Bisexual Squid? Not Exactly — Just Lonely

A female Octopoteuthis deletron observed by researchers

Male deep-sea squid will get it on with just about anything with tentacles.

A team of researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute observed nearly 20 years of mating behavior of Octopoteuthis deletron, recorded on video by remote-controlled vehicles up to half a mile below the surface of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Male squid were just as likely to try to mate with other males as with other females, the researchers found.

It's not the first time same-sex sex has been noted among squid and octopus species, but it's the first time it's been found to be equally as common as male-female sex, the researchers said.

Of the 108 squid the researchers caught on video, they could determine the sex of 39 individual squid: 19 females and 20 males, a roughly equal and representative split, the researchers said. Of these, there were nine males and 10 females that showed evidence of mating. So the scientists, led by Hendrik-Jan Hoving, figured that male squid were trying to mate equally with both males and females.

Reported the New York Times:

The way the squid mate is something else. Little is known about the details but it seems that the male ejaculates a packet of sperm at the mating partner, and the packet turns inside out, essentially shooting the sperm contained in a membrane into the flesh of the partner, where they stay embedded until the female (if the shooter has been lucky) is ready to fertilize its eggs. If males are the recipient of these rocket sperm, they are just stuck with them. It is the kind of mating that would make a good video game.

The embedded sperm are visible as white dots on the squids' bodies, which is how the researchers were able to determine which squid had been involved in attempts at breeding.

Wanton? Sure. But the male squid's same-sex mating behavior isn't evidence that it's gay, researchers said. More that it's lonely. Squid live alone in the deep, dark sea and have few encounters with other squid. It's advantageous for the species to mate indiscriminately: better to have quick sex with all comers, even if some are guys, than to miss out on any opportunity to reproduce.

"This behavior further exemplifies the 'live fast and die young' life strategy of many cephalopods," Hoving told ABC Science Online.

The study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biology Letters.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/22/bisexual-squid-not-exactly-%e2%80%94-just-lonely/#ixzz1Ygz3BhwC

Out and Proud to Serve

WASHINGTON — Now it can be told: A prominent gay rights advocate who called himself J. D. Smith is in fact 1st Lt. Josh Seefried, a 25-year-old active-duty Air Force officer. At 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, he dropped the pseudonym, freed from keeping his sexual orientation secret like an estimated tens of thousands of others in the United States military.

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Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Lt. Josh Seefried: “When I go to a Christmas party, I can actually bring the person I'm in a relationship with. And that's a huge relief.”

Related

• Times Topic: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

“I always had the feeling that I was lying to them and that I couldn’t be part of the military family,” said Lieutenant Seefried, who helped found an undercover group of 4,000 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender active-duty service members. “I feel like I can get to know my people again. When I go to a Christmas party, I can actually bring the person I’m in a relationship with. And that’s a huge relief.”

The 18-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy officially ended at midnight and with it the discharges that removed more than 13,000 men and women from the military under the old ban on openly gay troops. To mark the historic change, gay rights groups are planning celebrations across the country while Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will usher in the new era at a Pentagon news conference.

The other side will be heard, too: Elaine Donnelly, a longtime opponent of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, has already said that “as of Tuesday the commander in chief will own the San Francisco military he has created.” Two top Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee — the chairman, Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, and Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina — have asked the Pentagon to delay the new policy, saying commanders in the field are not ready. But the Pentagon has moved on.

No one knows how many gay members of the military will come out on Tuesday, although neither gay rights advocates nor Pentagon officials are expecting big numbers, at least not initially.

“The key point is that it no longer matters,” said Doug Wilson, a top Pentagon spokesman. “Our feeling is that the day will proceed like any other day.”

Gen. Carter F. Ham, who was a co-director of a Pentagon study on repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” said last week that he expected the effect to be “pretty inconsequential.”

That is not the case for Lieutenant Seefried, an Air Force Academy graduate and a budget analyst at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, who had to work in the shadows with the Pentagon in an 18-month effort to change the policy.

