UK scientists want human-animal tests monitored

UK scientists want human-animal tests monitored — British scientists say a new expert body should be formed to regulate experiments mixing animal and human DNA to make sure no medical or ethical boundaries are crossed.

In a report issued on Friday, scientists at the nation's Academy of Medical Sciences said a government organization is needed to advise whether certain tests on animals that use human DNA should be pursued.

Tighter regulation isn't needed for most such experiments, said Martin Bobrow, chair of the group that wrote the report. "But there are a small number of future experiments, which could approach social and ethically sensitive areas which should have an extra layer of scrutiny," he told reporters in London.

The group analyzed evidence from academics, the U.K. government, animal welfare groups and others. An independent survey was also conducted to gather public opinion. It found people were mostly supportive as long as the work might contribute to the development of medical treatments that would be widely available.

Scientists have long been swapping animal and human DNA. Numerous tests on mice with human genes for brain, bone and heart disorders are already under way and experiments on goats implanted with a human gene are also being done to study blood-clotting problems.

Controversy erupted several years ago in Britain after scientists announced plans to make human embryos with the nucleus removed from cow and rabbit eggs. Authorities allowed limited experiments and ruled the embryos should not be allowed to develop for more than two weeks.

In the latest report, Bobrow and colleagues concluded some experiments should only be allowed under additional monitoring from the new expert body and that a very small number of experiments should not be done at all.

Among experimentation that might spark concern are those where human brain cells might change animal brains, those that could lead to the fertilization of human eggs in animals and any modifications of animals that might create attributes considered uniquely human, like facial features, skin or speech.

Some disagree. "We think some of these should be done, but they should be done in an open way to maintain public confidence," said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at Britain's Medical Research Council, one of the expert group members. He said experiments injecting human brain cells into the brains of rats might help develop new stroke treatments or that growing human skin on mice could further understanding of skin cancer.

Other experts said such issues needed to be debated in Parliament and that any advisory body must have a diverse membership. "The danger is you could get scientists effectively regulating scientists," said Dr. Peter Saunders, chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship, a group that opposes the creation of human and animal embryos. He said most experiments on animals with human DNA were OK, but that any tests that aim to enhance animals with human material are not acceptable.

Bobrow warned altering animal brains with human brain cells shouldn't be done just yet. "The closer (an animal brain) is to a human brain, the harder it is to predict what might happen," he said.

Some members of the public surveyed about such potential experiments agreed. "I don't have a problem with it until it gets to the brain," said one respondent to an independent survey done for the Academy of Medical Sciences. "Bits to do with memories, that would be too far — it's a human thing to have a memory." ( Associated Press )

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God's Hand? 44% of Americans See Natural Disasters as Sign of End Times

God's Hand? 44% of Americans See Natural Disasters as Sign of End Times - According to just over half of Americans, God is in control of everything that happens on Earth. But slightly fewer are willing to blame an omnipotent power for natural disasters such as Japan's earthquake and tsunami.

A new poll finds that 56 percent of Americans agree or mostly agree that God is in control of all Earthly events. Forty-four percent think that natural disasters are or could be a sign from the Almighty. The fire-and-brimstone version of a vengeful God is even less popular in America: Only 29 percent of people felt that God sometimes punishes an entire nation for the sins of a few individuals.

Nonetheless, the desire to turn to God for an explanation after a disaster is a widespread human urge, said Scott Schieman, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who studies people's beliefs about God's influence on daily life.

"There's just something about the randomness of the universe that is too unsettling," Schieman told LiveScience. "We like explanations for why things happen … many times people weave in these divine narratives."

Deity of disaster

The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,008 adults in the continental United States in the few days after the Japanese disaster. The sample was weighted by age, sex, geographic region, education and race to reflect the entire population of U.S. adults.

