• Business Day (South Africa): Emerging markets

China National Offshore Oil Corporation acquired Nigeria's Oil & Gas Assets for $2.69 billion in January 2006.
* EMIRATES INTEGRATED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CO, DUBAI INVESTMENT GROUP-TUNISIE TELECOM
Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co and Dubai Investment Group Ltd acquired 35 percent of Tunisie Telecom for $2.29 billion in April 2003
* PETRONAS-EDISON
Malaysia's Petronas acquired Egypt's natural gas firm Edison SpA for $1.76 billion in April 2003.
* INTESA SANPAOLO-BANK OF ALEXANDRIA
Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo purchased a 80 percent stake in Egypt's Bank of Alexandria for $1.6 billion in October 2006.
* VIVENDI-MAROC TELECOM
France's Vivendi bought a 16 percent stake in Morocco's Maroc Telecom for $1.45 billion in November 2004.
* ENI-CONGO OIL AND GAS ASSETS
Italian oil and gas group Eni bought operating licences for oil fields in the Republic of Congo for $1.43 billion in February 2007.
* ALTADIS SA-REGIE DES TABACS
French-Spanish tobacco group Altadis purchased a 80 percent stake in Morocco's Regie des Tabacs for $1.4 billion in January 2003.
* MTC-MOBITEL
Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co. (Zain) bought a 61 percent stake in the Sudanese Mobile Telephone Co. Ltd for $1.33 billion in February 2006.
Source: Dealogic
STANDARDBANK-ICBC/AFRICA (FACTBOX)|LANGEN|ABN|E|RBN|SF|AFN|UKI|Z|MD|GFN|RNP|DNP|PCO
Document LBA0000020071025e3ap00143

LEV, VSE, ARUN, BWTR, CPSL, CSUN Have Been On BUYINS.NET Naked Short List For 13 Consecutive Trading Days
2,158 words