As Lieutenant Seefried told it in a recent telephone interview, in late 2009 a civilian instructor at a technical training course found out through social networking sites that the lieutenant is gay and began harassing him. Lieutenant Seefried reported the instructor in early 2010, and the instructor responded by outing him. Under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Lieutenant Seefried was temporarily removed from his job. But around the same time, Robert M. Gates, who was then defense secretary, changed the rules so service members could not be discharged by third-party outings. “That saved my career,” Lieutenant Seefried said.

Back in his job, Lieutenant Seefried began building what eventually became OutServe, a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender active-duty service members connected by secret Facebook groups and e-mail lists. In April 2010, he spoke for the first time publicly against “don’t ask, don’t tell” at the State University of New York at Oswego, but under a pseudonym he had hastily created for the occasion — J.D., for his initials, Josh David, and Smith because it is his mother’s maiden name. He asked the group of about 70 students and administrators at Oswego not to take pictures of him or out him on the Internet. No one did.

“It was a risk I was willing to take,” he said. “There were a lot of times I should have been caught last year doing this, but I never was.”

When Lieutenant Seefried appeared on television, his face was always in shadow, although he did not disguise his voice. “I thought that was too creepy,” he said. “I wanted to appear as human as possible.”

Related

• Times Topic: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Then last summer, something surprising happened — the Pentagon reached out to him. The department was conducting a broad study of the effects of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” but was stumped by how to interview active-duty gay and lesbian service members without having to discharge them under the rules of the policy. Working through a civilian liaison to OutServe, Lieutenant Seefried gave the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation — which was conducting a survey of service members — access to his database.

When the final study was presented to the Senate, many of the quotations read at the hearings were from members of OutServe.

In December, he was invited to the White House when President Obama signed into law the bill repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“I was there as Josh,” he said. “You can’t go into these events with a pseudonym.” Although other gay rights advocates knew who he really was, the Defense Department never knew — or at least chose not to know.

On Tuesday, the lieutenant will appear at a Capitol Hill news conference with senators who pushed for the repeal. In October comes the publication of a book he edited, “Our Time: Breaking the Silence of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”’ (Penguin Press).

Lieutenant Seefried said he was happy to say goodbye to J. D. Smith. “There’s not a day when you don’t think of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ when you live under this policy,” he said. “It consumes your thought process, it consumes your future, because of the fear of getting caught. I never thought I would see the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ during my military career.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/after-toiling-in-shadows-to-end-dont-ask-dont-tell-1st-lt-josh-seefried-greets-a-new-era.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Beauty bias works both ways, study says

Researchers from Germany find the well-known beauty bias is actually flipped when attractive job candidates are appraised by a same-sex evaluator. Researchers from the U.S., separately, show a similarly negative effect when good-looking people have their apologies judged by their own gender.

It isn't easy being beautiful — at least, not all the time.

Two new studies have identified a surprising penalty for good looks, with implications for professional and personal settings alike.

Researchers from Germany find the well-known beauty bias is actually flipped when attractive job candidates are appraised by a same-sex evaluator. Researchers from the U.S., separately, show a similarly negative effect when good-looking people have their apologies judged by their own gender.

"There are a lot of studies that show attractive people make more money, are more likely to get hired and get lighter sentences in court when they're convicted of crimes. But this shows the benefits might not be across the board," says April Phillips, co-author of the American research.

Phillips' study, to appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Personal Relationships, found that a beautiful woman's apology was judged by other women as less sincere than the exact same mea culpa of a less attractive female.

Not surprisingly, the opposite effect was seen when the apology was evaluated by men, with the woman's beauty increasing the likelihood that she'd be let off the hook.

"Forgiveness is a multi-faceted process," says Phillips, an associate professor at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma. "This is the first step in showing that the acceptance and effectiveness of an apology varies based on things other than the quality of the apology or the relationship you have with the other person."

Phillips suggests the effect has much to do with the "overall mate value" of the other person. She explains that men would want to forgive a beautiful woman so the possibility of a relationship wasn't eliminated, whereas a woman might see her as a threat and thus be less open to a pardon.

This premise is explored in the German research, published in the August issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The study found beauty biases with job candidates were partially mediated by a desire for social contact. That is, the evaluators wanted to be friends and co-workers with the attractive opposite-sex applicants, but not the attractive same-sex applicants.