The poll found that evangelical Christians are more likely to see disasters as a sign from God than other religious faiths. Of white evangelicals, 59 percent said disasters are or could be a message from the deity, compared with 31 percent of Catholics and 34 percent of non-evangelical Protestants. The margin of error for the survey was plus or minus 3 percent.

Forty-four percent of all Americans said that recent natural disasters could be a sign of the Biblical end times, with 67 percent of white evangelicals holding that view. (In comparison, 58 percent of Americans attributed recent severe natural disasters to global climate change, as did 52 percent of evangelicals.)

It makes sense that those who interpret the Bible more literally would link disasters to God, said David Foy, a psychologist at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles who has studied religious coping and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, Foy said, the poll should be interpreted with caution.

"They try to draw some conclusions between evangelicals and mainline Protestants and Catholics, and I don't think they can do that from the data that they've got," Foy told LiveScience. "[The poll participants] weren't selected on those variables, and other things that could have influenced their responses weren't controlled."

A vengeful God?

The poll found that 53 percent of white evangelical respondents and 20 percent of Catholics and mainline protestants said God sometimes punishes entire nations for the sins of a few.

That belief can make it harder to cope after a tragedy, Foy said. In his work with combat veterans, Foy has found that those who see tragedies as evidence of God's wrath are not as psychologically well-off as those who seek other explanations for negative events.

Less clear are the risks and benefits of believing that God is in the driver's seat, Schieman said, adding that the number of people in the survey who believe in a God that controls the universe (56 percent) matches what he's seen in his work.

"It doesn't surprise me, especially given the nature of God-talk in everyday society, how people talk about God being in control and influential," he said.

Among the group of people who believe in a take-charge kind of God are those who see the hand in the divine in every aspect of life, down to the number of empty parking spaces at a busy shopping mall, Schieman said. And then there are those who see God as an absentee sort of manager — someone who cares and is in-charge, but isn't fiddling with the weather or engineering tsunamis.

"It's an interesting question," Schieman said. "If you package or interpret events like this in the context of divine control, does it make people feel better? Does it make people feel more motivated?"

There's no straightforward answer to that question, Schieman said. In one 2008 study of data from a phone survey of U.S. adults, Schieman found that people who believed in a controlling God felt that they had less personal control over their own lives. But that association was strongest in people who rarely prayed or went to religious services. Those who believed in a controlling God but were invested in services and prayer showed no decrease in personal feelings of control, Schieman found.

One of the toughest questions for believers is how to reconcile the image of an "all-powerful, all-good and all-mighty" deity with one that allows disasters like the Japanese tsunami, Foy said. How people cope with the question depends on their conception of God, he said.

"If you believe God ultimately is in charge of everything but doesn't control the minutiae of daily life, then I think it's easier to reconcile," Foy said. "God would still care, but did not cause the tsunami to punish people." ( LiveScience.com )

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Genomic Fossils Reveal Explosion of Life 3 Billion Years Ago

Genomic Fossils Reveal Explosion of Life 3 Billion Years Ago - Life has existed on Earth for roughly 3.5 billion years, but there is very little fossil record left for most of that time. However, two researchers have used modern genomes to look back in time and reconstruct the evolution of ancient cells.

Their work has revealed an explosion of life about 3 billion years ago, coinciding with the appearance of the chemical mechanism that makes possible two crucial processes - respiration and photosynthesis.

"What is really remarkable about these findings is that they prove that the histories of very ancient events are recorded in the shared DNA of living organisms," said one of the researchers, Eric Alm, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He collaborated with Lawrence David, who received his doctorate from MIT and is now a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.

To turn the clocks back, Alm and David used information about modern genomes in combination with their own mathematical model that took into account the ways genes evolve, such as, the creation and inheritance of new gene families and the loss of genes. Using this technique, they traced thousands of genes from 100 modern genomes back to those genes' first appearance on Earth.

This genomic "fossil record" indicates that the collective genome of life expanded between 3.3 billion and 2.8 billion years ago. During this period, 27 percent of all presently existing gene families came into being. The pair dubbed this the Archean Expansion.