22 October 2007

M2 Presswire

MTPW

English

(c) 2007 M2 Communications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
BUYINS.NET, www.buyins.net , announced today that these select companies have been on the NASDAQ, AMEX and NYSE naked short threshold list for 13 consecutive trading days: Levitt Corp. (NYSE: LEV), VeraSun Energy Corp. (NYSE: VSE), Aruba Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN), Basin Water Inc. (NASDAQ: BWTR), China Precision Steel Inc. (NASDAQ: CPSL), China Sunergy Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ: CSUN). For a complete list of companies on the naked short list please visit our web site. To find the SqueezeTrigger Price before a short squeeze starts in any stock, go to www.buyins.net .
Regulation SHO took effect January 3, 2005, and provides a new regulatory framework governing short selling of securities. It was designed with the objective of simplifying and modernizing short sale regulation and providing controls where they are most needed. At the conclusion of each settlement day, data is provided on securities in which: 1) there are at least 10,000 shares in aggregate failed deliveries for the security for five consecutive settlement days, and 2) these failures constitute at least 0.5% of the issuer's total shares outstanding. Regulation SHO mandates that, if a clearing agent has had a fail-to-deliver position for 13 consecutive settlement days, that clearing agent, and the broker/dealer it clears for, must purchase securities to close out its fail to deliver position.
Levitt Corp. (NYSE: LEV) together with its subsidiaries, operates as a homebuilding and real estate development company in the southeastern United States. The company operates in two divisions, Homebuilding and Land. The Homebuilding division primarily develops single and multi-family homes for adults and families in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The Land division engages in the development of master-planned communities in Florida and South Carolina. It engages in the acquisition of large tracts of raw land; planning, entitlement, and infrastructure development; the sale of entitled land and/or developed lots to homebuilders and commercial, industrial, and institutional end-users; and the development and leasing of commercial space to commercial, industrial, and institutional end-users. As of December 31, 2006, this division owned approximately 6,500 gross acres. In addition, the company develops industrial, commercial, retail, and residential properties, as well as owns equity interests in Bluegreen Resorts, which engages in the acquisition, development, and marketing of vacation resorts. Levitt Corporation was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. With 19.84 million shares outstanding and 3.08 million shares declared short as of September 2007, the failure to deliver in shares of LEV has not been resolved and a buy-in is imminent.
VeraSun Energy Corp. (NYSE: VSE) engages in the production and sale of ethanol and its co-products in the United States. Ethanol is primarily used as a blend component in the gasoline fuel market. The company's ethanol co-products include wet and dry distillers grains with solubles, which are used as animal feed; and Corn oil, which is used as an animal feed, as well as to produce biodiesel, a clean burning alternative fuel. In addition, it offers ethanol-blended VE85 fuel to gas distributors and retailers. VeraSun Energy was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Brookings, South Dakota. With 78.29 million shares outstanding and 4.78 million shares declared short as of September 2007, the failure to deliver in shares of VSE has not been resolved and a buy-in is imminent.
Aruba Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) provides an enterprise mobility solution that enables secure access to data, voice, and video applications across wireless and wireline enterprise networks in the United States and internationally. It licenses and sells ArubaOS, a modular and flexible operating system that forms the core of its user-centric network architecture and network, security, application, and RF management services to give network managers a centralized point-of-control over the access points, mobile users, and mobile devices; and additional software modules for ArubaOS, which include policy enforcement firewall, wireless intrusion protection, Remote AP, VPN server, external services interface, Wireless Mesh, and xSec. The company also provides Aruba Mobility Management System that automatically discovers, monitors, and manages mobility controllers, access points, and users simultaneously from a single console; and mobility controllers that aggregates network traffic from access points, process it using its software controls, and delivers it to the network primarily for offices, retail stores, and campuses; and wireless access points and wired access concentrators, which serve as on-ramps that aggregate user traffic onto the enterprise network and direct traffic to mobility controllers. Its wireless access points provide network access and security monitoring services for wireless networks; and wired access concentrators are designed for use in conference rooms, auditoriums, public areas, and home applications. The company serves finance, retail, hospitality, technology, manufacturing, media, healthcare, education, utilities, telecom, government, transportation, engineering, and construction industries. Aruba Networks sells its products through value added resellers, distributors, and original equipment manufacturers. Aruba Networks was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. With 76.9 million shares outstanding and 1.82 million shares declared short as of September 2007, the failure to deliver in shares of ARUN has not been resolved and a buy-in is imminent.
