It wasn’t just what Congressman Anthony Weiner tweeted that got him in trouble: It was also whose tweets he read. The New York Democrat’s sexting scandal came to light after he accidentally posted a lewd photograph of his crotch on Twitter, setting off a bungled cover-up attempt, then a tearful apology and revelations of even more extensive and x-rated electronic sexcapades. Weiner, an avid Twitter user whom The New York Times described as a “technophile,” made his first social media mistake when a Twitter typo turned a private message into a public post. But even before, he was asking for trouble by following other Twitterers that hinted at his extramarital interests. Even if you’re not engaging in illicit activities or a public figure trying to keep his personal life under wraps, Weinergate reveals just how many digital footprints we leave on services like Twitter. Weiner’s experience serves as a warning about the numerous ways online activities can expose personal information. A Twitterer need not hit send to let secrets slip: A user can be judged not only on what he tweets, but also on the digital relationships he forms online. Months before Weinergate erupted, a self-described conservative group started tracking what users Weiner had chosen to follow on Twitter and made a discovery: The congressman appeared to have a predilection for following young women. The group, which used the hashtag #bornfreecrew, cautioned some of the women to be wary of Weiner, among them Gennette Cordova, the Washington co-ed to whom he later tweeted the image of his underwear. The crew, “closely monitored those whom Mr. Weiner was following, taking it upon themselves to contact young women they believed to be ‘schoolgirls,’ and urging them publicly to stay away from him, according to an analysis of posts on Twitter’s public stream,” wrote The New York Times. “By early May, members of the group were also speculating that Mr. Weiner would be caught in a sex scandal.” Horror stories about people that have been fired or even arrested over tweets, Facebook photos, and YouTube videos have made people cautious about what they share with the web. Yet most overlook the danger that their online acquaintances may reveal more than they realize about their interests, political affiliations, religious beliefs and sexual orientation. The social connections people have curated on online profiles can expose a great deal about their lifestyles. For example, researchers at MIT found that they could predict whether a person was gay by analyzing their Facebook friends. “People understand that what they tweet or post on Facebook will be there forever, so they should be careful,” said Murat Kantarcioglu, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Texas. “But I don’t think they’ve gotten to the next level yet… Following people suggests you have a relationship with that person. It surfaces your connection with them.” Weiner is not the first public figure to come under scrutiny for his Twitter timeline, nor is he likely to be the last. When Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, first joined Twitter, the people he initially followed on raised eyebrows as they included reality TV celebutante Heidi Montag, notorious for her extensive plastic surgery procedures. The 96 people Schmidt currently follows on Twitter are a surprising mix of Hollywood stars and Silicon Valley luminaries, suggesting the executive may have some less obvious interests outside of search engines and smartphones. In addition to fellow Googlers, such as Marissa Mayer and Vic Gundotra, Schmidt also follows rapper Kanye West, singer Akon, Australian model Ceyenne Tozzie and twenty-something pop singer Matisse. He also follows virtual unknowns such as (@PersianNathalie, who recently tweeted, “60 yr old chauffeur asked me to roll down my window at light to tell me I had beautiful hair and he’d like the run his fingers in it!!”), and Alex Smith, whose bio reads, “When it’s all for love, it’s love for all :).” Schmidt’s announcements at board meetings and press conferences have offered few hints that he may have an interest in rap music or modeling. Users can do little to disguise whose tweets populate their timelines. It is built for public discourse, not private conversation, and essentially all activity on the social network is visible to everyone else. Whereas Facebook allows users far more granular control over the information so that they can specify that different data will be visible to different groups — whether classmates, relatives, or employers — Twitter has just one privacy on/off switch. Either your profile is public, and every tweet you send, every account you follow, and every account that follows you is visible to anyone on the Internet, or your profile is “protected,” meaning that people must receive your permission before they can access your account. Once you have approved them, they can see every tweet you send, every account you follow, and every account that follows you. In other words, Twitter is an all-or-none platform that assumes users are comfortable being transparent about their content and their contacts. “Even though people complain about Facebook privacy all the time, there is a greater level of privacy. On Twitter, it’s always public,” said Graham Cluley a security expert at Sophos, an antivirus software vendor. “On Twitter, the default is to have everything open.” Though users have the option to make their tweets private, doing so makes it more difficult for them to gain followers and broadcast their message, ultimately hindering Twitter’s usefulness. Tweets from a protected account cannot