This expansion coincided with the development of modern electron transport, which is the biochemical process responsible for shuttling electrons within cellular membranes to make breathing oxygen and carrying out photosynthesis possible.

"Our results can't say if the development of electron transport directly caused the Archean Expansion," David said. "Nonetheless, we can speculate that having access to a much larger energy budget enabled the biosphere to host larger and more complex microbial ecosystems."

After the Archean Expansion, about 2.5 billion years ago, the atmosphere filled with oxygen, a dramatic event in the history of life on Earth, called the Great Oxidation Event. A type of photosynthesis, made possible by electron transport, is believed to have driven the oxygenation of the atmosphere. ( LiveScience.com )

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Most Dinosaurs More Like Barney Than T. Rex

Most Dinosaurs More Like Barney Than T. Rex - Dinosaurs might not have been the mighty conquerors that everyone thinks they were.

Instead of overwhelming the world with force, dinosaurs might have instead moved in when no one was looking.


Conventional wisdom suggests that soon after dinosaurs originated in what is now South America, they rapidly invaded every corner of the world, defeating their rivals by virtue of strength to rule for about 160 million years.

Now, however, a new species of dinosaur suggests that instead of overpowering weaker species, dinosaurs came into dominance by taking advantage of a catastrophe that wiped out the competition.


"We used to think of dinosaurs as fierce creatures that out-competed everyone else," said researcher Timothy Rowe, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin. "Now we're starting to see that's not really the case."


The new dinosaur, named Sarahsaurus, was a 14-foot-long, 250-pound (4.2 meters, 113 kilograms) sauropodomorph, a relatively small ancestor of sauropods, the largest animals to ever walk the Earth. The dinosaur lived about 190 million years ago in a setting much like today's Nile Valley, with lush vegetation on either side of a river and barren desert just beyond.


Rowe and his colleagues discovered the creature in Arizona in 1997. Excavating it proved hard, as the site was in the high desert and prone to windstorms. Since the researchers could not reach the site by car, they had to spend days lugging chunks of the rock-encased fossil back to camp.


"It was a rigorous challenge, the kind I love," Rowe told LiveScience.


Ten million years before Sarahsaurus lived, one of the five greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history, the Triassic-Jurassic event, wiped out many potential competitors of dinosaurs. The researchers now reveal that Sarahsaurus and two other early sauropodomorphs migrated to North America in separate waves long after that extinction. At the same time, none migrated there before the extinction.


"They were humbler, more opportunistic creatures," Rowe added of dinosaurs. "They didn't invade the neighborhood. They waited for the residents to leave and when no one was watching, they moved in."


"It's the story of a recovery after a great extinction," Rowe said. "That's what makes it poignant for me - it's a portent of our future. We're undergoing an immense extinction right now, and by examining the fossil record, we could get a good predictor of our future."


Rowe was also intrigued by the new dinosaur's hands.


"Its hand is smaller than my hand, but if you line the base of the thumbs up, this small hand is much more powerfully built than my hand and it has these big claws," he said. "It's a very strange animal. It's doing something with its hands that involved great strength and power."


"They may have been digging up roots or ripping apart rotten logs looking for small creatures," Rowe explained. "These animals are often thought of as herbivores, but I'm not so sure of that."


Sarahsaurus also had physical traits usually associated with gigantic animals. For example, its thigh bones were long and straight like pillars, yet were not much larger than a human's thigh bones.


"Some of the features we thought were tied to gigantism might instead be linked with the forceful way of life," Rowe said. "You could imagine they fastened onto things with their front and rear legs and arched their backs to tear things apart."

The researchers plan on scanning the fossils in greater detail to learn more about how the dinosaurs behaved. ( LiveScience.com)

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The Pinocchio frog and the world's smallest wallaby discovered in 'lost world'

The Pinocchio frog and the world's smallest wallaby discovered in 'lost world' .The world's smallest wallaby and a frog with a Pinocchio-like nose have been discovered in a remote mountain 'lost world'.

