VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Benedict XVI has convened a special meeting of cardinals to get their advice about how to deal with the scandal over leaked Vatican documents.
Benedict was already scheduled to attend a regular meeting of the heads of Vatican offices Saturday morning. The Vatican press office said he had added a second meeting later in the day with other cardinals in a bid to try to "restore a climate of serenity and trust" in the church.
The Vatican has been scrambling to cope with the leaks of hundreds of Vatican documents exposing corruption, political infighting and power struggles at the highest level of the Catholic Church's governance. The pope's butler has been arrested in the case, accused of aggravated theft after papal documents were found in his Vatican City apartment.
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Contact: Aileen Sheehy press.office@sanger.ac.uk 0044-012-234-96928 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Diversity within Ethiopian genomes reveals imprints of historical events
Researchers have started to unveil the genetic heritage of Ethiopian populations, who are among the most diverse in the world, and lie at the gateway from Africa. They found that the genomes of some Ethiopian populations bear striking similarities to those of populations in Israel and Syria, a potential genetic legacy of the Queen of Sheba and her companions.
The team detected mixing between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago. The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur'an.
Ethiopia is situated in the horn of Africa, and has often been regarded as one of the gateways from Africa to the rest of the world. The Ethiopian region itself has the longest fossil record of human history anywhere in the world. Studying population genetics within this diverse region could help us to understand the origin of the first humans.
"From their geographic location, it is logical to think that migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago began in either Ethiopia or Egypt. Little was previously known about the populations inhabiting the North-East African region from a genomic perspective. This is the first genome study on a representative panel of Ethiopian populations," explains Luca Pagani, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. "We wanted to compare the genome of Ethiopians with other Africans to provide an essential piece to the African and world - genetic jigsaw."
They found that the Ethiopian genome is not as ancient as was previously thought and less ancient than the genomes of some Southern African populations. There were also links with other populations.
"We found that some Ethiopians have 40-50% of their genome closer to the genomes of populations outside of Africa, while the remaining half of their genome is closer to populations within the African continent," says Dr Toomas Kivisild, co-author from the University of Cambridge. "We calculated genetic distances and found that these non-African regions of the genome are closest to populations in Egypt, Israel and Syria, rather than to the neighbouring Yemeni and Arabs".
The team found that these two groups of African and non-African people mixed approximately 3,000 years ago, well before the historically-documented Islamic expansions and the colonial period of the last centuries.
An earlier study found that Ethio-Semitic, an Ethiopian language belonging to a linguistic family primarily spoken in the Middle East, split from the main Semitic group 3,000 years ago, around the same time as the non-African genomic component arrived in Ethiopia. All this evidence combined fits the time and locations of the legend of the Queen of Sheba, which describes the encounter of the Ethiopian Queen and King Solomon.
"None of this research would have been possible without the superb fieldwork of our Ethiopian colleagues Professor Endashaw Bekele and Dr Ayele Tarekegn over many years. The outstanding genetic diversity present within the peoples of Ethiopia is a rich resource that will contribute greatly, both to our understanding of human evolution and the development of personalised medicine" says Dr Neil Bradman, co-lead author from UCL (University College London). "The Ethiopian Government has a practice of encouraging genetic research, a policy that bodes well for the future."
"Our research gives insights into important evolutionary questions," says Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, co-lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "We see imprints of historical events on top of much more ancient prehistoric ones that together create a region of rich culture and genetic diversity. The next step for our research has to be to sequence the entire genomes, rather than read individual letters, of both Ethiopian people and others to really understand human origins and the out-of-Africa migration."
###
Publication Details
Pagani et al., Ethiopian Genetic Diversity Reveals Linguistic Stratification and Complex Influences on the Ethiopian Gene Pool, The American Journal of Human Genetics (2012), doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.05.015
Funding
This work was supported by grant number 098051 from the Wellcome Trust; Domestic Research Scholarship, the Cambridge European Trust, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK.