Basin Water Inc. (NASDAQ: BWTR) engages in the design, building, and implementation of systems for the treatment of contaminated groundwater. The company offers ion-exchange treatment system that reduces groundwater contaminant levels. Its system is installed at the site of the well to treat varying volumes of water. The company serves utilities, municipalities, special districts, real estate developers, and other organizations that supply water for use in treating groundwater sources. Basin Water markets its system through direct sales force, independent contractors, and strategic partners primarily in the United States. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Rancho Cucamonga, California. With 19.94 million shares outstanding and 4.75 million shares declared short as of September 2007, the failure to deliver in shares of BWTR has not been resolved and a buy-in is imminent.
China Precision Steel Inc. (NASDAQ: CPSL) a steel processing company, engages in the manufacture and sale of high precision cold-rolled steel products in China. The company produces and sells precision ultra-thin and high strength cold-rolled steel products with thicknesses ranging from 7.5 mm to 0.03 mm. It also provides heat treatment and cutting of medium and high carbon hot-rolled steel strips. The company's precision products are primarily used in the manufacture of automobile parts and components, plane friction discs, appliances, food packaging materials, saw blades, textile needles, microelectronics, packing, and containers. It sells its products in China, Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. China Precision Steel was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. With 35.36 million shares outstanding and 293,600 shares declared short as of September 2007, the failure to deliver in shares of CPSL has not been resolved and a buy-in is imminent.
China Sunergy Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ: CSUN) and its subsidiaries engage in the design, development, manufacture, and marketing of solar cells in China. The company manufactures solar cells from silicon wafers utilizing crystalline silicon solar cell technology to convert sunlight directly into electricity through a process, known as the photovoltaic effect. China Sunergy sells its solar cell products through direct sales force to module manufacturers and system integrators, who assemble its solar cells into solar modules and solar power systems for use in various markets worldwide. The company was founded in 2004 and is based in Nanjing, China. With 237.33 million shares outstanding and 1.11 million shares declared short as of September 2007, the failure to deliver in shares of CSUN has not been resolved and a buy-in is imminent.
About BUYINS.NET
WWW.BUYINS.NET is a service designed to help bonafide shareholders of publicly traded US companies fight naked short selling. Naked short selling is the illegal act of short selling a stock when no affirmative determination has been made to locate shares of the stock to hypothecate in connection with the short sale. Buyins.net has built a proprietary database that uses Threshold list feeds from NASDAQ, AMEX and NYSE to generate detailed and useful information to combat the naked short selling problem. For the first time, actual trade by trade data is available to the public that shows the attempted size, actual size, price and average value of short sales in stocks that have been shorted and naked shorted. This information is valuable in determining the precise point at which short sellers go out-of-the-money and start losing on their short and naked short trades.
BUYINS.NET has built a massive database that collects, analyzes and publishes a proprietary SqueezeTrigger for each stock that has been shorted, www.buyins.net/squeezetrigger.pdf . The SqueezeTrigger database of nearly 1,600,000,000 short sale transactions goes back to January 1, 2005, and calculates the exact price at which the Total Short Interest is short in each stock. This data was never before available prior to January 1, 2005, because the Self Regulatory Organizations (primary exchanges) guarded it aggressively. After the SEC passed Regulation SHO, exchanges were forced to allow data processors like Buyins.net to access the data.
The SqueezeTrigger database collects individual short trade data on over 7,000 NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ stocks and general short trade data on nearly 8,000 OTCBB and PINKSHEET stocks. Each month the database grows by approximately 50,000,000 short sale transactions and provides investors with the knowledge necessary to time when to buy and sell stocks with outstanding short positions. By tracking the size and price of each month's short transactions, BUYINS.NET provides institutions, traders, analysts, journalists and individual investors the exact price point where short sellers start losing money.
All material herein was prepared by BUYINS.NET, based upon information believed to be reliable. The information contained herein is not guaranteed by BUYINS.NET to be accurate, and should not be considered to be all-inclusive. The companies that are discussed in this opinion have not approved the statements made in this opinion. This opinion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. This material is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities. BUYINS.NET is not a licensed broker, broker dealer, market maker, investment banker, investment advisor, analyst or underwriter. Please consult a broker before purchasing or selling any securities viewed on or mentioned herein. BUYINS.NET may receive compensation in cash or shares from independent third parties or from the companies mentioned.
BUYINS.NET affiliates, officers, directors and employees may also have bought or may buy the shares discussed in this opinion and may profit in the event those shares rise in value. Market commentary provided by Thomas Ronk.
BUYINS.NET will not advise as to when it decides to sell and does not and will not offer any opinion as to when others should sell; each investor must make that decision based on his or her judgment of the market.
This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a companies' annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and BUYINS.NET undertakes no obligation to update such statements.
M2 Communications Ltd disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data prepared by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to [e-mail].
Document MTPW000020071022e3am0015w