be retweeted by other users, or viewed by people that have not been approved, which limits the exposure these posts will receive. “The only way to protect yourself is to make your profile completely private. The vast majority don’t do that on Twitter because that won’t work well if you want to grow your userbase,” said Cluley. “You can’t use Twitter with any sort of power or strength to get your message out if you have a closed private profile. You have to be open to use Twitter. It’s essentially used now to broadcast information and gain more followers.” Short of quitting Twitter, users wary of what their relationships may reveal should consider carefully curating whom they follow. But having very few users can also call attention to outliers — the porn stars, the cute co-eds, the models — and some experts say that following tens of thousands of users, while potentially producing an overwhelming number of tweets, could be a defense against anyone reading too much into your Twitter choices. “If you have connections you want to be protective about, hide the needle in the haystack,” said Kantarcioglu. Alternately, users could abide by Schmidt’s own advice to people worried about their privacy online. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” he has said. Cluley added, “The other thing you can do is think with your head, not with your trousers.” Has the Weiner scandal changed how you use, check or post to Twitter? How? Let us know by emailing technology [at] huffingtonpost.com
Continue reading …It wasn’t just what Congressman Anthony Weiner tweeted that got him in trouble: It was also whose tweets he read. The New York Democrat’s sexting scandal came to light after he accidentally posted a lewd photograph of his crotch on Twitter, setting off a bungled cover-up attempt, then a tearful apology and revelations of even more extensive and x-rated electronic sexcapades. Weiner, an avid Twitter user whom The New York Times described as a “technophile,” made his first social media mistake when a Twitter typo turned a private message into a public post. But even before, he was asking for trouble by following other Twitterers that hinted at his extramarital interests. Even if you’re not engaging in illicit activities or a public figure trying to keep his personal life under wraps, Weinergate reveals just how many digital footprints we leave on services like Twitter. Weiner’s experience serves as a warning about the numerous ways online activities can expose personal information. A Twitterer need not hit send to let secrets slip: A user can be judged not only on what he tweets, but also on the digital relationships he forms online. Months before Weinergate erupted, a self-described conservative group started tracking what users Weiner had chosen to follow on Twitter and made a discovery: The congressman appeared to have a predilection for following young women. The group, which used the hashtag #bornfreecrew, cautioned some of the women to be wary of Weiner, among them Gennette Cordova, the Washington co-ed to whom he later tweeted the image of his underwear. The crew, “closely monitored those whom Mr. Weiner was following, taking it upon themselves to contact young women they believed to be ‘schoolgirls,’ and urging them publicly to stay away from him, according to an analysis of posts on Twitter’s public stream,” wrote The New York Times. “By early May, members of the group were also speculating that Mr. Weiner would be caught in a sex scandal.” Horror stories about people that have been fired or even arrested over tweets, Facebook photos, and YouTube videos have made people cautious about what they share with the web. Yet most overlook the danger that their online acquaintances may reveal more than they realize about their interests, political affiliations, religious beliefs and sexual orientation. The social connections people have curated on online profiles can expose a great deal about their lifestyles. For example, researchers at MIT found that they could predict whether a person was gay by analyzing their Facebook friends. “People understand that what they tweet or post on Facebook will be there forever, so they should be careful,” said Murat Kantarcioglu, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Texas. “But I don’t think they’ve gotten to the next level yet… Following people suggests you have a relationship with that person. It surfaces your connection with them.” Weiner is not the first public figure to come under scrutiny for his Twitter timeline, nor is he likely to be the last. When Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, first joined Twitter, the people he initially followed on raised eyebrows as they included reality TV celebutante Heidi Montag, notorious for her extensive plastic surgery procedures. The 96 people Schmidt currently follows on Twitter are a surprising mix of Hollywood stars and Silicon Valley luminaries, suggesting the executive may have some less obvious interests outside of search engines and smartphones. In addition to fellow Googlers, such as Marissa Mayer and Vic Gundotra, Schmidt also follows rapper Kanye West, singer Akon, Australian model Ceyenne Tozzie and twenty-something pop singer Matisse. He also follows virtual unknowns such as (@PersianNathalie, who recently tweeted, “60 yr old chauffeur asked me to roll down my window at light to tell me I had beautiful hair and he’d like the run his fingers in it!!”), and Alex Smith, whose bio reads, “When it’s all for love, it’s love for all :).” Schmidt’s announcements at board meetings and press conferences have offered few hints that he may have an interest in