Participating Centres
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Division of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK
University College London, UK
University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
University of Bologna, Italy
Sindh Institute for Urology and Transplantation, Pakistan
Selected Websites
The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. It admits the very best and brightest students, regardless of background, and offers one of the UK's most generous bursary schemes. The University of Cambridge's reputation for excellence is known internationally and reflects the scholastic achievements of its academics and students, as well as the world-class original research carried out by its staff. Some of the most significant scientific breakthroughs occurred at the University, including the splitting of the atom, invention of the jet engine and the discoveries of stem cells, plate tectonics, pulsars and the structure of DNA. From Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking, the University has nurtured some of history's greatest minds and has produced more Nobel Prize winners than any other UK institution with over 80 laureates.
http://www.cam.ac.uk
Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by performance in a range of international rankings and tables. UCL currently has 24,000 students from almost 140 countries, and more than 9,500 employees. Our annual income is over 800 million.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally.
Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease.
http://www.sanger.ac.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests.
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Aileen Sheehy press.office@sanger.ac.uk 0044-012-234-96928 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Diversity within Ethiopian genomes reveals imprints of historical events
Researchers have started to unveil the genetic heritage of Ethiopian populations, who are among the most diverse in the world, and lie at the gateway from Africa. They found that the genomes of some Ethiopian populations bear striking similarities to those of populations in Israel and Syria, a potential genetic legacy of the Queen of Sheba and her companions.
The team detected mixing between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago. The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur'an.
Ethiopia is situated in the horn of Africa, and has often been regarded as one of the gateways from Africa to the rest of the world. The Ethiopian region itself has the longest fossil record of human history anywhere in the world. Studying population genetics within this diverse region could help us to understand the origin of the first humans.
"From their geographic location, it is logical to think that migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago began in either Ethiopia or Egypt. Little was previously known about the populations inhabiting the North-East African region from a genomic perspective. This is the first genome study on a representative panel of Ethiopian populations," explains Luca Pagani, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. "We wanted to compare the genome of Ethiopians with other Africans to provide an essential piece to the African and world - genetic jigsaw."
They found that the Ethiopian genome is not as ancient as was previously thought and less ancient than the genomes of some Southern African populations. There were also links with other populations.
"We found that some Ethiopians have 40-50% of their genome closer to the genomes of populations outside of Africa, while the remaining half of their genome is closer to populations within the African continent," says Dr Toomas Kivisild, co-author from the University of Cambridge. "We calculated genetic distances and found that these non-African regions of the genome are closest to populations in Egypt, Israel and Syria, rather than to the neighbouring Yemeni and Arabs".
The team found that these two groups of African and non-African people mixed approximately 3,000 years ago, well before the historically-documented Islamic expansions and the colonial period of the last centuries.
An earlier study found that Ethio-Semitic, an Ethiopian language belonging to a linguistic family primarily spoken in the Middle East, split from the main Semitic group 3,000 years ago, around the same time as the non-African genomic component arrived in Ethiopia. All this evidence combined fits the time and locations of the legend of the Queen of Sheba, which describes the encounter of the Ethiopian Queen and King Solomon.
"None of this research would have been possible without the superb fieldwork of our Ethiopian colleagues Professor Endashaw Bekele and Dr Ayele Tarekegn over many years. The outstanding genetic diversity present within the peoples of Ethiopia is a rich resource that will contribute greatly, both to our understanding of human evolution and the development of personalised medicine" says Dr Neil Bradman, co-lead author from UCL (University College London). "The Ethiopian Government has a practice of encouraging genetic research, a policy that bodes well for the future."
"Our research gives insights into important evolutionary questions," says Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, co-lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "We see imprints of historical events on top of much more ancient prehistoric ones that together create a region of rich culture and genetic diversity. The next step for our research has to be to sequence the entire genomes, rather than read individual letters, of both Ethiopian people and others to really understand human origins and the out-of-Africa migration."
###
Publication Details
Pagani et al., Ethiopian Genetic Diversity Reveals Linguistic Stratification and Complex Influences on the Ethiopian Gene Pool, The American Journal of Human Genetics (2012), doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.05.015
Funding
This work was supported by grant number 098051 from the Wellcome Trust; Domestic Research Scholarship, the Cambridge European Trust, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK.