Notably, this effect didn't hold true for evaluators with high self-esteem. Study co-author Maria Agthe explains that people's "responses were driven primarily by a desire to avoid perceived self-threats posed by attractive same-sex targets."

The research is among the first to demonstrate that although there exists a positive beauty bias in hiring practices, it can work in the opposite direction when the applicant is being judged by a member of his or her own gender — despite evaluators' belief that they aren't susceptible to appearance-based prejudice.

"These findings have implications for potential biases in the way organizations hire or accept people, make decisions about salaries and promotions, and so on," says Agthe, a post-doctoral researcher at The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

"Organizational decision-makers often are faced with difficult choices among candidates who possess similar levels of qualifications, and even small preferential biases based on appearance might end up having a critical impact.

http://www.canada.com/life/relationships/Beauty+bias+works+both+ways+study+says/5401671/story.html

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Canada likely to follow U.K's lifting of ban on gay men's blood donations

The U.K. joins countries such as Australia and Italy that have altered their bans on gay men giving blood or refocused their eligibility criteria.

OTTAWA — Health ministers in the United Kingdom decided Thursday to lift an indefinite ban on gay men donating blood, a move Canada seems likely to follow.

The U.K.'s rules from the 1980s said all men who have had sex with men, even once, cannot give blood. But the new policy allows men to donate as long as they haven't had sex with another man in the past 12 months. The change does not alter the risk of contracting disease, health officials said, so people can be sure blood is safe.

Canadian Blood Services currently bans donation from all men who have had sex with another man since 1977, citing statistics that say these men are at greater risk for being infected with HIV/AIDS.

But Dr. Dana Devine, the agency's vice-president of medical, scientific and research affairs, said Thursday officials have already begun looking at changing their permanent deferral of gay men.

"Certainly we already have a process underway where we're looking to see about changing from a permanent to a time-based deferral," Devine said. The agency is in partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

"It's a step-wise thing and we have lots of consultation to do," Devine said. "(But) I do think that it will happen in Canada."

The U.K. joins countries such as Australia and Italy that have altered their bans on gay men giving blood or refocused their eligibility criteria.

Physicians, student groups and gay rights' activists in Canada have long protested the policy to exclude men who have had sex with men from donating blood, calling it outdated, unfair and offensive.

Canadian Blood Services, however, has refrained from change, citing the need for more scientific research, the public's still-vivid concerns over the tainted blood scandal of the 1980s, and Health Canada holding final approval over any policy alterations.

"People, I think, appropriately, carry the recollection of that," Devine said of the blood scandal. "We're not going to do anything that adds increased risk."

Doug Elliott, a Toronto lawyer who represented the Canadian AIDS Societyduring the inquiry into the blood scandal, said Canadians pay a lot of attention to what happens in the United Kingdom, and Thursday's vote will help crack their resistance to change.

"The challenge is making change palatable to various stakeholders, including Health Canada, the government and the people of Canada," Elliott said, adding that tests to screen for HIV/AIDS have vastly improved over the years.

"Unfortunately, I fear that it may take another crisis to do it," such as people dying over a shortage of blood donors. "I hope it doesn't get that far."

Helen Kennedy, executive director of Equality For Gays and Lesbians Everywhere Canada, argued that Canadian Blood Services has all the scientific research it needs and should get in line with other countries.

"The science is there, obviously it is," she said. "These are political issues."

The U.K. lifting its lifetime ban will help engender trust in the health system and end discrimination, said Dr. Norbert Gilmore, director of chronic viral disease clinics at the McGill University Health Centre.

"I think people have to get their heads around a lot of issues. We just have to make sure that everyone is on side," said Gilmore, who called the lifetime ban "antiquated" in the Canadian Medical Association Journal last year. "I think it's just going to be a matter of time."

http://www.canada.com/health/men/Canada+likely+follow+lifting+blood+donations/5373086/story.html

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Finger length may have link to penis length: Study

Men whose index fingers are shorter than their ring fingers may have longer penises, according to a South Korean study published in the Asian Journal of Andrology.