The remarkable array of new species - which also include a bat that feeds on jungle nectar, a 'gargoyle-like gecko' with yellow eyes, and a giant woolly rat - were discovered in Indonesia's Foja mountains.

The creatures were identified during a four-week survey of the rainforest wilderness by Conservation International.

The long-nosed tree frog is an entirely new species to science. It was discovered on a bag of rice at a campsite

The discoveries include several new mammals, a reptile, an amphibian and a dozen insects.

Among them were a new imperial pigeon and a tiny forest wallaby that is believed to be the smallest member of the kangaroo family documented in the world.

Conservation International said the frog's Pinocchio-like protuberance on its nose pointed upwards when it called - but leaned downwards when it was less active.

Amphibian expert Paul Oliver spotted the animal sitting on a bag of rice in the campsite from which the team were tracking species.

The Foja Mountains, classified as a national wildlife sanctuary, are in the Indonesian province of Papua on the island of New Guinea and encompass more than 300,000 hectares of pristine rainforest.

This wallaby is the world's tiniest known member of the kangaroo family. It was discovered by Kristofer Helgen of the Smithsonian Institution

Conservation International found this 'gargoyle-like' gecko with yellow eyes during a rapid survey

The international and Indonesian researchers also found a black and white butterfly related to the common monarch, a tree-mouse, a new flowering shrub and imperial pigeons with feathers that appear coloured rusty, whitish and grey.

The expedition in November 2008 is featured in the June edition of National Geographic magazine, with images of the new species captured by photographer Tim Laman.

This tree mouse is likely to be a new species and was discovered by Kristofer Helgen of the Smithsonian Institution

Wildlife discovered in Indonesia's Foja Mountains has included several new mammals such as a blossom bat

The discoveries were announced after it emerged governments had failed to meet targets to halt the loss of wildlife by 2010, which was designated the International Year of Biodiversity.

Bruce Beehler, senior research scientist at Conservation International and a member of the expedition team, said: 'While animals and plants are being wiped out across the globe at a pace never seen in millions of years, the discovery of these absolutely incredible forms of life is much-needed positive news.

This is a particularly colourful species of Imperial pigeon found in the region. The birds usually have a lighter head neck and belly and a darker back and wings

'Places like these represent a healthy future for all of us and show that it is not too late to stop the current species extinction crisis.'

Conservation International is hoping the documentation of the unique wildlife of the Foja Mountains will encourage the Indonesian government to boost long-term protection of the area. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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The truth about the sex lives of swans

They famously mate for life, but as one flighty pair find new lovers... the truth about the sex lives of swans. There has been a divorce. So what? About a third of all British marriages end in divorce. Nothing unusual there, surely?

Yes - but this break-up has nothing to do with fickle humanity. It involves two swans, and everyone knows that swans mate for life.

It's in many a folk tale and is confirmed by professional scientists. If one swan dies, its partner may mourn or at least remain celibate for several seasons - a big slice from the life of a bird that can expect to live in the wild for only 15 years or so. But now a pair has broken up.

The swan split suggests the idea of the birds mating for life may not be true

The swans are Bewick's - just a bit smaller than the familiar mute swans, and with a black-and-yellow beak.

Unlike mutes, Bewick's migrate thousands of miles from Britain each April to feed and breed in Scandinavia and Arctic Russia, returning only in October to wile away the time and recuperate in our somewhat milder winter.

They tend to return to the same spot each year and about 300 of the 8,000 that come to Britain home in on the Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire.

The romantic tale of swans swimming off into the distance together for life could be a myth

All the Bewick's there are known individually. So the staff watch mated pairs normally fly out together and return together. But this year a male called Sarindi and a female named Saruni broke the rules. Sarindi returned from his Arctic summer with a new mate.

The Slimbridge scientists feared the worst, because members of this monogamous species don't usually take a new partner unless they are widowed.

