From Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief, Nature

It was like a weird but utterly pleasant dream. As I was driven through the streets of the old Spanish town of Oviedo, a throng of citizens lining the streets cheered and waved at me. Many of them were dressed in traditional costume, while others no doubt included tourists bemused by the fleet of black Mercedes driving all of 500 yards from the hotel to the Teatro Campoamor.

As we drew up by the theatre, my colleague Annette Thomas, chief executive of Macmillan publishers, and I were ushered out of the vehicle to face a crowd of onlookers, the sounds of a pipe band, and a carpeted path to the entrance that at that moment seemed a mile away.

Seconds later, we were closeted in a little room with two colleagues from our esteemed rival publication Science, Andrew Sugden and Colin Norman. Like us, they had spent the previous day in a swirl of press interviews, photo-opportunities and an open discussion about science and science communication. (Most testing question: would we publish a paper from Jim Watson about racial differences? The reporter interpreted my answer as ‘yes’ and Science’s answer as ‘no’, but on comparing notes we discovered we’d said essentially the same thing: we’d not publish baseless offensive opinion but we’d publish good science whatever it said.)

Then we were ushered into an orderly procession and made our way towards the entrance to the grand hall. We approached a doorway through which I could see a sea of faces of Spaniards and international guests, and in the distance a brightly lit stage festooned with the blue trappings of the Asturias Foundation, with Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia of Asturias sitting waiting for us, and the prince’s mother Queen Sofia of Spain up in the gallery.

I tried to calm my nerves by telling Annette to relax. (She was completely self-possessed, as it happens.) Would I remember to bow to the royals in the right order? (I did.) Would I trip as I climbed the stairs onto the platform? (I didn’t.)

And then there we were - standing on a platform on behalf of my colleagues in Europe, the United States and the Asia-Pacific to receive the 2007 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, given this year to Nature and to Science.

I’d said often in the interviews, and meant it, that to be given this award, considered and judged with as much care and respect by the Spanish as are the Nobels by the Swedes, is a wonderful testament to the importance of science and its communication to society and culture as a whole.

The assembled laureates on stage reflected that societal and cultural breadth. Al Gore, the pioneering social and political thinker Ralf Dahrendorf (represented by his wife Christiane due to illness), the novelist and champion of peaceful Israeli-Arab relations Amos Oz, the racing champion Michael Schumacher, the developmental geneticists Ginés Morata and Peter Lawrence, and representatives of Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, accompanied by 11 survivors from across Europe of the Nazi campaign of extermination. The regretted absentee: the arts laureate, Bob Dylan.

In succession, we walked up to the Prince to receive our scrolls, then down to the front of the stage to bask in the applause. We – Nature and Science – did so together, refraining from doing what past groups of laureates had done, joining hands and jumping up and down with joy. There was a more solemn moment as the holocaust survivors gathered at the front of the stage, to a standing ovation and then a minute’s silence.

Then came the speeches.

It’s not unknown for speeches at gatherings of ultra-distinguished people to degenerate into wafts of truisms and grandiloquent rhetoric. But when one is there to celebrate individuals and organisations of remarkable achievement, lofty sentiments can be tied to embodied reality and thereby achieve a vivid sense of purpose.

Thus it was that the addresses by Amos Oz, Avner Shalev of Yad Vashem, Christiane Dahrendorf, Al Gore and Prince Felipe struck a chord. When Shalev related the unresolved crisis in Dafur to the history of his people, when Gore spoke of the need for moral courage of peoples to move together with urgency to deal with the threats of climate, when Oz spoke of the need to explore each other as individuals rather than to hate each other as groups, and when the Prince cited each of the laureates as emblematic of respective enlightenment and humanitarian values: then it was that this editor, at least, felt that his colleagues and their publication are truly a part of a noble calling to which we only occasionally do full justice - to provide the messages of the sciences from the natural world as it truly is, and as it truly behaves, in a manner that helps humankind achieve its aspirations. The individual achievements of other laureates only served to highlight what more impact there is for us science editors and writers to aim for.