Participating Centres
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Division of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK
University College London, UK
University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
University of Bologna, Italy
Sindh Institute for Urology and Transplantation, Pakistan
Selected Websites
The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. It admits the very best and brightest students, regardless of background, and offers one of the UK's most generous bursary schemes. The University of Cambridge's reputation for excellence is known internationally and reflects the scholastic achievements of its academics and students, as well as the world-class original research carried out by its staff. Some of the most significant scientific breakthroughs occurred at the University, including the splitting of the atom, invention of the jet engine and the discoveries of stem cells, plate tectonics, pulsars and the structure of DNA. From Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking, the University has nurtured some of history's greatest minds and has produced more Nobel Prize winners than any other UK institution with over 80 laureates.
http://www.cam.ac.uk
Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by performance in a range of international rankings and tables. UCL currently has 24,000 students from almost 140 countries, and more than 9,500 employees. Our annual income is over 800 million.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally.
Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease.
http://www.sanger.ac.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests.
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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A cartoon view of the Milky Way shows stars bristling with planets. The planets, their orbits and the sizes of their host stars are all vastly magnified in the cartoon.
By Alan Boyle
A statistical analysis based on a survey of millions of stars suggests that there's?at least?one planet for every star in the sky, and probably more. That would add up to 160 billion planets or so in the Milky Way.
"We conclude that stars are orbited by planets as a rule, rather than the exception," an international research team reports today in the journal Nature.
The estimate may sound amazing: Just a year ago, the world was wowed by the claim that?at least?half of the 100 billion or more stars in the Milky Way possessed planets, yielding a figure of 50 billion planets. The latest survey now suggests that there's an average of 1.6 planets per star system, which would work out to 160 billion. But?perhaps the most amazing thing about the findings is ... astronomers don't find them amazing at all.
"I am not surprised by the numbers," Didier Queloz, a planet-hunter at the Geneva?Observatory who was not involved in the?survey, told me in an email. Back in 2008, Queloz?was part of a different research team that concluded?one-third of the stars like our sun harbored?super-Earth-size planets ? the kinds of planets that could support life.
Over the past couple of years, findings from a variety of planet-hunting missions ??including NASA's Kepler space telescope, the European Space Agency's COROT telescope and ground-based telescope surveys ? have reinforced the view that planets are plentiful.
"Results from the three main techniques of planet detection are rapidly converging to a common result: Not only are planets common in the galaxy, but there are more small planets than large ones," Caltech astronomer Stephen Kane, a member of the team behind the findings reported in Nature, said in a news release from the Space Telescope Science Institute. "This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets."
Six years' worth of data The new findings draw upon six years' worth of data from two wide-field surveys known as PLANET and OGLE. These surveys use a network of telescopes around the world, scanning the night sky for very rare events in which the light from one star system is?amplified by the gravitational-lensing effect of another star (and ?perhaps a planet) passing in front?of it. This particular planet-hunting method is known as microlensing, as opposed to the transit method (which looks for telltale dips in starlight as a planet crosses its parent star's disk) or the radial-velocity method (which looks for the slight gravitational wobble in a star that has a planet in orbit).
A. Feild / STScI / NASA / ESA
This graphic explains how microlensing is used to detect planets. Click on the image for a larger version.
During their six years of searching, the microlensing researchers?identified only three actual planets. But they combined those detections with seven earlier detections, plus?all the data about non-detections, to arrive at an estimate of how probable it is that planets of different types would be found around a star.
They?estimated that about 17 percent of the stars in the?Milky?Way should host?planets in?the Jupiter?range (0.3 to 10 times as massive as Jupiter), 52 percent should have planets in the Neptune range (10 to 30 times Earth's mass), and?62 percent should have super-Earth-size planets (five to 10 times Earth's mass).
All these figures?are surrounded by wide bands of uncertainty. For example, the researchers say their estimate of 1.6 planets per star system could actually be anywhere between 0.7 and 2.5. But the lead author of the Nature study?told me that?his team's estimate is the best guess yet.
"The average number we find is higher than estimates derived by other methods," said Arnaud Cassan, an astronomer at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris. That's because the microlensing method can detect planets as small as five times Earth's mass up to 10 times Jupiter's mass,?in orbits?ranging from 0.5 to 10 times as wide as Earth's. Other methods aren't that sensitive, Cassan said.
"If they could detect planets with a range farther out, our guess is that they would find more planets,"?Cassan said.
What are the chances? The big issue would have to do with how precise the statistical analysis can be with such a small sample of actual detections. Microlensing events are so rare that coming upon even one is like winning the lottery, and that makes the numbers difficult to crunch. But after reviewing the Nature paper, Queloz told me that Cassan and his colleagues conducted "a very good statistical analysis of the microlensing surveys."