But a little while later, Saruni turned up as large as life - and she, too, had a new partner. It appeared to be only the second recorded divorce among Slimbridge's Bewick's in 40 years.

It all seems very sad - and disappointing - for swans are nature's paragons, chivalric through and through: brave and powerful, faithful and beautiful. Although Shelley wrote rhapsodically to the skylark, 'Bird though never wert!', he could have written just as aptly of the swan.

How could such glorious creatures have come into being? Surely they must be the work of a divine creator, a supreme artist. Charles Darwin, of course, told us that every living creature is shaped by natural selection, subject only to the laws of physics, and honed above all for survival.

Yet swans seem to defy the laws of physics. How could such an enormous creature - they are among the heaviest of flying birds - just sit on the surface and sail like a galleon? Why that splendid, curved neck, like the prow of a Viking warship?

Why do they glow so white - so visible? Why not disguise themselves like female mallards, so they can hide among the reeds?

Swans seem to defy the laws of physics. How could such an enormous creature just sit on the surface and sail like a galleon?

Ah, but natural selection seems to answer these questions, too. Birds evolved first and foremost to fly and have gone to enormous lengths to reduce body weight. Even those that have long since given up flight, like emus and penguins, clearly evolved from flying ancestors.

Inside their bodies, and extending far into their bones, are spaces for air. Their feathers hold air, too, which helps to keep them warm. So swans float so high and mightily for the same reason as the bathtime plastic duck: their bodies are full of air.

They have long necks because of the way they feed.

Swans are closely related to geese and ducks, and all of them live all over the world, or almost so; and anywhere you go you may find all three carving out the waterside habitats between them.

Many geese, like the Canada goose and bean goose, nibble the grass, sometimes far from water. So, too, do widgeons - and so, sometimes, may swans. Others, like the shoveller duck, feed from the surface, sweeping the surface with their broad beaks.

Some, like the mallard, 'dabble', reaching down from the surface for whatever they can find. Yet more, like the pochard, dive to the bottom to feed on shoots and roots.

The swans which 'divorced' were Bewick swans, which have distinctive black and yellow beaks

Swans reach down to feed on water weeds like dabbling ducks - but they can reach much further. They can do much of what the pochard does, without the trouble of diving.

Natural selection can even explain their faithfulness. It's their survival strategy - and one which is almost unique in the bird kingdom.

Since life in the wild is always precarious, many smaller birds are widowed routinely. They find it doesn't pay to put too much store by any one spouse if that spouse could be dead the next day.

That's why we find that huge numbers of birds - from mallards to many a songbird - will mate with any other bird they can find.

Often, too, female birds - aware that their nest could be attacked at any moment - lay an egg or two in a neighbour's nest just in case.

Cliff swallows, which live in the U.S., may seem monogamous at first sight: certainly they nest in pairs, sharing parental duties between them. But a DNA study found that nearly 40 per cent of all the nestlings were the fruits of what scientists dourly call 'extra-pair copulations'.

They are shaped as they are because this suits their way of life. But they are as visually stunning as they are because this is how other swans prefer them to be

Yet by songbird standards, that's modest. Australia's superb fairy-wrens are as sweet on the surface as their name suggests.

But in one study, 98 per cent of their nests contained at least one chick that had not been sired by the female's regular mate; and 75 per cent of all the young had been fathered by some other fellow far from the scene.

The fact is that, for creatures for whom life is always on the edge, it pays to spread the genes. And it's good for any one male - or any one female - to have eggs in several nests because that heightens the chance of a chick's survival.

But for swans, unfaithfulness just wouldn't pay. Swans are highly territorial - they know what stretch of the river is theirs, and so does everybody else.

The pairs gang up on intruders - and together they get better at it year by year.

Demonstrably, pairs that have been together for several years raise more young than pairs that are newly formed. So while natural selection encourages cliff swallows and fairy-wrens to put themselves about, it says to swans: 'Stick together!'

