The boys and girls in Fifth Class who took part in the Readathon will receive their prizes on Monday.

The countdown to the London 2012 Games began in earnest today as the world watched the Olympic Flame being lit in ancient Olympia.

The traditional ceremony took place under baking sun and tight security in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Greece, birthplace of the ancient Games.

Dressed in robes, Ino Menegaki, an actress who has studied classical song, music and movement, played the key role of the high priestess who lights the flame from the rays of the sun.

She lifted a blazing torch from a parabolic mirror so it is lit as if beamed by the sun’s rays from the Greek god of the sun to guarantee the purity of the flame, according to tradition.

This is the only way the Olympic flame can be lit, again as stated by ancient rituals.

The torch for the London Games will set off on a seven-day journey across Greece before it leaves for Britain on May 18th.

A Traveller, a special Olympian and a garda will join six Irish Olympic medallists from the last half century in the Dublin relay of the torch next month.

The relay will inspire a generation and lift the spirits of people in Britain and the world, Games chief Sebastian Coe said today at the lighting ceremony.

“We promise to protect the Flame; to cherish its traditions and to stage an uplifting torch relay of which we can all be proud and which can inspire a generation,” Mr Coe said in his brief speech in front of the International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge.

“As torchbearers lift the Olympic flame in the days and months ahead, it is our hope that they will also lift the spirits and hopes of people across Britain and across world,” said the former Olympic champion.

“We will involve young people from all backgrounds, cultures and faith groups in the torch relay, reflecting London’s immense diversity and creativity as a global destination and voice for young people,” said Mr Coe.

“This is the second time the people of the UK have gathered here to celebrate igniting of the flame,” he said.

“In 1948, shortly after the Second World War, my predecessor stood where I am today and made the first tentative steps in turning the world from war to sport.”

“We find ourselves in challenging times again and turn to sport once more to connect the world in a global celebration of achievement and inspiration.”

London is the only city to have lit the torch twice in Olympia.

The 70-day torch relay will travel 12,800 km around Britain, taking in 1,018 villages and the 1,085-metre summit of Snowdon, before culminating with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron in the Olympic Stadium on the opening day of the Games on July 27th.

The relay will also take in landmarks around Britain with the flame travelling by canal boat, cable car, tram, steam train, hot air balloon and even motorcycle sidecar on the Isle of Man TT course.

More than 95 per cent of the population will be within an hour of the route.

Among the 41 torch bearers to carry the flame in Dublin are Eurovision duo Jedward (John and Edward Grimes) who will carry it together. The pair are keen cross-country runners and completed the Los Angeles marathon in March.

A detail from Desmond Kinney’s 1974 Táin Wall off Nassau Street in Dublin depicting Cúchulainn and Ferdia in single combat. New DNA technology means Irish people can trace their ancestry and while they obviously cannot trace a lineage to legendary heroes, the process can identify links to ancient royal Irish families.

WHOSE BLOOD courses through your veins? Could you be a descendant of a Viking warrior or a Berber pirate? Or perhaps you are related to the Uí Neill chieftains or the kings of Laighin (Leinster)?

If so your genes will carry the proof, and a new company set up by scientists offers a service that can reveal your genetic heritage.

Today sees the launch of “Ireland’s DNA”, a direct to customer genetic ancestry service. “We are planning it as a national project. The more people that get involved, the more we can understand about Irish history from the resulting dataset,” says Dr Gianpiero Cavalleri, one of three founders of the company.

Cavalleri is a biomedical research lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and heads its epilepsy genetics group. The Irish project grew out of a similar undertaking that started about six months ago in Scotland.

And that in turn came out of a book examining the genetic ancestry of Scotland, The Scots: A Genetic Journey. The authors were Dr James Wilson, a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh who works on the genetic roots of disease, and historian Alistair Moffat.

“There was huge public interest in the book,” Dr Cavalleri says, so much so that the three decided to set up a company, Scotland’s DNA, to help finance further study of the country’s collective genome.

“Now we are going to use the same concept for Ireland,” he says. He got the idea some years ago while at Stanford University. He became fascinated with the idea that you could identify past human migration by looking at the male-only part of the genome, the Y chromosome.

