth is rare, especially among highly mobile, immediate return hunter-gatherer populations. This research explores the idea that if excess mortality is associated with first pregnancy, females will outnumber males among young adult skeletons. The sample is of 246 skeletons (119 males, 127 females) representing Later Stone Age (LSA) foragers of the South African Cape. Young adults are distinguished through incomplete maturation of the medial clavicle, iliac crest and vertebral bodies. With 26 women and 14 men in the young category, a higher mortality risk for women is suggested, particularly in the Southern Cape region. Body size does not distinguish mortality groups; there is evidence of a dietary protein difference between young and older women from the Southern Cape. Possible increased mortality associated with first parturition may have been linked to morphological or energetic challenges, or a combination of both. Exploration of the sex ratio among young adult skeletons provides a tool for exploring the antiquity of an important evolutionary factor.

Age change in bone strength is systemically controlled and homeostatic, but change in bone mass may vary with limb-specific mechanical environment, particularly in females. However, the distribution of within-individual divergence between femur and metacarpal values suggests that idiosyncratic factors, rather than age, have the strongest influence on intraskeletal divergence. Attempts to reconstruct skeletal ageing in past populations may benefit from an approach that models whole-bone integrity, rather than bone mass alone, and that represents age-related variation in both weight-bearing and nonweight-bearing sites.

Using computer aided drug design we developed a new antibiotic class with a unique structure versus holo-acyl carrier protein synthase (AcpS). AcpS is a highly conserved enzyme essential for bacterial survival that catalyzes the first step in lipid synthesis. There are no current antibiotics targeting AcpS making this drug development program unique. We synthesized a library of >700 novel compounds targeting AcpS, from which 37 inhibit bacterial growth in vitro at ≤2 ug/ml. We demonstrate that compounds from this class have broad Gram positive activity including efficacy against clinically relevant multi-drug resistant strains in vitro and in animal models of infection in vivo. In addition, compounds from this new antibiotic family synergize with colistin versus multi-drug resistant Gram negative species. This new antibiotic family could form the basis for several multi-drug resistant antimicrobial programs.