The award has a financial component – 50,000 Euros, shared by the two publications. We will use our share to boost a philanthropic fund that helps researchers from the developing world attend Gordon conferences.

The speeches ended. A piper strode onto the stage and summoned the ranks of a pipe band to play the Asturian anthem – an emotional moment for the audience. (The sense of Asturian identity was enhanced by local crops, especially apples, draped around the stage.) Then we trooped out, back into our Mercedes, back to the hotel and a reception. The crowds peered at us trying to see who we were and applauded dutifully. Al Gore’s clapometer rating was appropriately higher. But Schumacher capped us all. And let’s face it, I watch him more than he reads me.

Philip Campbell
Editor in Chief, Nature

Posted by Nicola Jones at 12:58 PM | Permalink

Nature has won the prestigious Príncipe de Asturias Award, established by His Royal Highness the Prince of Asturias, heir to the throne of Spain.
The award is the best-known cultural prize in the Spanish-speaking community. The awards honour individuals, groups or institutions whose creative work or research represent a significant contribution to universal culture in the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic fields. Nature shares the 2007 Award for Communication and Humanities with the journal Science.

Editor in Chief Philip Campbell has gone to collect the award, and will be sending us his diary report soon.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 12:56 PM | Permalink

So the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s 63rd annual meeting has ended. I took a stab at giving you some of the higlights, but here’s an incomplete roundup of coverage elsewhere on the meeting.

While I was in another session on cryopreservation of eggs, embryos and the like, it looks like I missed some interesting imaging studies that someone posted on over at huliq.

I was around for the press briefing on Desvenlafaxine to treat the symptoms of menopause – mostly hot flushes. This is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs are usually used to treat depression) that Wyeth has been testing in hopes of regaining its former glory in the treatment of menopause after years of dwindling prospects over hormonal therapies. It was interesting, I thought, but something that they’ve been working on for a while. Some were concerned about suicidal thoughts – a side effect flagged in young people when they start the drug – but the data don’t currently indicate anything abnormal – and the study design only accepted women with clean bills of mental health. Lifesciencesworld.com picked up a presser on their blog.

Reuters story here

British press went ga-ga over the ASRM’s updated recommendations on oocyte freezing, which is kind of odd, because the ASRM practice committee basically just maintained their stance that it’s an experimental procedure, and not recommended as a way to preserve fertility or delay childbirth for non-health related issues. Nevertheless, the public’s interest in the process gave the announcement some weight and momentum in the lay press.

Times Online

BBC

New Scientist

Telegraph

It’s an interesting story, and worth following. But for the immediate conference goers, at least, the ASRM’s policy recommendations on preimplantation genetic screening appeared far more controversial, as we reported here.

The tricky part about IVF, and I’ve heard this confirmed by researchers who do the process in mice, is that determining the status and potential for development of an embryo in a dish, is really a black art. Even almost 30 years on, in human studies, there’s much guess work involved in choosing the best embryos for implantation. One of the very first oral presentations at the meeting apparently looked to address this gap in understanding through looking at the metabolites produced by the embryo en masse (despite my own wishes, it seems, the moniker ‘metabolomics’ has stuck to this practice). I missed it, but hope to get a chance to follow up with the author. Marketwire posted a press release on it here.

More headlines through the ASRM press office here.

Oh, and I'd heard different variations on how the acronym ASRM should be pronounced, and I'm more confused than ever. How do you say ASRM?

Posted by Brendan Maher at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Now, I love me some epigenetics. Feeling bad that I had to miss the Nova special last night called “The Ghost in our Genes.” I decided to sit in on a nurses session about epigenetics and assisted reproductive technologies.

Lee Fallon a former genetics counsellor and consultant made a very nice presentation employing the usual, though not unhelpful analogies, like the idea that epigenetics is akin to highlighting. If the genome is the book of human life, epigenetics provides the cells with context -- instructions on how to read genes and how much or how little emphasis should be placed on certain genes in certain cell types.