As males of a given lineage began their migration out of Africa, some would have been more successful than others. Untold numbers would have been killed off, but many continued to branch out into Europe and Asia. Successful migrants would have left their mark behind in the Y chromosome.

He realised that people were interested to know their links to past generations. “With DNA you can really go deep into the past to learn where your ancestors came from,” he says.

A decade ago it was tremendously expensive to deliver a complete genome but today prices have fallen and it is feasible to think of using DNA technology to identify ancestry. About 20,000 genomes have been completed so far by labs around the world and this has opened up the possibility of direct Y chromosome comparisons between individuals and groups.

The more genomes completed, the more the resolution improves, and the better the ability to see back in time. “Up until recently we might have had a genetic signature for the northwest of Ireland collectively as being Irish. What has happened since is we can split up the Irish type. The higher resolution comes from the sequencing of the human genome.”

It all comes down to comparisons. “We look for markers and see what they are telling us,” he says. “A marker is part of the DNA that is different between people. Those differences arise with each generation.”

Most of our genome is a mix of our mother’s and father’s DNA, but the Y chromosome does not mix in a substantial way. Cavalleri likens it to the Olympic torch as individual runners carry it from city to city on the way to the games.

The same torch is passed from person to person but imagine that each person is able to leave behind a mark on the torch, a small spelling change in the DNA. “By looking at those spelling changes you get a sense of how those people have moved. After all, we are part of one big pedigree.” It is all about knowing what markers are hidden in a genome pointing towards one ancestry or another.

Almost 1,000 people have so far paid to have their DNA ancestry assessed in Scotland and the work is throwing up some surprises, Cavalleri says. For example, an estimated 1 per cent of all Scotsmen are direct descendants of the Berber and Tuareg tribesmen of the Sahara, a staggering number given the lineage is around 5,600 years old.

Scots comedian Fred MacAulay assumed he had Viking origins – via Mac-Olaf or son of Olaf. This, though, proved to be wrong, Cavalleri says. MacAulay’s DNA shows that his ancestors were not Hebridean Vikings but Irish, probably a man sold in Dublin’s ninth-century slave markets and carried off. “What we think happened is the Vikings took individuals from Ireland back to Viking bases and they had children,” he says.

“There is a fascination with this type of work,” he says, and people can now participate via the company. The male Y chromosome can be traced but it is also possible to track female lines via mitochondrial DNA only passed along by female lineages.

It costs €250 to analyse both the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA and €210 for either one or the other. Women don’t have a Y chromosome but often co-opt either a brother’s or a father’s DNA to show the ancestry, Cavalleri says.

The data is heavily secured and can only be used for one purpose. “The data is all stored separately on a server, it is not shared with anyone,” he says. “It is only used for ancestry. It is not used for any medical purposes. It is only used to study the history of Ireland and Scotland.”

Each person gets a web page and an account and are told the distribution of their particular maternal and paternal DNA type. The analysis will show this distribution across the world, as far back as Africa, but right up to where the type is found today, he says.

For more information see irelandsdna.com

Researching royalty: DNA fit for kings

MANY FAMILIES like to lay claim to being descended from Irish kings and today DNA can help prove this relatedness. While many family names are associated with one king or another, genetic markers can deliver the proof.

Ireland before the arrival of the Normans was dynastic, with powerful local warlords controlling territories. Their high positions in society also provided the opportunity to deliver many offspring, explains Dr Gianpiero Cavalleri, a geneticist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. It means that many of the genes passed forward into later generations had their origins in a powerful dynastic leader.

The important families are well known here, for example, the Uí Néills in Ulster begun by fifth-century warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages. Family names associated with him include O’Neill, O’Conner, O’Donnell, McLoughlin, O’Rourke and others. These surnames are associated with one particular type of Y chromosome, the male-only part of the genome.

The Eoganachta were another important dynasty in fifth-century Munster led by Conall Corc, descended from founder Eoghan-Mor. This family, with surnames such as O’Donoghue, Hayes, O’Keeffe and O’Sullivan, have a different Y chromosome type.