rap music or modeling. Users can do little to disguise whose tweets populate their timelines. It is built for public discourse, not private conversation, and essentially all activity on the social network is visible to everyone else. Whereas Facebook allows users far more granular control over the information so that they can specify that different data will be visible to different groups — whether classmates, relatives, or employers — Twitter has just one privacy on/off switch. Either your profile is public, and every tweet you send, every account you follow, and every account that follows you is visible to anyone on the Internet, or your profile is “protected,” meaning that people must receive your permission before they can access your account. Once you have approved them, they can see every tweet you send, every account you follow, and every account that follows you. In other words, Twitter is an all-or-none platform that assumes users are comfortable being transparent about their content and their contacts. “Even though people complain about Facebook privacy all the time, there is a greater level of privacy. On Twitter, it’s always public,” said Graham Cluley a security expert at Sophos, an antivirus software vendor. “On Twitter, the default is to have everything open.” Though users have the option to make their tweets private, doing so makes it more difficult for them to gain followers and broadcast their message, ultimately hindering Twitter’s usefulness. Tweets from a protected account cannot be retweeted by other users, or viewed by people that have not been approved, which limits the exposure these posts will receive. “The only way to protect yourself is to make your profile completely private. The vast majority don’t do that on Twitter because that won’t work well if you want to grow your userbase,” said Cluley. “You can’t use Twitter with any sort of power or strength to get your message out if you have a closed private profile. You have to be open to use Twitter. It’s essentially used now to broadcast information and gain more followers.” Short of quitting Twitter, users wary of what their relationships may reveal should consider carefully curating whom they follow. But having very few users can also call attention to outliers — the porn stars, the cute co-eds, the models — and some experts say that following tens of thousands of users, while potentially producing an overwhelming number of tweets, could be a defense against anyone reading too much into your Twitter choices. “If you have connections you want to be protective about, hide the needle in the haystack,” said Kantarcioglu. Alternately, users could abide by Schmidt’s own advice to people worried about their privacy online. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” he has said. Cluley added, “The other thing you can do is think with your head, not with your trousers.” Has the Weiner scandal changed how you use, check or post to Twitter? How? Let us know by emailing technology [at] huffingtonpost.com
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Watching the Anthony Weiner scandal unfold, it was hard not to wonder how a smart, accomplished, beautiful woman like Huma Abedin got herself involved with a guy like Weiner. After all, the New York Congressman was dishonest to Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a messy, public way — confessing to sexting and sending lewd photos to a young coed after lying about it for 10 days — after less than a year of marriage. It’s probably not what a newlywed would expect, especially one who’s pregnant with their first child. But, sexting sexcapades aside, the 46-year-old Weiner’s a fit, intelligent, promising politician with a six-figure income who had a reputation of a ladies’ man and was even named a Cosmo eligible bachelor — the kind of man that many, many women are drawn to. And that’s where Abedin and other smart, beautiful, accomplished women often make their mistake. The more financially independent women become, the more they prefer good-looking men. But they don’t just want their partners to be hotties; they want them to be masculine, physically fit, loving, educated, a few years older and making the big bucks. Oh, and they also have to really want to be a hubby and daddy. That’s a tall order. And, evidently, it’s working against us. Attractive men don’t make the best husbands, according to researchers. They don’t put as much energy into their long-term relationships, aren’t as supportive of their wives, and they tend to lie and cheat more, too. In other words, they are better cads than dads, says evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, author of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. We’d be smarter if we sought out guys who are uglier than we are because researchers have found that couples in which the woman is hotter than the guy are happier than if the situation is reversed. And since quite a few women have been telling Weiner how “hot” he is, it’s clear that neither Abedin nor Weiner got that memo. Of course, hottie women can also “optimize their looks to find other partners if she’s unhappy,” says Rob Burriss, a professor at England’s University of Chester. Hello, Weiner? And Abedin, 35 — one of Time magazine’s “40 under 40″ young stars in politics — was considered a catch when Weiner started pursuing her a few years ago. But who can blame her? She, like so many women — and men — pick a mate based on pretty predictable factors, dating back to caveman days when all we were trying to do was survive and keep our species going, according to physical anthropologist and Why Him? Why Her? author