I've just come out of an excellent Nature meeting. Of course most of the documents we were addressing are company confidential and I cannot share them. It is, however, no secret that the Nature Publishing Group has successfully moved from being a magazine publisher with one flagship journal to being a scientific information and communication organisation whose lifeblood is on the internet. Two million registered users, ten million visits per month, 35 million page views per month and about 50% of its sales entirely electronic - not to mention 95% of manuscripts received electronically and 100% refereed, edited and designed electronically.

But the factoid I thought you'd appreciate, which I'm allowed to share and which, I think, says a huge amount about the concerns of the contemporary world is the list of top terms sought by users on the site.

Stem cell - 2997

HIV - 1877

Global warming - 1460

Cancer - 893

I shoud add that the Independent newspaper has just given a great plug for Nature's weekly podcast which competes with Madonna for top billing in the podcast ratings.