The Eoganachta were displaced in the 10th century by the Dalcassians, originally descended many centuries earlier from Cormac Cas, Cavalleri says. Family names here include O’Brien, Kennedy, McGrath and O’Casey, to name a few.

Then there were the kings of Laighin (Leinster) led by Dermot McMurrough who invited the Normans into Ireland. Names here include Kearney, Kinsella and McMurrough.

Few leaders had the genetic impact of the great 13th-century Mongol warrior Genghis Khan. Clearly he procreated where ever he went and today his Y chromsome is seen in 0.5 per cent of the world population, or about 16 million men. – Dick Ahlstrom

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GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor

Next summer, an A-level student from Belfast is hoping to become the youngest Irish person to reach the top of Mount Everest, but it’s not the record he is chasing, it’s the accomplishment

MATTHEW TAYLOR, a Belfast A-level student, is aiming to become the youngest Irish person to achieve the summit of Mount Everest – a dream he has entertained since his early teenage years. Sometime in the early summer of next year he hopes to be on top of the world; he will be just 19.

When, as a 13-year-old, he was first on the 850-metre Slieve Donard mountain in the Mournes in Co Down, Taylor began forming the ambition that eventually he would climb a mountain more than 10 times that height: the 8,848-metre Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world.

His first experience of hill-walking was as part of the Duke of Edinburgh scheme when, with fellow students and some teachers from the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (commonly known as Inst), he camped overnight on the Mourne Mountains. “Right from that moment I was hooked – I just found it really exciting,” he says.

When 18-year-old Taylor began telling his Inst classmates of his plans in the past year or so, some of the reaction was typical of what you would expect from teenage boys. “‘You’re going to do Everest? Aye, right!’ was what quite a number said,” he says. “But there were others too who said, ‘Go for it, Matthew.’ My teachers were also extremely supportive.”

Before he can get to the Himalayan foothills he must first raise almost £36,000 (€44,000) to be part of a 2013 Everest expedition run by the Adventure Peaks organisation, which is based in Ambleside, Cumbria. It’s obviously not the best economic time to be seeking such sponsorship, but Taylor is busily making his pitch for support to businesses, family and friends.

Taylor was also inspired by Bear Grylls, the English adventurer, writer and television presenter, who climbed Everest when he was 23. Grylls himself lived in Co Down until the age of four. A few years ago, Taylor read Grylls’s autobiography, Mud, Sweat and Tears, and was impressed not only by how Grylls made the summit of Everest, but also by how he doggedly raised the sponsorship to realise his ambition. “Bear Grylls said you may have to send out 1,000 letters to get the sponsorship, but you just have to keep going and keep going and keep going until you get there.”

Costs for the 70-day expedition, beginning in March next year, include a $10,000 (€7,562) climbing permit from the Nepalese authorities, other permits, Sherpa support, flights, hotel and other accommodation, tents, medical supplies and an expensive climbing kit of items such as crampons, ice axe, harness, down suit and gloves, face mask, sleeping bag and boots.

It’s a professionally-led “non-guided” expedition, and there are dangers involved, which Taylor and his parents – Peter, a commercial pilot, and Anne, a nurse – are well aware of. The open group of about 12 climbers will have a leader and Sherpa team accompanying them but, as stated by Adventure Peaks, they will “not be able to protect your every move and you must therefore be prepared to move between camps unsupervised”.

Taylor is also conscious that many people have died attempting Everest and many more have lost fingers, toes or limbs due to frostbite. But the spirit of adventure seems in him. “I think nowadays with the amount of safety and knowledge about the weather and so on, it is not as dangerous as it used to be.” His parents’ attitude was, “we are not going to hold you back”, he says.

In the meantime, Taylor has been gaining experience for his attempt on Everest. In February he attended a course on winter climbing in Scotland, and in August last year he climbed the highest mountain in the western Alps, the 4,810-metre Mont Blanc. He finds it awkward to put into precise words his personal sensations when he reached the summit but it is clear it is something deep and transcendent.

“At the top I had a feeling that I find extremely difficult to explain, but it was phenomenal. It was very strange. I thought it was absolutely unbelievable when I got to the top. I looked around me, and it was a clear day, there were only a couple of clouds in the sky. You could see down to Chamonix, you could see the Matterhorn – it just gave you this inner feeling that you have accomplished something quite big, after all the effort you have put in. In a strange way it is very satisfying. I haven’t really felt like that in any other way.”