Helen Fisher, who has been studying human courtship for decades. We’re drawn to guys like Weiner because they have good genes we can pass on to our kids. The downside is that we take a huge risk on whether he’s going to be sexually faithful to us. At the same time, who can blame the women who flirted with Weiner and who commented on how “hot” he is; women are more attracted to guys in relationships because they have “proven they can commit,” says Ian Kerner, a sex and relationship therapist, and author (She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman). It’s likely that we’ll see more male poaching in the future — “research shows that in societies where women are economically powerful, the more sexually and socially aggressive they are,” says Fisher. Regardless of whom we pick — handsome or ugly — chances are we’re going to be struggling sometime in our fourth year of marriage, Fisher notes. Her research of divorce statistics from 62 countries, dating to 1947, indicates that the seven-year itch is really a four-year itch — about the time it takes to raise a baby past toddlerhood. “To me, it clearly suggested that divorce might not be a cultural malaise, but an aspect of our inherited mating behavior,” she says. So, now that Abedin evidently has Weiner’s good genes, she can either stick it out another few years or split from Weiner now, before their unborn baby will have memories of the divorce, and while she’s still young and attractive enough to snag another mate. This time, she should go ugly.
Continue reading …Watching the Anthony Weiner scandal unfold, it was hard not to wonder how a smart, accomplished, beautiful woman like Huma Abedin got herself involved with a guy like Weiner. After all, the New York Congressman was dishonest to Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a messy, public way — confessing to sexting and sending lewd photos to a young coed after lying about it for 10 days — after less than a year of marriage. It’s probably not what a newlywed would expect, especially one who’s pregnant with their first child. But, sexting sexcapades aside, the 46-year-old Weiner’s a fit, intelligent, promising politician with a six-figure income who had a reputation of a ladies’ man and was even named a Cosmo eligible bachelor — the kind of man that many, many women are drawn to. And that’s where Abedin and other smart, beautiful, accomplished women often make their mistake. The more financially independent women become, the more they prefer good-looking men. But they don’t just want their partners to be hotties; they want them to be masculine, physically fit, loving, educated, a few years older and making the big bucks. Oh, and they also have to really want to be a hubby and daddy. That’s a tall order. And, evidently, it’s working against us. Attractive men don’t make the best husbands, according to researchers. They don’t put as much energy into their long-term relationships, aren’t as supportive of their wives, and they tend to lie and cheat more, too. In other words, they are better cads than dads, says evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, author of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. We’d be smarter if we sought out guys who are uglier than we are because researchers have found that couples in which the woman is hotter than the guy are happier than if the situation is reversed. And since quite a few women have been telling Weiner how “hot” he is, it’s clear that neither Abedin nor Weiner got that memo. Of course, hottie women can also “optimize their looks to find other partners if she’s unhappy,” says Rob Burriss, a professor at England’s University of Chester. Hello, Weiner? And Abedin, 35 — one of Time magazine’s “40 under 40″ young stars in politics — was considered a catch when Weiner started pursuing her a few years ago. But who can blame her? She, like so many women — and men — pick a mate based on pretty predictable factors, dating back to caveman days when all we were trying to do was survive and keep our species going, according to physical anthropologist and Why Him? Why Her? author Helen Fisher, who has been studying human courtship for decades. We’re drawn to guys like Weiner because they have good genes we can pass on to our kids. The downside is that we take a huge risk on whether he’s going to be sexually faithful to us. At the same time, who can blame the women who flirted with Weiner and who commented on how “hot” he is; women are more attracted to guys in relationships because they have “proven they can commit,” says Ian Kerner, a sex and relationship therapist, and author (She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman). It’s likely that we’ll see more male poaching in the future — “research shows that in societies where women are economically powerful, the more sexually and socially aggressive they are,” says Fisher. Regardless of whom we pick — handsome or ugly — chances are we’re going to be struggling sometime in our fourth year of marriage, Fisher notes. Her research of divorce statistics from 62 countries, dating to 1947, indicates that the seven-year itch is really a four-year itch — about the time it takes to raise a baby past toddlerhood. “To me, it clearly suggested that divorce might not be a cultural malaise, but an aspect of our inherited mating behavior,” she says. So, now that Abedin evidently has Weiner’s good genes, she can either stick it out another few years or split from Weiner now, before their unborn baby will have memories of the divorce, and while she’s still young and attractive enough to snag another mate. This time, she should go ugly.