Research and Market Report Analyzes the Next Billion Mobile Subscriptions
625 words

21 October 2007

Wireless News

WLNW

English

(c) Copyright 2007 M2 Communications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Research and Markets has announced the addition of "The Next Billion: How Emerging Markets are Shaping the Mobile Industry" to its offerings.
In a release, Research and Markets noted that report highlights include:
At the end of 2006, there were nearly 2.8bn mobile subscriptions around the world, translating to a penetration rate of 44 percent. The share of the population with mobile subscriptions is far higher in the richer economies of the world than in the emerging markets -- regions such as
Western Europe exceed 100 percent, whereas in most of Africa and Southeast Asia penetration rates average less than 20 percent. It is thus evident that the bulk of future mobile growth will come from emerging economies.
Indeed, we forecast that the global mobile market will add "the next billion" subscriptions by year-end 2009 and expects roughly 85 percent of the next billion to come from emerging markets.
This executive-level report analyzes the next billion mobile subscriptions in order to provide clients with a clearer understanding of the significance of the emerging markets in future mobile market growth. It offers trends in penetration and total subscriptions as well as figures for such measures as user penetration, churn rates, data ARPS and MOUs for 20 key countries. The report also compares developed market and emerging market forecasts for mobile demand through 2010 by both total subscriptions (prepaid and postpaid) and ARPS (voice and data), as well as forecasts for revenue and other measures.
Key questions answered
Who are the next billion subscribers? Where do the next billion live? What do they earn and spend? What do they want and need in terms of their telecommunications offerings? What will be the impact on operators? What will be the impact on handset and infrastructure suppliers? Target audience
Mobile operators in emerging markets
Assess the mobile market implications of long-term demographic and economic trends to develop a successful growth strategy. Compare forecasts of metrics for 20 key countries, quantify market opportunities, and develop a top-level view of where the global mobile market is going. Benchmark economic indicators and opportunities in markets where you are active against other emerging markets in order to decide whether to consolidate your position or expand into new markets.
Mobile operators considering emerging markets
Use the report's forecasts on demographic and economic developments to form a successful growth strategy for emerging countries that builds on global long-term trends and opportunities. Identify emerging markets where you can leverage your strengths by drawing on the report's regional indicators and mobile metrics for 20 key countries. Compare forecasts of metrics for markets, quantify the opportunities, and develop a top-level view of where the global mobile market is going.
Vendors
Assess the implications of long-term demographic and economic trends to target product development for high-growth markets. Use data and voice ARPS, market revenue, and other forecasts to focus on specific countries and the most valuable market segments within them, and to construct a long-term strategy that builds on your strengths.
Financial services, investment firms
This report will help you assess the long-term financial prospects for mobile service providers and telecom equipment vendors at a global level. Pyramid Research's forecasts of metrics such as mobile subscriber and user penetration will help you make strategic decisions to maximize the return on your investments.
Countries profiled in this report:
Algeria
Argentina
Brazil
China
Egypt
Germany
India
Indonesia
Iran
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Nigeria
Pakistan
Peru
Philippines
Russia
Turkey
US
Vietnam
Report information: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c71859
Comments on this story may be sent to [e-mail] Distributed via M2 Communications Ltd - http://www.m2.com
Document WLNW000020071022e3al0004c

