Editor's Choice
Past performance of assisted reproduction technologies as a model to predict future progress: a proposed addendum to Moore’s law
The ultimate goal of IVF is to achieve healthy, single, live births following each single-embryo transfer. A timeline for this eventuality has never been defined. National implantation rates from 2003–2010 provided by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) in the USA were evaluated. Regression analysis was applied to the annual trends. A high correlation was noted showing a linear increase from year to year ranging between 0.3% and 1.5% when maternal age was not higher than 42.Personhood: to be or when to be – is that the question?
The dictionary definition of personhood reads: ‘the quality or condition of being an individual person’, which does not advance our understanding of this term! Indeed, the concept of personhood has exercised philosophers for centuries, the state being variously, and disputedly, accorded the attributes of life, individuality, consciousness, agency, self-awareness, empathy, and/or the capacities to anticipate, remember, plan and choose – the capacity to exercise free will. How personhood is understood is of great significance, as, when conferred socio-legally on an individual, it carries with it privileges, protection and rights, together with responsibilities and liabilities – sometimes incorporated into the political and legal concept of citizenship.The uses and abuses of bibliometrics
Bibliographic databases provide us with easy access to many more journals than was possible when each of us editors started in science. We well remember the treks around libraries, the frustration of the missing volumes and the broken photocopier, the ‘reprint request’ post cards sent and received, and the bundling up of hard copy papers for posting to our colleagues. Now, at the press of a button, papers can be located, paid for (unless freely accessible), down loaded, filed – and sometimes even read! However, with this easy access to databases and papers come problems: notably the increased risk of deliberate or accidental plagiarism (Cohen et al., 2012) and the fact of information overload.Trophoblast tales
The placenta has to be the most complex organ in the body – genetically, functionally and structurally. It is uniquely complex genetically, comprising tissues of both maternal and fetal genotype in close apposition, as well as having a complex gene expression profile according to the parental epigenetic imprint inherited on selected genes. It is complex functionally in its sheer range of hormonal products, combining roles assigned to many or most other endocrine glands, and also in its transport systems, its physical anchoring role, and in its immunological properties.