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Watch Neil Patrick Harris rap the closing number of the 2011 Tony Awards! The 37-year-old actor hosted the star-studded event honoring the best in theater. Neil recapped the evening with a rap written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who performed in In The Heights and rapped his Tonys acceptance speech back in 2008! Love the playful shoutout to Hugh Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Just Jared Discovery Date : 13/06/2011 15:50 Number of articles : 3
Continue reading …Sony, Panasonic, others to launch cross-platform e-book service, later this year
June 13, 2011 No Comment
Don’t look now, but there’s some major synergy going on in Japan’s e-book market, now that Sony , Panasonic , Rakuten and Kinokuniya have all joined forces on a new digital quest. Today, the quartet of companies announced they’re working on a system that would allow users to purchase and read content across their respective e-readers , injecting the e-cosmos with a heavy dose of free love and good vibes. Under the new service, customers would be able to manage their downloads and browse bestsellers within a centralized web-based marketplace, regardless of the device they go to bed with every night. Because within this new universe, there would be no “mine,” “yours,” or “theirs” — all will be one and one will be all. The chieftains have already held powows with a handful of digital publishers, though they expect to have more friends around the campfire by the time the project launches later this year. Sony, Panasonic, others to launch cross-platform e-book service, later this year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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The Book of Mormon cleaned up at this year’s Tony Awards , but it was just one of a number of plays and acts that were featured throughout the telecast. Host Neil Patrick Harris summarized the event in a brilliant rap to conclude the show, Daniel Radcliffe proved that he can do a lot more than just cast spells on the big screen and two stars from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark managed not to hurt anyone… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Hollywood Gossip Discovery Date : 13/06/2011 04:27 Number of articles : 4
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The Book of Mormon cleaned up at this year’s Tony Awards , but it was just one of a number of plays and acts that were featured throughout the telecast. Host Neil Patrick Harris summarized the event in a brilliant rap to conclude the show, Daniel Radcliffe proved that he can do a lot more than just cast spells on the big screen and two stars from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark managed not to hurt anyone… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Hollywood Gossip Discovery Date : 13/06/2011 04:27 Number of articles : 4
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Experts divided on whether ‘deeply complex’ procedure, previously only carried out on animals, is safe for humans A woman in Nottingham has agreed to donate her womb to her infertile daughter if doctors gain permission to attempt the groundbreaking transplant operation. Eva Ottosson, 56, the director of a lighting company, said she would offer her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter, Sara, who cannot have children because of a serious birth defect that left her without a womb. If the operation goes ahead – at a hospital in Sweden – Sara could conceive and carry a child in the same womb she herself was born from, but serious technical hurdles must be cleared if the procedure is to succeed.The operation is experimental and still at a premature stage in animal studies. Only a handful of mice have been born from transplanted wombs and little work has been done in larger animals, such as pigs, rabbits and monkeys. The deeply complex nature of the operation carries serious risks for the donor and recipient, leading some doctors to claim the procedure is not ready to be performed in humans. “As a mother you have all these questions: have you thought it through; do you know what you are doing; how do you feel about having the same womb that you have been developed in yourself,” Eva Ottosson told the BBC. “Of course it’s major surgery and has its risks, but I trust them, I know they know what they’re doing. I’m more concerned about my daughter and what the impact will be for her,” she added. Sara Ottosson, a biology teacher who lives and works in Stockholm, has a rare condition called Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, also known as Müllerian agenesis , in which the reproductive system begins to grow but never fully develops. Women with the disorder are typically born without a womb and fallopian tubes, and have vaginal malformations. Little is known about the cause of the condition, but like many of the one in 5,000 people born with the disorder, Sara only became aware of the problem when she failed to begin menstruating as a teenager. While a small number of womb transplants have led to healthy births in experiments with mice, the procedure is almost completely untested in humans. In 2000, doctors in Saudi Arabia transferred a womb from a dead donor into a 26-year-old woman, but had to remove the organ three months later when it developed a blood clot and began to die. Sara Ottosson is one of seven patients who have undergone tests to assess their suitability for the operation under a programme run by Mats Brännström, a