Whether the actual number of planets in the Milky Way is 70 billion or 250 billion, it's a big, big number ? 10 to?30 planets for every human on Earth. And the number doesn't even count?worlds that are less than five times as big as Earth (such as Mercury, Venus, Mars and our own planetary home), inside the orbit of Venus?or beyond the orbit of Saturn (such as Uranus, Neptune and the icy dwarfs?on the solar system's edge).
Still more revelations about planets beyond our own solar system are coming up this week, but the bottom line for all this is that there's a big cosmos out there ? with plenty of opportunities for planets and even life to develop. And that'll always be?amazing.
"We used to think that the Earth might be unique in our galaxy," Daniel Kubas, a colleague of Cassan's at the?Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris and a co-author of the Nature paper, said in a news release from the European Southern Observatory. "But now it seems that there are literally billions of planets with masses similar to Earth orbiting stars in the Milky Way."
More about the planet quest:
In addition to Cassan, Kubas and Kane, authors of the Nature paper, "One or More Bound Planets Per Milky Way Star from Microlensing Observations," include J.-P. Beaulieu, M. Dominik, K. Horne, J. Greenhill, J. Wambsganss, J. Menzies, A. Williams, U. G. J?rgensen, A. Udalski, D.P. Bennett, M.D. Albrow, V. Batista, S. Brillant, J.A.R. Caldwell, A. Cole, Ch. Coutures, K.H. Cook, S. Dieters, D. Dominis Prester, J. Donatowicz, P. Fouqu?, K. Hill, N. Kains, J.-B. Marquette, R. Martin, K.R. Pollard, K.C. Sahu, C. Vinter, D. Warren, B. Watson, M. Zub, T. Sumi, M.K. Szymanski, M. Kubiak, R. Poleski, I. Soszynski, K. Ulaczyk, G. Pietrzynski and L. Wyrzykowski.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - The most powerful man in soccer called goal-line technology a "necessity" Wednesday, only hours after Ukraine was denied what appeared to be a legitimate goal in its must-win match against England at the European Championship.
"After last night's match GLT is no longer an alternative but a necessity," FIFA President Sepp Blatter wrote on Twitter.
Marko Devic's shot in the 62nd minute of Tuesday's match looped up off England goalkeeper Joe Hart and appeared to cross the goal line before it was cleared by defender John Terry. The official standing near the post didn't signal for a goal, leaving the referee no option but to play on.
If the goal had been awarded, Ukraine would have pulled even at 1-1. But the co-hosts instead lost 1-0, a result that eliminated them from the tournament.
Ukraine's players complained furiously, coach Oleg Blokhin raged on the touchline and Twitter was quickly awash with indignation, reaction and opinion on goal-line technology.
The high-profile incident added to the momentum behind providing referees with high-tech aids to make accurate decisions.
UEFA is using Euro 2012 to trial the five-official system that features a referee, two linesmen and two additional assistants beside the goal. It's UEFA President Michel Platini's preferred alternative to goal-line technology.
FIFA will decide on July 5 whether to approve the five-official system and either of the two goal-line technology systems currently being tested in England and Denmark.
Speaking at a media briefing in Warsaw on Monday, Platini said he expects goal-line technology to be approved at the IFAB meeting.
"Yes, Blatter will do it," Platini said. "He will (introduce) the technology, but I think it's a big mistake. ... it's the beginning of the technology, the arrival of the technology."
There have been a number of memorable goal-line incidents to which critics often hark back whenever a fresh controversy occurs.
The most famous came in the 1966 World Cup final, when Geoff Hurst's shot that hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced down was ruled a goal. It gave England a 3-2 lead and Hurst later completed his hat trick for a 4-2 win.
In a match between the same two countries at the 2010 World Cup, a long shot by England midfielder Frank Lampard bounced down behind goalkeeper Manuel Neuer's line before spinning back out. Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda looked across at his linesman and allowed play to continue. The goal would have made it 2-2, but instead England lost 4-1.
Platini said Monday that if an official had been beside the goal that day, he would have spotted that Lampard's shot crossed the line.
"Of course, because it's his job to see if the ball is inside the line," Platini said.
Two days later, those words are coming back to haunt him.
---
AP Sports Writer Graham Dunbar contributed to this report.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Public release date: 21-Jun-2012
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