CONSORTIUM PUBLISHES PHASE II MAP OF HUMAN GENETIC VARIATION
1,838 words

17 October 2007

US Fed News

INDFED

English

© Copyright 2007. HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' National Institutes of Health issued the following press release:
The International HapMap Consortium today published analyses of its second-generation map of human genetic variation, which contains three times more markers than the initial version unveiled in 2005. In two papers in the journal Nature, the consortium describes how the higher resolution map offers greater power to detect genetic variants involved in common diseases, explore the structure of human genetic variation and learn how environmental factors, such as infectious agents, have shaped the human genome.
Any two humans are more than 99 percent the same at the genetic level. However, it is important to understand the small fraction of genetic material that varies among people because it can help explain individual differences in susceptibility to disease, response to drugs or reaction to environmental factors. Variation in the human genome is organized into local neighborhoods, called haplotypes, that usually are inherited as intact blocks of information. Consequently, researchers refer to the map of human genetic variation as a haplotype map, or HapMap.
The International HapMap Consortium is a public-private partnership of researchers and funding agencies from Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States. The U.S. component of the project is led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) on behalf of the 20 institutes, centers and offices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that contributed funding.
"Thanks to this consortium's pioneering efforts to map human genetic variation, we are already seeing a windfall of results that are shedding new light on the complex genetics of common diseases," said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "This new approach to research, called genome-wide association studies, has recently uncovered new clues to the genetic factors involved in type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis and many other disorders. These results have opened up new avenues of research, taking us to places we had not imagined in our search for better ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease."
The second-generation haplotype map, or Phase II HapMap, contains more than 3.1 million genetic variants, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) - three times more than the approximately 1 million SNPs contained in the initial version. The more SNPs that are on the map, the more precisely researchers can focus their hunts for genetic variants involved in disease. The rapid growth of genome-wide association studies over the past year and half has been fueled by the HapMap consortium's decision to make its SNP datasets immediately available in public databases, even before the first and the second versions of the map were fully completed.
Researchers around the globe have now associated more than 60 common DNA variants with risk of disease or related traits, with most of the findings coming in the past nine months. As just one example, the Wellcome Trust consortium in England looked at 14,000 cases and 3,000 shared controls, finding variants associated with increased risk of bipolar disorder, coronary artery disease, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
"We are thrilled that the worldwide scientific community is taking advantage of this powerful new tool and we anticipate even more exciting findings in the future. The improved SNP coverage offered by the Phase II HapMap, along with better statistical methods, promises to further increase the accuracy and reliability of genome-wide association studies," said Gil McVean, Ph.D., of the University of Oxford in England, who co-led the group that analyzed the HapMap data.
Another analysis leader, Mark Daly, Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., said, "In addition to providing a critical backbone for standard genome-wide association studies, the Phase II HapMap identifies additional features of human genetic variation that will bolster efforts to pinpoint rarer disease mutations."
The Phase II HapMap was produced using the same DNA samples used in the Phase I HapMap. That DNA came from blood collected from 270 volunteers from four geographically diverse populations: Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Han Chinese in Beijing; and Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe. No medical or personal identifying information was obtained from the donors, but the samples were labeled by population group.
To provide information on less common variations and to enable researchers to conduct genome-wide association studies in additional populations, NHGRI plans to extend the HapMap even further. Among the populations donating additional DNA samples are: Luhya in Webuye, Kenya; Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya; Tuscans in Italy; Gujarati Indian in Houston; Chinese in metropolitan Denver; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; and people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States.
In its overview paper in Nature, the consortium estimates that the Phase II HapMap captures 25 percent to 35 percent of common genetic variation in the populations surveyed. The consortium also confirmed that use of Phase II HapMap data has helped to improve the coverage of various commercial technologies currently being used to identify disease-related variants in genome-wide association studies. Researchers did note, however, that current technologies tend to provide better coverage in non-African populations than in African populations because of the greater degree of genetic variability in African populations.
The overview paper also reports that the Phase II HapMap has provided new insights into the structure of human genetic variation. One new finding was the surprising extent of recent common ancestry found in all of the population groups. Taking advantage of the map's increased resolution, the researchers identified stretches of identical DNA between pairs of donor chromosomes and then compared these stretches both within and across individuals. Their analysis showed that 10 to 30 percent of the DNA segments analyzed in each population showed shared regions indicating descent from a common ancestor within 10 to 100 generations.
In addition, the new map enabled researchers to quantify more precisely the rates of shuffling, or recombination, seen among different gene classes in the human genome. In their overview paper, researchers report that recombination rates vary more than six-fold among different gene classes. The highest rates of recombination were found among genes involved in the body's immune defense, while the lowest rates appear among genes for chaperones, which are proteins that play a crucial role in making sure other proteins are folded properly. In general, genes that code for proteins associated with the surface of cells and external functions, such as signaling, were found to be more prone to recombination than those that code for proteins internal to cells.
While the reasons for the varying recombination rates remain to be determined, the findings pose interesting evolutionary questions. In their paper, researchers suggest that one explanation may be that some recombinations in areas of the genome that affect responses to infectious agents or other environmental pressures may be selected for because they provide a survival advantage.
A related study appearing in the same issue of Nature describes how the enhanced map can help pinpoint pivotal changes in the human genome that arose in recent history. These changes, now common among various populations worldwide, became prevalent through natural selection - meaning they were somehow beneficial to human health. Although these DNA variants may still be important, their biological significance remains largely unknown.
Using the Phase II HapMap data, a team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard identified hundreds of genomic regions that carry the hallmarks of recent positive natural selection. These regions are large, often extending for millions of nucleotides and including multiple genes. Thus, the researchers developed a set of computational guidelines to help locate the single letter changes that formed the focal points for evolutionary change.
The work uncovered several intriguing genetic variations that could provide novel insights into the biological forces underlying natural selection in humans. Two differences, which are common primarily in Asian populations, lie within the EDAR and EDA2R genes. In humans, these genes function together to form hair follicles and sweat glands, as well as other structures.
The researchers also identified DNA variations in African populations that may be linked to resistance to Lassa fever, a viral infection common in Western Africa. These changes lie in two genes, LARGE and DMD, which are involved in viral entry into cells. The findings help underscore one of the study's key themes - that multiple genes, acting together in the same biological process, often show signs of positive selection, both in humans and other organisms. Integrating these data may bolster efforts to understand the biological consequences of human genetic variation.
"Human history and the genome have been dramatically shaped by environmental factors, diet and infectious disease," said co-first author Pardis Sabeti, Ph.D., who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "The gene variants identified in our study open new windows on these evolutionary forces and provide a launching point for future biological studies of human adaptation."
The effort to build the improved HapMap relied heavily on the high-throughput genotyping capacity of Perlegen Sciences, Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. The firm tested virtually the entire known catalog of human SNP variation on the HapMap samples, as well as contributed some of its own resources to make the map possible.
"The Phase II HapMap is truly an example of a public-private collaboration at its best. It's wonderful that everyone pulled together to create this improved map, which is a priceless tool for all researchers seeking to use genomic information to improve human health, be they in government, academia or industry," said Kelly A. Frazer, Ph.D., formerly vice president of genomics at Perlegen and now director of genomic biology at Scripps Genomic Medicine Program, in La Jolla, Calif.
Researchers can access the Phase II map data through the HapMap Data Coordination Center ( www.hapmap.org ), the NIH-funded National Center for Biotechnology Information's dbSNP ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/index.html ) and the JSNP Database in Japan ( http://snp.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp ).
NHGRI is one of 27 institutes and centers at NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. NHGRI's Division of Extramural Research supports grants for research and for training and career development. For more, visit www.genome.gov
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation's Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .
HTS rprp 071018-1206885 RASHMIRANJAN
Document INDFED0020071018e3ah003in
Consortium Publishes Phase II Map of Human Genetic Variation
1,812 words