Hands may say more about their owners than commonly thought, especially in the case of men.

Men whose index fingers are shorter than their ring fingers may have longer penises, according to a South Korean study published in the Asian Journal of Andrology.

"According to our data ... the shorter index (second) finger than ring (fourth) finger you have, the longer stretched penile length you have," wrote Tae Beom Kim at the urology department of Gachon University Gil Hospital in Incheon, South Korea, in reply to questions from Reuters.

Previous studies have shown strong evidence that prenatal testosterone may determine finger development as well as penile length, a relationship that Kim and his colleagues launched a study to focus on.

The study involved 144 men suffering from urological problems that did not affect the length of their penis, which was measured under anesthesia.

The measurements were later compared to the difference in length between their second and fourth fingers on the right hand. Previous studies have shown that the right hand may be more sensitive to the influence of testosterone.

The so-called "digit ratio" in this study refers to the length of the index finger divided by the length of the ring finger. The lower the ratio, the study suggests, the longer the penis may be.

The findings offered "circumstantial evidence that prenatal testosterone is responsible for both traits (penile length and digit formation,)" said Denise McQuade at Skidmore College in New York, who was not involved in the study.

"Digit ratio is non-invasive and easy to measure, yet may provide clues about an individual's prenatal history. Thus, combined with other information, digit ratio offers the potential for clinical usefulness," wrote McQuade in an email reply to questions from Reuters.

Female index and ring fingers tend to be about the same length, she added.

A study last year said that men with long index fingers have a lower risk ofprostate cancer.

Researchers at Britain's Warwick University and the Institute of Cancer Researcher found that men whose index finger is longer than their ring finger were one-third less likely to develop the disease than men with the opposite pattern of finger length.

http://www.canada.com/health/men/Finger+length+have+link+penis+length+Study/5045325/story.html

http://www.canada.com/health/Study+links+finger+length+prostate+cancer+risk/3910957/story.html

Green-glowing cats are new tool in AIDS research

A green-glowing cat is seen in this undated handout photo. Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a genome-based immunization strategy to fight feline AIDS and illuminate ways to combat human HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

U.S. scientists have developed a strain of green-glowing cats with cells that resist infection from a virus that causes feline AIDS, a finding that may help prevent the disease in cats and advance AIDS research in people.

The study, published on Sunday in the journal Nature Methods, involved inserting monkey genes that block the virus into feline eggs, or oocytes, before they are fertilized.

The scientists also inserted jellyfish genes that make the modified cells glow an eerie green colour -- making the altered genes easy to spot.

Tests on cells taken from the cats show they are resistant to feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, which causes AIDS in cats.

"This provides the unprecedented capability to study the effects of giving AIDS-protection genes into an AIDS-vulnerable animal," Dr. Eric Poeschla of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Poeschla said that besides people, cats and to some extent, chimpanzees, are the only mammals that develop a naturally occurring virus that causes AIDS.

"Cats suffer from this all over the world," he said.

Just as the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, does in people, FIV works by wiping out infection-fighting T-cells.

FIV infects mostly feral cats, of which there are half billion in the world, Poeschla said. It is transmitted by biting, largely by males defending their territory, but companion cats are affected as well.

In both humans and cats, proteins called restriction factors that normally fight off viral infections are defenseless against HIV and FIV because the viruses evolved potent counter-weapons. But certain monkey versions of these restriction factors are capable of fighting the virus and the team used one such gene from the rhesus monkey.

For the team, which included collaborators in Japan, the trick was to get the monkey gene for the restriction factor -- known as TRIMCyp -- into cats to block cells from becoming infected with the virus.

GREEN FLUORESCENT PROTEIN GENE

To do that, they used a harmless virus to insert the genes into the eggs, a process that has already been done in other mammals including mice, pigs, sheep and marmoset monkeys.

To make it easier to check which cells had the monkey gene, the team also inserted a green fluorescent protein gene from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria that makes them glow green.

"We did it to mark cells easily just by looking under the microscope or shining a light on the animal."

The method worked so well nearly all offspring from the modified eggs have the restriction factor genes. And these defense proteins are made throughout the cat's body.