For his A-levels this summer he is studying maths, physics and PE, and hopes to do an automotive engineering degree at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, and thereafter pursue a career as an officer in the British army. But first he intends to take a year out after his A-level exams to concentrate on preparing for the assault on Everest along the South Col route.

He is booked on an expedition to Muztagh Ata in China this summer. This mountain, said to be one of the “easiest” such peaks in the world to climb, is just over 7,500 metres, and will test his capabilities and endurance at high altitude.

He displays no sign of nervousness about either Muztagh Ata or Everest, just a great sense of excitement and adventure. The youngest Irish person to have climbed Everest is 26-year-old Limerickman Mark Quinn, who reached the top in May last year. American Jordan Romero is the youngest to make the summit, which he did at the age of 13.

Taylor said he would like to beat the Irish record but it’s not the main driving force behind his ambition. “It’s a factor, but I’m not doing it because I would be the youngest Irish person on Everest, but because it is a dream I have, and because of the feeling you get on top of a mountain.”

His parents are considering taking a hiking holiday in the lower regions of the Himalayas towards the end of his expedition and hope to be present when he descends from the great mountain. “They would hopefully meet me at base camp when I return. That would be nice.”

He adds: “I know of the dangers but plan to prepare for what could happen.”

Ribbons are tied at the end of the maypole dance at Avebury Stone Circlein Wiltshire, England, where pagans celebrated Beltane during the sunrise.

• Collect at selected checkouts to give customers a choice – the supervisor will inform us which ones we can work at.
• We have been informed by Dunnes regarding the number of volunteers required per hour however if the store is quiet at that time only a selected number of checkouts may be open.
• All must wear similar colour top so that we are distinguishable to shoppers – please wear white.
• There are 12 white NETNS tee-shirts which will be available from Caroline Kennedy on the day for anyone who wishes to wear.
• Do not ask people for money directly- just leave the box where people can see it. All collection boxes will have notice stating Newbridge Educate Together National School.
• Ask each customer ‘Would you like me to pack your bags’ and if they say ‘No’ just smile and step back.
• Dunnes has a `no mobile phone’ at checkout policy – so we are requested to leave our phones off or on silent.
• There is no eating or drinking by volunteers permitted while bag packing at checkouts.
• Children under 16 are not allowed to pack bags at Dunnes so it’s adults or older siblings only.
• Make sure everyone is a great bag-packer!! No eggs or fruit at the end of bags. No mix of raw and cooked meats.
• Caroline Kennedy will be available in Dunnes throughout the day – wearing NETNS tee-shirt.

There are still volunteers required in order to fill all the slots – if you are available for an hour or two this Saturday 28^th particularly in the afternoon, please contact the office or text Caroline Kennedy at 087 1221610.

Thank you.

• Collect at selected checkouts to give customers a choice – the supervisor will inform us which ones we can work at.
• We have been informed by Dunnes regarding the number of volunteers required per hour however if the store is quiet at that time only a selected number of checkouts may be open.
• All must wear similar colour top so that we are distinguishable to shoppers – please wear white.
• There are 12 white NETNS tee-shirts which will be available from Caroline Kennedy on the day for anyone who wishes to wear.
• Do not ask people for money directly- just leave the box where people can see it. All collection boxes will have notice stating Newbridge Educate Together National School.
• Ask each customer ‘Would you like me to pack your bags’ and if they say ‘No’ just smile and step back.
• Dunnes has a `no mobile phone’ at checkout policy – so we are requested to leave our phones off or on silent.
• Children under 16 are not allowed to pack bags at Dunnes so it’s adults or older siblings only.
• Make sure everyone is a great bag-packer!! No eggs or fruit at the end of bags. No mix of raw and cooked meats.
• Caroline Kennedy will be available in Dunnes throughout the day – wearing NETNS tee-shirt.

We look forward to welcoming families and friends of NETNS to come and have a look around our school and see some of the fantastic work that goes on behind the scenes on a daily basis!

Looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday