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Who loves Lucy? Far fewer people than a Seattle science center hoped when officials paid millions to show the fossil remains of one of the earliest known human ancestors.

Halfway through the five-month exhibit, the Pacific Science Center faces a half-million-dollar loss resulting in layoffs of 8 percent of the staff, furloughs and a wage freeze, President Bryce Seidl said Friday.

Lucy is a 3.2 million-year-old fossilized partial skeleton of a species with chimplike features that walked upright. The discovery in 1974 in Ethiopia forced a major revision of theories about the evolution of Homo sapiens.

The fossil exhibit was successful at the first stop on the tour — Houston in 2007, but the expenses have other museums reconsidering the planned six-year, 10-city tour.

The Seattle center’s staff redesigned the Lucy exhibit, adding a large section on Ethiopian history and artifacts, an audio tour and interactive displays in which visitors can put themselves in the shoes of a fossil hunter.

“It’s a powerful story of evolution and culture and history … but we’re not getting the attendance we need for an exhibit of this scale,” Seidl said.

The center had hoped to draw 250,000 visitors during the exhibit that ends March 8, but only 60,000 have come. Seidl blamed the recession, which has cut into arts and museum revenue nationwide, as well as December snowstorms that curtailed travel within and around Seattle.

The Lucy show cost the center about $2.25 million, Seidl estimated. That includes a $500,000 fee to Ethiopia, which plans to use the money for cultural and scientific programs.

The Field Museum in Chicago withdrew from the tour because of the cost. Debate over whether the irreplaceable fossil should be shipped around the globe led the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to drop the idea after early consideration.

“Lucy may not be anywhere other than Ethiopia after Seattle,” Seidl said.

But Donald Johanson, the American anthropologist who discovered Lucy, said fascination with the skeleton remained strong.

“As I travel around the country lecturing, people seem to have a deep interest in their origins, in their roots,” Johanson said.

Routine gum treatments do not reduce the risk of early delivery in pregnant women with periodontal disease, according to a new study by researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It was earlier found that gum disease was associated with very preterm deliveries (defined as less than 32 weeks gestation), which led insurance policies and healthcare providers to recommend scaling and root planing, sometimes referred to as “deep cleaning,” in pregnant women.

It was believed that such care had the potential to reduce preterm delivery risk.

However, the new findings, based on a randomized trial of 1,800 pregnant women with periodontal disease, indicate that routine gum treatments do not reduce the risk of early delivery.

“I’m always asked whether we should mandate dental treatment for all pregnant women. The biggest implication of this study is that this level of standard periodontal care will not affect the birth outcome,” said Amy Murtha, MD, director of obstetrics research at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC.

However, Murtha said that the findings do not suggest that pregnant women should not get dental exams and treatment as needed; they should.

“Our study emphasizes that treating periodontal disease during pregnancy is safe, but that standard periodontal care is not enough,” said Murtha.

Steven Offenbacher, DDS, PhD, the study’s lead investigator said that progression, or worsening of periodontal disease occurs in about 25 percent of pregnancies.

The bacterial infection attacks the teeth-supporting tissues below the gum line. If left untreated, it can lead to tooth loss as well as a host of other problems.

For the study, pregnant women with periodontal disease were randomly assigned to two groups: one received periodontal treatment before 23 weeks gestation; the other did not.

Overall, no significant differences were reported regarding obstetric or neonatal outcomes when the two groups were compared.

Despite the findings, Murtha said much remains unknown about the relationship between the two conditions.

“Periodontal disease and poor pregnancy outcomes travel together, but we don’t know why.”

Nor do researchers understand how or why pregnancy appears to jumpstart the onset and progression of the disease.

Murtha added that it might be that a more aggressive approach to periodontal disease management could have a different outcome.

He presented the findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in San Diego.

New data has led scientists to disapprove a theory that a large comet exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing a shock wave that traveled at hundreds of kilometers per hour and triggering continent-wide wildfires.

Dr Sandy Harrison from the University of Bristol and colleagues tested the theory by examining charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed between 15 and 10,000 years ago, a time of large and rapid climate changes.

Their results provide no evidence for continental-scale fires, but support the fact that the increase in large-scale wildfires in all regions of the world during the past decade is related to an increase in global warming.

According to Dr Harrison, fire is the most ubiquitous form of landscape disturbance and has important effects on climate through the global carbon cycle and changing atmospheric chemistry.

This has triggered an interest in knowing how fire has changed in the past, and particularly how fire regimes respond to periods of major warming.

“The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,700 years ago, was an interval when the temperature of Greenland warmed by over 5 degrees Celsius in less than a few decades,” said Dr Harrison.

“We used 35 records of charcoal accumulation in lake sediments from sites across North America to see whether fire regimes across the continent showed any response to such rapid warming,” he added.

The team found clear changes in biomass burning and fire frequency whenever climate changed abruptly, and most particularly when temperatures increased at the end of the Younger Dryas cold phase.

Understanding whether rapid changes in climate have caused wild fires in the past will help understand whether current changes in global temperatures will cause more frequent fires at the present time.

Such fires have a major impact on the economy and health of the population, as well as feeding into the increase in global warming.

Scientists have uncovered in an Armenian cave what may be the oldest preserved human brain from an ancient society, which dates back to 6,000 years.

The cave overlooks southeastern Armenia’s Arpa River, just across the border from Iran.

The researchers found a trio of Copper Age human skulls, each buried in a separate niche inside the three-chambered, 600-square-meter cave.

The skulls belonged to 12- to 14-year-old girls, according to anatomical analyses conducted independently by three biological anthropologists.

Fractures identified on two skulls indicate that the girls were killed by blows from a club of some sort, probably in a ritual ceremony, according to Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Remarkably, one skull contained a shriveled but well-preserved brain. “This is the oldest known human brain from the Old World,” Areshian said.

The Old World comprises Europe, Asia, Africa and surrounding islands.

Scientists now studying the brain have noted preserved blood vessels on its surface. Surviving red blood cells have been extracted from those hardy vessels for analysis.

The cave has also offered surprising new insights into the origins of modern civilizations, such as evidence of a winemaking enterprise and an array of culturally diverse pottery.

Excavations in and just outside of Areni-1 cave during 2007 and 2008 yielded an extensive array of Copper Age artifacts dating to between 6,200 and 5,900 years ago, according to Areshian.

The finds show that major cultural developments occurred during the Copper Age in areas outside southern Iraq, which is traditionally regarded as the cradle of civilization, Areshian noted.

The new cave discoveries move cultural activity in what’s now Armenia back by about 800 years.

“This is exciting work,” said Rana Ozbal of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

According to Areshian, whoever they were, these people participated in trade networks that ran throughout the Near East.

Additional discoveries at the site include metal knives, seeds from more than 30 types of fruit, remains of dozens of cereal species, rope, cloth, straw, grass, reeds and dried grapes and prunes.