17 October 2007

National Institutes of Health Documents

NIHDOC

English

Copyright © 2007 Federal Information & News Dispatch, Inc.
National Institutes of Health - National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
The International HapMap Consortium today published analyses of its second-generation map of human genetic variation, which contains three times more markers than the initial version unveiled in 2005. In two papers in the journal Nature, the consortium describes how the higher resolution map offers greater power to detect genetic variants involved in common diseases, explore the structure of human genetic variation and learn how environmental factors, such as infectious agents, have shaped the human genome.
Any two humans are more than 99 percent the same at the genetic level. However, it is important to understand the small fraction of genetic material that varies among people because it can help explain individual differences in susceptibility to disease, response to drugs or reaction to environmental factors. Variation in the human genome is organized into local neighborhoods, called haplotypes, that usually are inherited as intact blocks of information. Consequently, researchers refer to the map of human genetic variation as a haplotype map, or HapMap.
The International HapMap Consortium is a public-private partnership of researchers and funding agencies from Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States. The U.S. component of the project is led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) on behalf of the 20 institutes, centers and offices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that contributed funding.
"Thanks to this consortium's pioneering efforts to map human genetic variation, we are already seeing a windfall of results that are shedding new light on the complex genetics of common diseases," said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "This new approach to research, called genome-wide association studies, has recently uncovered new clues to the genetic factors involved in type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis and many other disorders. These results have opened up new avenues of research, taking us to places we had not imagined in our search for better ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease."
The second-generation haplotype map, or Phase II HapMap, contains more than 3.1 million genetic variants, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) -- three times more than the approximately 1 million SNPs contained in the initial version. The more SNPs that are on the map, the more precisely researchers can focus their hunts for genetic variants involved in disease. The rapid growth of genome-wide association studies over the past year and half has been fueled by the HapMap consortium's decision to make its SNP datasets immediately available in public databases, even before the first and the second versions of the map were fully completed.
Researchers around the globe have now associated more than 60 common DNA variants with risk of disease or related traits, with most of the findings coming in the past nine months. As just one example, the Wellcome Trust consortium in England looked at 14,000 cases and 3,000 shared controls, finding variants associated with increased risk of bipolar disorder, coronary artery disease, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
"We are thrilled that the worldwide scientific community is taking advantage of this powerful new tool and we anticipate even more exciting findings in the future. The improved SNP coverage offered by the Phase II HapMap, along with better statistical methods, promises to further increase the accuracy and reliability of genome-wide association studies," said Gil McVean, Ph.D., of the University of Oxford in England, who co-led the group that analyzed the HapMap data.
Another analysis leader, Mark Daly, Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., said, "In addition to providing a critical backbone for standard genome-wide association studies, the Phase II HapMap identifies additional features of human genetic variation that will bolster efforts to pinpoint rarer disease mutations."
The Phase II HapMap was produced using the same DNA samples used in the Phase I HapMap. That DNA came from blood collected from 270 volunteers from four geographically diverse populations: Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Han Chinese in Beijing; and Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe. No medical or personal identifying information was obtained from the donors, but the samples were labeled by population group.
To provide information on less common variations and to enable researchers to conduct genome-wide association studies in additional populations, NHGRI plans to extend the HapMap even further. Among the populations donating additional DNA samples are: Luhya in Webuye, Kenya; Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya; Tuscans in Italy; Gujarati Indian in Houston; Chinese in metropolitan Denver; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; and people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States.
In its overview paper in Nature, the consortium estimates that the Phase II HapMap captures 25 percent to 35 percent of common genetic variation in the populations surveyed. The consortium also confirmed that use of Phase II HapMap data has helped to improve the coverage of various commercial technologies currently being used to identify disease-related variants in genome-wide association studies. Researchers did note, however, that current technologies tend to provide better coverage in non-African populations than in African populations because of the greater degree of genetic variability in African populations.
The overview paper also reports that the Phase II HapMap has provided new insights into the structure of human genetic variation. One new finding was the surprising extent of recent common ancestry found in all of the population groups. Taking advantage of the map's increased resolution, the researchers identified stretches of identical DNA between pairs of donor chromosomes and then compared these stretches both within and across individuals. Their analysis showed that 10 to 30 percent of the DNA segments analyzed in each population showed shared regions indicating descent from a common ancestor within 10 to 100 generations.
In addition, the new map enabled researchers to quantify more precisely the rates of shuffling, or recombination, seen among different gene classes in the human genome. In their overview paper, researchers report that recombination rates vary more than six-fold among different gene classes. The highest rates of recombination were found among genes involved in the body's immune defense, while the lowest rates appear among genes for chaperones, which are proteins that play a crucial role in making sure other proteins are folded properly. In general, genes that code for proteins associated with the surface of cells and external functions, such as signaling, were found to be more prone to recombination than those that code for proteins internal to cells.
While the reasons for the varying recombination rates remain to be determined, the findings pose interesting evolutionary questions. In their paper, researchers suggest that one explanation may be that some recombinations in areas of the genome that affect responses to infectious agents or other environmental pressures may be selected for because they provide a survival advantage.
A related study appearing in the same issue of Nature describes how the enhanced map can help pinpoint pivotal changes in the human genome that arose in recent history. These changes, now common among various populations worldwide, became prevalent through natural selection -- meaning they were somehow beneficial to human health. Although these DNA variants may still be important, their biological significance remains largely unknown.
Using the Phase II HapMap data, a team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard identified hundreds of genomic regions that carry the hallmarks of recent positive natural selection. These regions are large, often extending for millions of nucleotides and including multiple genes. Thus, the researchers developed a set of computational guidelines to help locate the single letter changes that formed the focal points for evolutionary change.
The work uncovered several intriguing genetic variations that could provide novel insights into the biological forces underlying natural selection in humans. Two differences, which are common primarily in Asian populations, lie within the EDAR and EDA2R genes. In humans, these genes function together to form hair follicles and sweat glands, as well as other structures.
The researchers also identified DNA variations in African populations that may be linked to resistance to Lassa fever, a viral infection common in Western Africa. These changes lie in two genes, LARGE and DMD, which are involved in viral entry into cells. The findings help underscore one of the study's key themes -- that multiple genes, acting together in the same biological process, often show signs of positive selection, both in humans and other organisms. Integrating these data may bolster efforts to understand the biological consequences of human genetic variation.
"Human history and the genome have been dramatically shaped by environmental factors, diet and infectious disease," said co-first author Pardis Sabeti, Ph.D., who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "The gene variants identified in our study open new windows on these evolutionary forces and provide a launching point for future biological studies of human adaptation."
The effort to build the improved HapMap relied heavily on the high-throughput genotyping capacity of Perlegen Sciences, Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. The firm tested virtually the entire known catalog of human SNP variation on the HapMap samples, as well as contributed some of its own resources to make the map possible.
"The Phase II HapMap is truly an example of a public-private collaboration at its best. It's wonderful that everyone pulled together to create this improved map, which is a priceless tool for all researchers seeking to use genomic information to improve human health, be they in government, academia or industry," said Kelly A. Frazer, Ph.D., formerly vice president of genomics at Perlegen and now director of genomic biology at Scripps Genomic Medicine Program, in La Jolla, Calif.
Researchers can access the Phase II map data through the HapMap Data Coordination Center ( www.hapmap.org ), the NIH-funded National Center for Biotechnology Information's dbSNP (http: // www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/index.html ) and the JSNP Database in Japan (http: //snp.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp).
NHGRI is one of 27 institutes and centers at NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. NHGRI's Division of Extramural Research supports grants for research and for training and career development. For more, visit www.genome.gov
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .
Document NIHDOC0020071017e3ah0002v
CONSORTIUM PUBLISHES PHASE II MAP OF HUMAN GENETIC VARIATION
1,805 words