Increasingly we’ve seen indications that epigenetic patterns set up during pregnancy will influence offspring long into their lives. And there’s been some concern over the past few years that culture media used during IVF or other stresses to the embryos might influence gene imprinting, potentially adding to the incidence of diseases that can be caused by faulty imprinting. Beckwith Wiedemann Syndrome and Angelman Syndrome are the most visible concerns but also intrauterine growth retardation and birth weight issues appear like they might be influenced by epigenetics.

I’ll first state that there’s little data on the role of epigenetic changes in IVF. One scary sounding number is an association of the procedure with a four fold increase in incidence of Angelman is less frightening in face of the fact that it’s population occurrence is on the order of 1 in 16,000.

It’s really the geekier concepts that attract me to this, and that’s the evolutionary role of epigenetics during fertilization. The sperm, from a survival of the species point of view, really doesn’t care where it is as long as it can produce an offspring that will be strong and viable. Thus, imprinting in the sperm’s contribution to the offspring genome tends to favour expression of growth factors.

This drive for growth may benefit baby, but not necessarily mom, who has to provide the nutrients for this growth. If resources are scarce, this might not protect her long term reproductive health. The maternal complement to an embryo’s genome therefore favours more modest growth. Beckwith Wiedemann can be due to chromosomal translocations and mutations, but in some cases of natural pregnancy occurs due to faulty maternal imprinting. With maternal copies of growth factor genes left unsilenced, the babies grow large and often have large organs. So far, all instances of the disorder in IVF children have been due to imprinting.

But while I like getting caught up in the nitty gritty details of how the diseases occur and what it means biologically, this was a session for practicing nurses http://npg-asrm.org/ in the ART field. Shirley Jones of Planned Parenthood offered practical implications of this dense and evolving field of study. During the meeting, she says, she performed an informal survey of her colleagues that run IVF clinics (she told me she talked to about 10), only one of them had anything about the dangers of imprinting disorders in their consent forms and informational materials.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There isn’t much evidence at the moment that IVF is doing dangerous things, but it’s something to keep an eye on, and in a litigious society, even one reference to a potential link could be enough for a judge to find in favour of a plaintiff. But this is only the tip of a coming iceberg in relation to reproduction and epigenetics. Fallon warned of a coming “mushroom of recognition of the importance of epigenetics … This is a much broader issue”

Oh and if anyone saw the Nova program. How was it?

Posted by Brendan Maher at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Reproduction was hard enough. So today, just to throw a kink in things, a major focus at ASRM's 2007 annual meeting was contraception. I didn't make it to many of the symposia on the topic -- too busy with preimplantation genetic diagnositcs. Nevertheless few choice comments came from an engaging, though poorly attended late morning panel on the politics of contraception, something that is largely only an issue for christian dominated countries like the US.

Wayne Shields, president and CEO of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals was talking about ideological intrusions into research and public health policy, which he sayshas "been brought to new art by this administration.” Vanessa Cullins, vice president of Planned Parenthood agreed and worried about the more insidious changes in the way regulations have been interpreted urging folks to look deeply into the Waxman report, and warning, “The damage that has been done through the areas of regulation that are not seen are the ones that are going to be haunting us for generations to come.”

Kirsten Moore President of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project seemed the most upbeat, no less so for the fact that fewer people had heard of her organization (and just maybe because of it). She recounted the story of how Susan Wood came to her group when she planned to resign from the FDA over what she saw as blatant disregard for scientific information over the regulation of the Plan B contraceptive.

She urged attendees to take part in an open session by the FDA next month to consider a new class of hybrid over the counter/prescription drugs that might include smoking cessation medications, plan b, and the new weight loss pill Alli.

She called the move "pure cover your ass mechanic [begging pardon for the language. Plan B] should be on the shelves next to condoms.” But, she said, her friends at the FDA (and she still has friends there, apparently) were adamant that if her group wanted to kill all progress, all they had to do was start talking about over the counter contraceptives.

As is customary at such meetings scientists and medical professionals were urged to take a more active role in politics. A show of hands revealed that few were interested in this endeavor. But for this field, Moore said, tough toenails. Better learn to have fun with it.