But then why do some divorce? The answer is that in any given season, a pair may fail to produce any eggs. And if this happens too often, then they simply decide to give it a try somewhere else.

This, probably, is why the Slimbridge pair broke up. In nature, there seems little room for romance - natural selection rules.

Yet as Darwin admitted, life isn't just about survival. It is also about raising families, and that requires co-operation and selflessness.

To raise a family, first find a mate - which means animals and birds must be attractive, and not just physically, although outward signs certainly help.

That's why Darwin coined the expression 'beauty for beauty's sake' - which is what we witness in swans.

They are shaped as they are because this suits their way of life. But they are as visually stunning as they are because this is how other swans prefer them to be.

We, mere onlookers, can just give thanks that there is such beauty to admire. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Fabergé unveils its first jewellery collection in 90 years

Fabergé unveils its first jewellery collection in 90 years. The opulent jewellers Fabergé fell foul of the Russian Revolution, then languished in the hands of unsympathetic corporations.

Now a new team, in concert with descendants of the company’s founder, is reviving its original spirit.

Fabergé, the luxury jewelers famous for the ornate eggs they gave the Russian royal family each Orthodox Easter, is to launch its first jewellery collection since 1917. Photo: Getty Images

Last year, on a pilgrimage to a once grand and elegant (and now grandly derelict) summer house that had belonged to Peter Carl Fabergé, Katharina Flohr, the newly appointed creative director of the great Russian luxury goods brand Fabergé, found a four-leaf clover. She was there with Tatiana Fabergé, the 79-year-old great-granddaughter of Peter Carl Fabergé, and Frédéric Zaavy, the artisan jeweller who had agreed to work with her to revive the Fabergé name in the spirit in which it was originally created – as a fine jewellery house and purveyor of the most exquisitely crafted gems. On those long white nights, the three were on a mission.

‘We were at Tatiana’s family’s country house outside St Petersburg,’ Flohr says. ‘It is a rundown estate which is so morbidly beautiful but completely destroyed; here we were with Tatiana, very courageously going through the broken beams and the loose staircases. And I found a four-leaf clover.’ It was a good omen.

‘Tatiana introduced us to museum curators, and took us to her old family country seat; we went to the ballet, she took us to exhibitions, we went on river-boat cruises at midnight,’ Flohr recalls over a cup of violet tea and a rose macaroon at the Parisian tea house Ladurée. ‘We went to the Hermitage, to all the palaces, and saw a cross-section of things that were relevant for Tatiana personally and for Fabergé’s past. Frédéric said the best bit was dancing with Tatiana – we went to a restaurant where they were playing Soviet-style dance music.’

Flohr had worked in the late 1990s as the fashion director of Russian Vogue (she later became the jewellery editor at Tatler in London),and Zaavy was a collector of Russian art. The trip was an opportunity to connect with the old world of Fabergé and work out exactly what the new Fabergé should be. This is the first time fine jewellery has been made under the Fabergé name since the house was forced to close in 1917. The brand has undergone many reinventions over the years, most recently losing its way under the auspices of Unilever. But now, gone are the trinkets, the eggs (though they may be given a new lease of life in the future), the tacky licences and the dreadful aftershaves. In their place is a quest to rediscover the heart and soul of one of the most famous – and romantic –names in art and design. Most of the original jewellery pieces were destroyed during the Russian Revolution. There is no archive, so Flohr went to Sotheby’s and Christie’s and managed to find some pieces –such as the famous cigarette cases – to look at and touch. ‘Everything was so beautifully executed and perfectly made that first and foremost I came back and said it is all about the way things are made – it’s about the craft and the art of making jewellery.’