17 October 2007

States News Service

SNS

English

(c) 2007 States News Service
The following information was released by the National Institutes of Health:
The International HapMap Consortium today published analyses of its second-generation map of human genetic variation, which contains three times more markers than the initial version unveiled in 2005. In two papers in the journal Nature, the consortium describes how the higher resolution map offers greater power to detect genetic variants involved in common diseases, explore the structure of human genetic variation and learn how environmental factors, such as infectious agents, have shaped the human genome.
Any two humans are more than 99 percent the same at the genetic level. However, it is important to understand the small fraction of genetic material that varies among people because it can help explain individual differences in susceptibility to disease, response to drugs or reaction to environmental factors. Variation in the human genome is organized into local neighborhoods called haplotypes, which usually are inherited as intact blocks of information. Consequently, researchers refer to the map of human genetic variation as a haplotype map, or HapMap.
The International HapMap Consortium is a public-private partnership of researchers and funding agencies from Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States. The U.S. component of the project is led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) on behalf of the 20 institutes, centers and offices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that contributed funding.
"Thanks to this consortium's pioneering efforts to map human genetic variation, we are already seeing a windfall of results that are shedding new light on the complex genetics of common diseases," said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "This new approach to research, called genome-wide association studies, has recently uncovered new clues to the genetic factors involved in type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis and many other disorders. These results have opened up new avenues of research, taking us to places we had not imagined in our search for better ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease."
The second-generation haplotype map, or Phase II HapMap, contains more than 3.1 million genetic variants, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) - three times more than the approximately 1 million SNPs contained in the initial version. The more SNPs that are on the map, the more precisely researchers can focus their hunts for genetic variants involved in disease. The rapid growth of genome-wide association studies over the past year and half has been fueled by the HapMap consortium's decision to make its SNP datasets immediately available in public databases, even before the first and the second versions of the map were fully completed.
Researchers around the globe have now associated more than 60 common DNA variants with risk of disease or related traits, with most of the findings coming in the past nine months. As just one example, the Wellcome Trust consortium in England looked at 14,000 cases and 3,000 shared controls, finding variants associated with increased risk of bipolar disorder, coronary artery disease, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
"We are thrilled that the worldwide scientific community is taking advantage of this powerful new tool and we anticipate even more exciting findings in the future. The improved SNP coverage offered by the Phase II HapMap, along with better statistical methods, promises to further increase the accuracy and reliability of genome-wide association studies," said Gil McVean, Ph.D., of the University of Oxford in England, who co-led the group that analyzed the HapMap data.
Another analysis leader, Mark Daly, Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., said, "In addition to providing a critical backbone for standard genome-wide association studies, the Phase II HapMap identifies additional features of human genetic variation that will bolster efforts to pinpoint rarer disease mutations."
The Phase II HapMap was produced using the same DNA samples used in the Phase I HapMap. That DNA came from blood collected from 270 volunteers from four geographically diverse populations: Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese in Tokyo; Han Chinese in Beijing; and Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe. No medical or personal identifying information was obtained from the donors, but the samples were labeled by population group.
To provide information on less common variations and to enable researchers to conduct genome-wide association studies in additional populations, NHGRI plans to extend the HapMap even further. Among the populations donating additional DNA samples are: Luhya in Webuye, Kenya; Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya; Tuscans in Italy; Gujarati Indian in Houston; Chinese in metropolitan Denver; people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles; and people of African ancestry in the southwestern United States.
In its overview paper in Nature, the consortium estimates that the Phase II HapMap contains 25 percent to 35 percent of common genetic variation in the populations surveyed. The consortium also confirmed that use of Phase II HapMap data has helped to improve the coverage of various commercial technologies currently being used to identify disease-related variants in genome-wide association studies. Researchers did note, however, that current technologies tend to provide better coverage in non-African populations than in African populations because of the greater degree of genetic variability in African populations.
The overview paper also reports that the Phase II HapMap has provided new insights into the structure of human genetic variation. One new finding was the surprising extent of recent common ancestry found in all of the population groups. Taking advantage of the map's increased resolution, the researchers identified stretches of identical DNA between pairs of donor chromosomes and then compared these stretches both within and across individuals. Their analysis showed that 10 to 30 percent of the DNA segments analyzed in each population showed shared regions indicating descent from a common ancestor within 10 to 100 generations.
In addition, the new map enabled researchers to quantify more precisely the rates of shuffling, or recombination, seen among different gene classes in the human genome. In their overview paper, researchers report that recombination rates vary more than six-fold among different gene classes. The highest rates of recombination were found among genes involved in the body's immune defense, while the lowest rates appear among genes for chaperones, which are proteins that play a crucial role in making sure other proteins are folded properly. In general, genes that code for proteins associated with the surface of cells and external functions, such as signaling, were found to be more prone to recombination than those that code for proteins internal to cells.
While the reasons for the varying recombination rates remain to be determined, the findings pose interesting evolutionary questions. In their paper, researchers suggest that one explanation may be that some recombinations in areas of the genome that affect responses to infectious agents or other environmental pressures may be selected for because they provide a survival advantage.
A related study appearing in the same issue of Nature describes how the enhanced map can help pinpoint pivotal changes in the human genome that arose in recent history. These changes, now common among various populations worldwide, became prevalent through natural selection - meaning they were somehow beneficial to human health. Although these DNA variants may still be important, their biological significance remains largely unknown.
Using the Phase II HapMap data, a team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard identified hundreds of genomic regions that carry the hallmarks of recent positive natural selection. These regions are large, often extending for millions of nucleotides and including multiple genes. Thus, the researchers developed a set of computational guidelines to help locate the single letter changes that formed the focal points for evolutionary change.
The work uncovered several intriguing genetic variations that could provide novel insights into the biological forces underlying natural selection in humans. Two differences, which are common primarily in Asian populations, lie within the EDAR and EDA2R genes. In humans, these genes function together to form hair follicles and sweat glands, as well as other structures.
The researchers also identified DNA variations in African populations that may be linked to resistance to Lassa fever, a viral infection common in Western Africa. These changes lie in two genes, LARGE and DMD, which are involved in viral entry into cells. The findings help underscore one of the study's key themes - that multiple genes, acting together in the same biological process, often show signs of positive selection, both in humans and other organisms. Integrating these data may bolster efforts to understand the biological consequences of human genetic variation.
"Human history and the genome have been dramatically shaped by environmental factors, diet and infectious disease," said co-first author Pardis Sabeti, Ph.D., who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "The gene variants identified in our study open new windows on these evolutionary forces and provide a launching point for future biological studies of human adaptation."
The effort to build the improved HapMap relied heavily on the high-throughput genotyping capacity of Perlegen Sciences, Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. The firm tested virtually the entire known catalog of human SNP variation on the HapMap samples, as well as contributed some of its own resources to make the map possible. "The Phase II HapMap is truly an example of a public-private collaboration at its best. It's wonderful that everyone pulled together to create this improved map, which is a priceless tool for all researchers seeking to use genomic information to improve human health, be they in government, academia or industry," said Kelly A. Frazer, Ph.D., formerly vice president of genomics at Perlegen and now director of genomic biology at Scripps Genomic Medicine Program, in La Jolla, Calif.
Researchers can access the Phase II map data through the HapMap Data Coordination Center ( www.hapmap.org ), the NIH-funded National Center for Biotechnology Information's dbSNP ( www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/index.html ) and the JSNP Database in Japan ( http://snp.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp ).
NHGRI is one of 27 institutes and centers at NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. NHGRI's Division of Extramural Research supports grants for research and for training and career development. For more, visit www.genome.gov
The National Institutes of Health - "The Nation's Medical Research Agency" - is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more, visit www.nih.gov .
10/17/07 16:00:30
Document SNS0000020071017e3ah000gq