Posted by Brendan Maher at 03:45 AM | Permalink

At ASRM George Daley gave this morning’s plenary lecture to a dense crowd. He talked about the growing relationship between embryonic stem cell research and reproductive medicine and discussed the promise of embryonic stem cell research for basic discovery and, cautiously, for human health. But he made a point about the many complaints often voiced about the fact that ‘no cures have come’ from embryonic stem cell research, flagging this year’s Nobel prize winning scientists for the development of knockout mice.

Perhaps not everyone considers the relationship between embryonic stem cell research and the hundreds of disease models that have been created thanks to its role in the development of knockout mice, but it’s worth noting. Daley went on to discuss some interesting research in the wings in which his group is collaborating with Brigham and Women’s Hospital IVF clinic to gain access to discarded eggs, discarded 3 day embryos and discarded 5 day embryos. He’s been able to develop several embryonic stem cell lines from the discarded 5 day embryos. The 3 day embryos have proved harder to translate. These so-called poor quality embryos could be a good source for deriving human embryonic stem cell lines for research. That said, it did take 2 years to get IRB approval for the process.

As for the eggs, following on his recent discoveries that fraudster Woo Suk Hwang actually did achieve parthenogenesis and derivation of an embryonic stem cell line from human eggs, he’s begun looking into ways of identifying women that might provide through their eggs, sources of histocompatible stem cells for therapeutic purposes in the future. Some research has shown that if stem cell lines can be derived that are HLA homozygous, just a few stem cell lines could be banked and be largely compatible with a wide range of patients.

Posted by Brendan Maher at 04:34 PM | Permalink

Sherilyn Levy the Nurse in Charge at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Reproductive Medicine says that she knows what guys want. In ART, the woman’s job -- from hormone injections, to harvesting, to implantation, and hopefully pregnancy and delivery -- can be pretty harrowing. The man’s job is simple really, but Levy and a colleague Bonnie Campbell decided that B&W’s aging ‘men’s lounge’ an important part of most fertility procedures at the hospital, was due for an update.

They surveyed 100 males who had used the lounge asking them to provide feedback, anonymously, on things like the ambient noise level, the preferred subject matter (surprise surprise 95% preferred heterosexual encounters), and their general impressions of the experience.

Sample question:

When compared to other situations when you have been required to produce a semen specimen this men’s lounge was ____ than the others.

A. Better, B. Same, C. Worse, D. NA

The survey gave them lots of ideas for improvements to the lounge. Some men were worried because they could hear people in the hallway. It was distracting to some, others worried that outsiders could listen in on their progress. Many, Levy said, were less than impressed with the furnishings. Not surprisingly most guys wanted a bigger TV. Also, she said, “The lounge chair was a bit intimidating.” A drooping leather chaise, similar in shape to a dentist’s chair apparently put some guys on edge. And when there’s a task … erm … at hand you really don’t want nerves getting in the way.

Levy and Campbell have yet to institute their renovations, which will include better soundproofing, a more traditional recliner, and a computer based media centre with a touch-screen interface. When I asked if the idea of a touch-anything might be a bit out of place in a masturbatorium, Campbell reminded me that touch screens wipe down easily. A traditional remote control has the potential to get “a lot funkier.”

And keeping all of the inspirational media centrally stored has another benefit, they told me. One of the common complaints their anonymous respondents made was over the lack of material. Apparently their porn has a tendency to grow legs.

Posted by Brendan Maher at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m reporting from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting this week, in Washington D.C. There are sure to be some controversial subjects discussed including the ethics and efficacy of prenatal genetic screening in assisted reproductive technology (ART), as well as a hot up and coming topic in the cryopreservation of eggs. In press conferences held this morning however, the interesting topic was a growing concern in ART, and one that has some controversial implications internationally. Timothy Hickman, medical director at Houston IVF in Texas, and others were discussing the justifications for transferring multiple embryos in older women.
The danger implicit in transferring, say six embryos as opposed to two, is generally multiple births, something that stands to threaten the health of older women. Nevertheless, the eggs of older women are sometimes of questionable quality, riddled by aneuploidy and other factors that enhance the likelihood for miscarriage and failed pregnancy.