The team has mated two of the three original green-glowing cats, which have produced litters totaling eight kittens which make glowing cells as well.

But the point is not to breed generations of disease-resistant, glowing cats. Rather, the team plans to study these felines as a new way to develop treatments for HIV and the feline version of the disease.

Researchers said the work has several potential uses.

"This technology can be applied to a wide range of species, for many of which there are clear applications and potential benefits," Dr. Laurence Tiley of the University of Cambridge said in a statement.

"It will be interesting to see how enthusiastically this capability in cats is received and adopted by the HIV and neurobiological research communities and what other research opportunities it offers. A representative non-primate animal model would be a fantastic new tool for studying HIV pathogenesis."

So far, Poeschla's team has only tested cells taken from the animals and found they were resistant to FIV. But eventually they plan to expose the cats to the virus and see if they are protected.

"If you could show that you confer protection to these animals, it would give us a lot of information about protecting humans," Poeschla said.

For cats, this may eventually lead to gene therapy or new drug treatments for FIV, he said.

http://www.canada.com/health/Topic/HIV+and+AIDS/Green+glowing+cats+tool+AIDS+research/5387959/story.html

Amphetamine-type drugs nearly as common as cannabis: UN

Police seizures of all amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) rose between 2005 and 2009 -- except ecstasy, which remained constant -- while heroin, cocaine and cannabis held largely stable, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC)

Criminal gangs are selling more cheap and easy-to-make amphetamine-type drugs, such as ecstasy and crystal meth, in new markets, and cannabis is now the only more widely used illegal drug, a United Nations report released on Tuesday said.

The number of methamphetamine pills seized in southeast Asia, for instance, nearly tripled in a year to 93 million in 2009 and then rose to 133 million in 2010, the study said. The number of ATS laboratories raided there also soared.

Police seizures of all amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) rose between 2005 and 2009 -- except ecstasy, which remained constant -- while heroin, cocaine and cannabis held largely stable, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC).

"The ATS market has evolved from a cottage-type industry typified by small-scale manufacturing operations to more of a cocaine or heroin-type market with a higher level of integration and organized crime groups involved throughout the production and supply chain," said UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov.

Several European countries have reported an increase in the use and production of methamphetamine, which is stronger and acts faster than standard amphetamines.

West African countries have started to manufacture the drugs, it said, noting ATS seized in several East Asian countries appear to have originated in West Africa.

Central and South American countries are reporting a rise in ATS manufacturing with laboratories dismantled in Brazil, Guatemala and Nicaragua, the UNDOC report said.

It also highlighted the emergence of new stimulants called analog substances, which fall outside international controls and are widely available on the Internet.

Drugs such as mephedrone or methylenedioxypyrovalerone that were first surfaced last year are sold as "bath salts" or "plant food" and substitute for illegal drugs such as cocaine, it said.

The spreading intravenous use of ATS poses health issues particularly relating to the spread of HIV and AIDS, it noted, citing special concern about this in eastern and southeastern Asia as well as parts of Europe.

SOURCE: 2011 Global ATS Assessment,

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/September/ats-second-most-used-drug-type-in-the-world.html?ref=fs1

http://www.canada.com/health/Topic/HIV+and+AIDS/topic.html

Study: IUD's lower cervical cancer risk

Women who use IUDs are roughly half as likely to develop cervical cancer as women who have never used one, a study found.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Intrauterine devices (IUDs) prevent unwanted pregnancies
• As an added benefit, they may also help protect against cervical cancer
• Women who use IUDs are roughly half as likely to develop cervical cancer

(Health.com) -- Intrauterine devices (IUDs) prevent unwanted pregnancies, and as an added benefit they may also help protect against cervical cancer, according to a new study in the Lancet Oncology, a British medical journal.

Women who use IUDs are roughly half as likely to develop cervical cancer as women who have never used one, the study found. Nor does IUD use appear to increase the risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, a known cause of cervical cancer.

European researchers combined and analyzed data from nearly 20,000 women around the world who participated in various studies and surveys between 1985 and 2007. The new analysis does not prove that IUDs directly prevent cervical cancer; it simply suggests that the devices are associated with a lower risk of cancer for reasons that aren't fully understood.

Health.com: Which birth control method is best for you?

"This study does not show cause and effect," says Mehdi Moslemi-Kebria, M.D., a gynecologic oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in the new research. "For that you would need a prospective, randomized study. But this does tell us with pretty good accuracy that an IUD is not a risk factor for cervical cancer."

Compared to women who had never used an IUD, the study participants who had used the devices had 44% lower odds of developing squamous cell carcinoma, by far the most common type of cervical cancer. They also had 54% lower odds of developing adenocarcinoma cancers and a mixed type of cancer known as adenosquamous carcinoma.

Roughly 12,000 women in the U.S. -- the majority of them over 30 -- receive a cervical cancer diagnosis each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most cases are caused by a persistent infection with HPV, a common sexually transmitted virus that is usually defeated by the body's immune system. (Pap smears can tell if HPV is damaging the cervix.)

Health.com: Top 10 myths about safe sex

In the study, which was funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) and several other government and philanthropic organizations, IUD use neither increased nor decreased the risk of HPV infection. The rates of infection were the same among women who had used an IUD as among those who hadn't, even after researchers took into account various risk factors for HPV, such as a woman's number of sexual partners, the number of Pap smears she'd had in her life, and her menopausal status.

Although they have no firm evidence, the researchers speculate that the contraceptive devices may disrupt HPV's cancer-causing mechanism. The devices may cause a low-level immune-system response that fights cancer cells, for instance, or their insertion and withdrawal may physically remove precancerous lesions, the study notes.

Health.com: 7 common birth control side effects

"More research is definitely needed to study the biological mechanisms by which IUDs may induce this risk reduction," says the lead author of the study, Xavier Castellsagué, M.D., a cancer epidemiology researcher at the Institut Català d'Oncologia, in Barcelona, Spain.

Whatever the mechanism, it seems to work quickly. Women who used an IUD for less than a year were no more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer than women who'd had an IUD implanted for several years.

There are two kinds of IUD available in the U.S., both of which are T-shaped and made from molded plastic. One uses copper as a contraceptive, and the other prevents pregnancy by releasing the hormone progestin into the uterus. Both are extremely effective forms of birth control, but because the study did not include data on the type of IUD used, the authors were unable to assess whether one type of IUD is more likely than another to lower the risk of cervical cancer.

Health.com: Amazing moments in birth control

The new findings do not mean that women worried about cervical cancer should be fitted for an IUD, says Karl Ulrich Petry, M.D., a gynecologic oncologist at the Klinikum Wolfsburg, in Germany.

Petry, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, points out that HPV testing and Pap smears already reduce the risk of cervical cancer by 80% to 90%.

"Women in countries with screening programs are well protected," he says. "Cervical cancer is a preventable disease -- we have more tools to prevent this cancer than any other malignancy in humans. Women should really use [HPV] vaccine and screening to protect themselves from this cancer."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/13/health/iud-lower-cervical-cancer-risk/index.html?eref=rss_health&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_health+%28RSS%3A+Health%29

Who Owns Most of the World's Gold?

4% of the World Controls 12.6% of the Gold

With gold prices getting ready to soar, we've decided to find out who owns the most bullion in the world.

It's no surprise that governments, central banks, and investment funds are world's largest holders of gold reserves. These organizations know gold is the ultimate store of value that protects against inflation and offers a safe haven during times of economic and geopolitical turmoil.

To find out who owns the most gold in the world, we referred to data from the International Monetary Fund's International Financial Statistics Report.

The 10 biggest gold owners in the world:

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
10	Netherlands	612.5	61.4%

The Netherland central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, oversees the Dutch national finances, including the country's 612.5 tonnes of gold reserves. The Dutch gold is currently worth over $20 billion and accounts for 61.4% of the country's foreign reserves.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
9	Japan	765.2	2.1%

Although Japan is ninth largest gold owner in the world, its 765.2 tonnes of gold accounts for just 2.1% of the nation's total foreign reserves. On the open market, Japan's gold reserves would fetch approximately $25.4 billion and are managed by the Bank of Japan.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
8	Switzerland	1040.1	37.1%

Conducting Switzerland's monetary policy is the Swiss National Bank, which oversees the country's 1,040.1 tonnes of gold. The gold is believed to be stored in huge underground vaults near the federal Parliament building in Berne, but the Swiss National Bank treats the location of the gold reserves as a secret. With the world's eighth largest reserve of the yellow metal, Switzerland's stockpile would fetch approximately $34.5 billion in today's gold market, accounting for 37.1% of the country's foreign reserves.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
7	China	1054.0	1.8

The world's most populous country also has the world's seventh largest gold reserve. With a population of 1.33 billion, the country holds about $26 worth of gold per person, worth a total of almost $35 billion. The Chinese gold accounts for only 1.8% of the nation's total foreign reserves.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
6	SPDR Gold Shares ETF	1,120.6	n/a

Originally listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2004, SPDR Gold Shares has been one of the fastest growing ETFs in the world. SPDR Gold Shares now trade on the Singapore Stock Exchange as well as the Tokyo Stock Exchange. All of the Trust’s gold is held by the Custodian, HSBC Bank, in their London vault except when the gold has been allocated in the vault of a sub-custodian.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
5	France	2,450.7	72.6%

The Banque De France is responsible for France's gold holdings, which have been reported at about 2,450.7 tonnes by the International Monetary Fund. With the fifth largest gold reserve in the world, France's amount to about $81.3 billion, accounting for 72.6% percent of the country's foreign reserves, which is the second highest percentage of gold in foreign reserves on our top ten list.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
4	Italy	2,451.8	66.5%

The Italian National Bank, Banca D'Italia, manages the country's large gold holdings, which account for 66.5% of its foreign reserves. With approximately 2,451.8 tonnes of gold in reserve, Italy's holdings are very close to France's and are also worth approximately $81.3 billion at current prices.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
3	International Monetary Fund	3,217.3	n/a

The International Monetary Fund oversees the global financial system by following the macroeconomic policies of its member countries 185 member countries. It is an organization formed to stabilize international exchange rates and facilitate development and offers highly leveraged loans mainly to poorer countries. The IMF's gold policies have changed in the last quarter century, but the reserves remain in place for use in stabilizing international markets and aiding national economies. The IMF's official policy on gold as it is stated on the organization's website is governed by the following principles:

• As an undervalued asset held by the IMF, gold provides fundamental strength to its balance sheet. Any mobilization of IMF gold should avoid weakening its overall financial position.
• The IMF should continue to hold a relatively large amount of gold among its assets, not only for prudential reasons, but also to meet unforeseen contingencies.
• The IMF has a systemic responsibility to avoid causing disruptions to the functioning of the gold market.
• Profits from any gold sales should be used whenever feasible to create an investment fund, of which only the income should be used.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
2	Germany	3,412.6	69.5%

The Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, is the most influential member of the European System of Central Banks. With a hefty 3,412.6 tonnes of gold reserves, which are valued at about $113.2 billion at current prices, Germany's gold accounts for almost 70% of the country's total foreign reserves.

Rank	Owner	Tonnes	Share of Foreign Reserves
1	United States	8,133.5	78.3%

The United States holds the largest gold reserve in the world. With 8,133.5 tonnes, the US gold holdings are worth approximately $269.67 billion. This massive gold reserve represents about .9436 an ounce for ever person living in the country. The majority of the American gold is reported to be held in the world famous United States Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, Kentucky, although there is some controversy that suggests otherwise. The remainder of the US reserves are held at the Philadelphia Mint, the Denver Mint, the West Point Bullion Depository and the San Francisco Assay Office.

The top ten largest owners of gold in the world are reported to control a total of 24,258.3 tonnes, or over 855 million ounces. At current spot prices, this gold would be worth approximately $804.35 billion and represents about 15.4% of all the gold ever mined.

We continue to urge all Gold World readers to buy and hold both gold and silver in anticipation of significantly higher precious metal prices.

Good Investing,

Luke Burgess

http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/who-owns-worlds-gold/2491