This Executive Level Report Analyzes The Next Billion Mobile Subscriptions In Order To Provide Clients With A Clearer Understanding Of The Significance Of The Emerging Markets
730 words

17 October 2007

M2 Presswire

MTPW

English

(c) 2007 M2 Communications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Dublin - Research and Markets ( http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c71860 ) has announced the addition of "The Next Billion: How Emerging Markets are Shaping the Mobile Industry" to their offering
At the end of 2006, there were nearly 2.8bn mobile subscriptions around the world, translating to a penetration rate of 44%. The share of the population with mobile subscriptions is far higher in the richer economies of the world than in the emerging markets - regions such as Western Europe exceed 100%, whereas in most of Africa and Southeast Asia penetration rates average less than 20%. It is thus evident that the bulk of future mobile growth will come from emerging economies.
Indeed, we forecast that the global mobile market will add "the next billion" subscriptions by year-end 2009 and expects roughly 85% of the next billion to come from emerging markets.
This executive-level report analyzes the next billion mobile subscriptions in order to provide clients with a clearer understanding of the significance of the emerging markets in future mobile market growth. It offers trends in penetration and total subscriptions as well as figures for such measures as user penetration, churn rates, data ARPS and MOUs for 20 key countries. The report also compares developed market and emerging market forecasts for mobile demand through 2010 by both total subscriptions (prepaid and postpaid) and ARPS (voice and data), as well as forecasts for revenue and other measures.
Key questions answered
-Who are the next billion subscribers?
-Where do the next billion live?
-What do they earn and spend?
-What do they want and need in terms of their telecommunications offerings?
-What will be the impact on operators?
-What will be the impact on handset and infrastructure suppliers?
Target audience