So, the trick is optimizing the number of embryos that should be implanted in an older woman so that the success rate of single births is sufficiently high and the rate of multiple births stays relatively low. Current recommendations for women above the age of 40 is no more than five cleavage stage embryos and no more than three blastocyst stage (more developed) embryos.
Hickman talked about a mathematical model that could predict at different ages what the precise rates of single and multiple births. By setting the threshold for triplet births at around 1%, he showed that indeed, the number of embryos delivered could be increased to as many as six without increasing the triplet birth rate above that threshold.
In more than 240 cycles of ART that he looked at in women aged 41-42, this model held up and predicted that in women over forty as many as six embryos could be transferred to increase the success rate up to nearly 45% percent.
This is controversial, as clinics in many European countries are restricted by law in the number they can transfer. Hickman told me “There are some arbitrary laws in the UK saying that doctors can transfer no more than two. The physicians there are very frustrated.”
Judy Stern, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical center in Lebanon New Hampshire, has started delving into data from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology or SART database. She was able to look at thousands of IVF cycles and looked for variables that predicted how successful embryo delivery would be in aging women. Oddly Folicle stimulating hormone, which is currently used in guidelines to determine how many embryos to implant, proved not to be predictive of outcome. Other variables like the number of eggs collected from the woman made a differenc, and there were distinct differences in women 38 and older and women 40 and older, something that is not accounted for under current guidelines.
Stern says she’s had trouble convincing docs in her own clinic to start making decisions based on these more predictive factors.

Posted by Brendan Maher at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Nature News readers,

Our apologies, but with the site relaunch we are experiencing some glitches. We are aware that some people are having difficulty accessing the site or logging in to comment or read pay-protected stories. If you have bookmarked stories from our old site, these links are temporarily not working. We expect all these issues to be solved very soon, and we ask for your patience.

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Posted by Nicola Jones at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Welcome to In the Field, the new face of the Nature newsblog.

As you may know, the Nature newsblog had two roles: to provide our readers with an easy way to comment on our news stories, and to provide diary entries from our reporters at scientific conferences and events.

As of 3 October, it has become much easier to comment on our news stories – you can do it on the stories themselves, directly on www.nature.com/news (see also the post about that redesign). This means no more flicking back and forth between websites! We hope this will make things easier for our readers and encourage even more conversation about science news.

In the Field is now exclusively a place for diary entries from the most exciting science events. Here you can get daily reports from reporters scouring conference floors, or read entries from scientists on field missions. Keep us bookmarked, sign up for RSS feeds, or watch the homepage of Nature News to see when we’re hitting a conference floor.

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Posted by Nicola Jones at 04:00 PM | Permalink

Quake alarms now available for home use.

On Monday, Japan switched on a nationwide advance warning system for earthquakes, giving any person tuned to radio or television seconds of warning before a large quake.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 06:01 PM | Permalink

Skull model shows a wimpy bite for fearsome cats.

Toothsome, not to mention fearsome, sabre-toothed cats actually had quite a weak bite, according to research that has implications for our understanding of how the animals hunted.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Star specimen of 100-million-year-old fungus in amber up for sale.

If you know someone with a fondness for fungi, here's the perfect present: the oldest mushroom ever discovered, encased in amber, and on sale for a mere US$100,000.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Researchers unleash power of canine genome.

Man's best friend is becoming the geneticist's too. Researchers have made good on the dog genome's promise: a quick-and-dirty way to find the genes responsible for physical traits using just a couple of dozen pooches and a gene chip.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 06:30 PM | Permalink

Mechanism for chromosome corruption also revealed.

How long have I got left, doctor? For a cell, at least, scientists may be close to an answer. A cell's lifespan depends on the length of its telomeres — the regions of repeating DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter until they become unstable and cause chromosomes to fuse together. These fusions can make the chromosomes break when cells divide, leading to cell death or triggering genomic rearrangements associated with the early stages of cancer.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 06:30 PM | Permalink