leader in the field of experimental womb transplants at Gothenburg University in Sweden. The operation could go ahead next year. If the operation is approved, Sara would have surgery to transplant her mother’s uterus before an IVF embryo created from her eggs and her partner’s sperm was transferred. A successful transplant would be temporary, with the uterus being removed two to three years later to avoid medical complications. Any birth would be via caesarean section.The operation is technically more demanding than a heart, kidney or liver transplant. Among the greatest risks are life-threatening haemorrhage and an insufficient blood supply to the womb. Sara has said she will consider adoption if the transplant operation does not go ahead or fails to result in a baby. Some 15,000 women of childbearing age in Britain were born without a uterus or had the organ damaged or removed by illness, such as cancer. In 2009, a team of surgeons and vets led by Richard Smith at Hammersmith Hospital in London reported several womb transplant operations in rabbits, though none of the animals became pregnant and carried young. The research has stalled in Britain through a lack of funding and scepticism from some in the medical community. The work is due to resume this year with support from an independent charity, Uterine Transplant UK. Medical research Health Health & wellbeing Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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Experts divided on whether ‘deeply complex’ procedure, previously only carried out on animals, is safe for humans A woman in Nottingham has agreed to donate her womb to her infertile daughter if doctors gain permission to attempt the groundbreaking transplant operation. Eva Ottosson, 56, the director of a lighting company, said she would offer her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter, Sara, who cannot have children because of a serious birth defect that left her without a womb. If the operation goes ahead – at a hospital in Sweden – Sara could conceive and carry a child in the same womb she herself was born from, but serious technical hurdles must be cleared if the procedure is to succeed.The operation is experimental and still at a premature stage in animal studies. Only a handful of mice have been born from transplanted wombs and little work has been done in larger animals, such as pigs, rabbits and monkeys. The deeply complex nature of the operation carries serious risks for the donor and recipient, leading some doctors to claim the procedure is not ready to be performed in humans. “As a mother you have all these questions: have you thought it through; do you know what you are doing; how do you feel about having the same womb that you have been developed in yourself,” Eva Ottosson told the BBC. “Of course it’s major surgery and has its risks, but I trust them, I know they know what they’re doing. I’m more concerned about my daughter and what the impact will be for her,” she added. Sara Ottosson, a biology teacher who lives and works in Stockholm, has a rare condition called Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, also known as Müllerian agenesis , in which the reproductive system begins to grow but never fully develops. Women with the disorder are typically born without a womb and fallopian tubes, and have vaginal malformations. Little is known about the cause of the condition, but like many of the one in 5,000 people born with the disorder, Sara only became aware of the problem when she failed to begin menstruating as a teenager. While a small number of womb transplants have led to healthy births in experiments with mice, the procedure is almost completely untested in humans. In 2000, doctors in Saudi Arabia transferred a womb from a dead donor into a 26-year-old woman, but had to remove the organ three months later when it developed a blood clot and began to die. Sara Ottosson is one of seven patients who have undergone tests to assess their suitability for the operation under a programme run by Mats Brännström, a leader in the field of experimental womb transplants at Gothenburg University in Sweden. The operation could go ahead next year. If the operation is approved, Sara would have surgery to transplant her mother’s uterus before an IVF embryo created from her eggs and her partner’s sperm was transferred. A successful transplant would be temporary, with the uterus being removed two to three years later to avoid medical complications. Any birth would be via caesarean section.The operation is technically more demanding than a heart, kidney or liver transplant. Among the greatest risks are life-threatening haemorrhage and an insufficient blood supply to the womb. Sara has said she will consider adoption if the transplant operation does not go ahead or fails to result in a baby. Some 15,000 women of childbearing age in Britain were born without a uterus or had the organ damaged or removed by illness, such as cancer. In 2009, a team of surgeons and vets led by Richard Smith at Hammersmith Hospital in London reported several womb transplant operations in rabbits, though none of the animals became pregnant and carried young. The research has stalled in Britain through a lack of funding and scepticism from some in the medical community. The work is due to resume this year with support from an independent charity, Uterine Transplant UK. Medical research Health Health & wellbeing Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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