Flohr met Frédéric Zaavy while she was still working at Tatler, and knew within seconds that his work was unique. When Tatiana Fabergé (the head of the heritage council appointed two years ago to look after the Fabergé legacy with her distant cousin Sarah Fabergé and the Fabergé specialist John Andrew) also mentioned his name it was, according to Flohr, a eureka moment. ‘He has this painstaking attention to detail,’ Flohr says. ‘He is such a romantic and he sees jewels in a very poetic way. The way he applies the stones is very much the way a painter applies brushstrokes to a painting. Every stone is there for a reason and is colour-coordinated with the one next to it, and everything is put together like a mosaic – a kaleidoscope of colours. That perfect workmanship would symbolise what Fabergé was going to be about.’

Zaavy has his own atelier in Paris, where he already had a loyal clientele, and it was only the Fabergé name that sparked his interest in working for a company. He describes his work as a painter would: ‘When you look at a painter in pointillism or impressionism, every singlemillimetre of colour is super-important,’ he tells me. ‘Every single dot of his palette is very important; it is what we are trying to do as well, so it is about the importance in colouration, in vibration and in rhythm on a piece.’

He begins with a drawing and, with his team of 15, works on about 20 pieces at a time. Every piece has its own story, its own life. Some of the animal characters, like the wonderfully intricate fairytale seahorse brooch, have charming, whimsical faces. Flohr likens them to Disney characters in their loveability. Zaavy might not make the same comparison, but says, ‘These pieces are definitely characters and that is why people say they have a lot of substance, that they have something to say, that they glow on people. I would even say each piece has a life, they are individuals, they are stories. Stones are there always but you have to draw the character of that person, or the soul.’

Since starting work last year, Zaavy has produced about 100 pieces, which range in price from £40,000 (€44,000) to several million. Fabergé, which has been bought from Unilever by the British private equity firm Pallinghurst Resources, with the former Dunhill president Mark Dunhill as the CEO, has also developed a cost-effective and thoroughly modern way of selling its exquisite treasures. There is a single shop, which has just opened in Geneva, but the real store front is a virtual one. Customers are invited to go online and key in their password to be presented with a selection of pieces they might be interested in. If they are, they can email a personal assistant, who will chat with them online, find out what sort of pieces they are looking for, and – if you are seriously in the market – will fly to you anywhere in the world, to your penthouse, your palace or your yacht, to show you the pieces in the flesh. As I was sipping tea with Flohr, a salesperson was on a plane bound for Hong Kong with a case of jewels to show to a prospective buyer. It is the ultimate in personal service.

‘Frédéric is an artist jeweller,’ Flohr says. ‘And it is about bringing that artistic impression into jewellery. That is what makes the difference, and I think someone may want to buy a piece because they want to collect it as much as they want to wear it and show it off to their friends. But first and foremost because it is so beautifully made, each piece is an individual miniature work of art. It’s a very intimate moment.’

The pieces have a magic about them – they have an organic feel and look that is quite unique. The four-leaf clover Flohr found in St Petersburg has evolved into the exquisite Clover ring which is smothered in bright green demantoid garnets, with the leaves edged in white diamonds. It is part of the collection with the theme of flowers (a recurring motif for the original Fabergé workshops; flowers were a luxury in Russia in the 1800s). There are two collections: Fables (which taps into Russian folklore, with mythological creatures such as the firebird, and the seahorse from the story of Sadko, the Bard), and the Fauves, inspired by the early- 20th-century Fauvist movement in art, with its links with the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev, and the set and costume designer Leon Bakst. Some of these pieces, like the incredible ruby-and-sapphire-encrusted Emotion rings, look as if they have come out of the earth, like molten lava that has cooled and wrapped itself around your finger. The stones themselves – many of which, like the hand-carved purple jasper, or the demantoids and alexandrites, are from the Ural mountains – really do almost vibrate with intensity.‘

Frédéric has that sense of urban romanticism,’ Flohr says. ‘Some of the pieces are just beautifully sculptural and others are so contemporary and glam that you don’t need a ballgown, you can wear a simple black dress or you can wear jeans.’ ( © Telegraph.co.uk )

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