SEB Reportage

SEB Bulletin July 2005

Report from President and Council

I want to start by looking back over the four years during which I have been Vice-President and then President. It has been a very interesting period in the life of the SEB. I note with pleasure that the Society has used problems and threats and turned them into opportunities for change and improvement, in particular in the following areas:

Finances: The potentially serious budgetary situation of three years ago led us to look at our spending, to institute clearer budgetary controls and to investigate further sources of revenue, for example in sponsorship (and through other activities, mentioned below).

Offices: The possibility of a large rent increase coupled with the inadequacy of our former offices led us to purchase N^o 3 The Carronades, giving us for the first time in the SEB's history, a 'place of our own.' The difference this has made to the day-to-day running of the Society has been amazing, in addition to which the external image of the Society has been very much improved by this change.

Publications: The long-term concerns that the Animal Biology section did not have a journal to call its own have now been met by seizing an opportunity to work with Elsevier to establish a new journal, Reviews in Experimental Biology

Membership: The slow decline in membership, a problem faced by many learned societies, led us to examine new ways to recruit and retain members; the decline has been reversed and membership numbers are on the increase.

Meetings: Of course, one of our main functions is to put on good meetings - this is one of the features that will help to keep our membership numbers healthy - and I believe that the quality of our meetings continues to improve.

So much for the nostalgic look-back, but what about the immediately past year? First, it has been a year of consolidating some of the changes and improvements to which I have referred. For example, not only has the Society paid off the mortgage on its offices but it has also let out the top two floors of our office building, thus bringing in a net income. Secondly, the Society has continued to be very outward looking: the use of Barcelona as the venue for our 2005 Annual Main meeting is clear evidence of that. Further, we have started to take opportunities to run meetings on behalf of other societies. The first such meeting will be that of the International Society for Photosynthesis Research in 2007. We continue as a Society to be active in Education and Public Affairs, including ongoing involvement with the Education Committee of the Biosciences Federation and, in June 2005, in running a workshop for postgraduate students on Science Communication. Thirdly, it is clear that our finances are in a very healthy state. We have responded to this by putting more money into the sessions at our meetings, which we hope will lead to even higher quality. However, I need to say that the healthy financial situation is due in very large part to the income from our journals which all go from strength to strength. However, there are uncertainties about the future because it is impossible at this time to predict the effect that 'open access' will have on our journal income. Our Publications Officer, our Treasurer and our Management Committee will be keeping a close eye on this.

During the year, Council has provided the 'checks and balances' that ensure that the work of the Management Committee is subject to wider scrutiny. Council has also approved changes in the Statutes and Articles of Association that reflect the way the SEB is actually run. These changes have been notified to the Charities Commission. The other major item that Council needs to bring to notice of the members is that it has approved the establishment of two commercial companies under the SEB's ownership. Professional advice was that it is advisable to separate our commercial activity from our activities as a registered charity. One of the companies deals with the letting of our property and the second with provision of services to other organisations. They are both registered at and are run from N^o 3 The Carronades.

None of what I have mentioned could happen without the work of a good many people. I want therefore to thank the following:

Our journal editors and all those involved in running our journals, whether on the administrative or editorial sides of the work.

My fellow elected officers and committee members who have participated enthusiastically in our shared vision for the SEB and who have worked very hard for the Society to bring about that vision. I have been very fortunate to work with such a great bunch of people.

Our employed staff, Sarah Blackford at Lancaster and Mike Lakin, Christine Trimmer and Nancy Livesey at Southampton. I think that they have an especially difficult job. They are responsible for the day-to-day running of the offices and affairs of the Society; they have a very arduous path to walk, putting into place mechanisms to enact the policies of the Society's elected officers whilst at the same time acting on their own initiative to identify and follow-up new opportunities. They do a magnificent job; much of the improved level of professionalism, with the concomitant elevation of the SEB's image, is due to the initiative of our employed staff, to whom the Society is very grateful.

In this context, I need to mention some forthcoming staff changes. Mike Lakin will be leaving the post of Chief Executive Officer on July 31. His advice and financial acumen have been invaluable and I am especially appreciative of his work on the financial aspects of the purchase of our offices. At the time of writing, Mike is considering whether to stay on with the SEB as Journals Finance Officer. The other office staff change is that we will be employing an Administrative Assistant to work at Southampton.

Finally, I extend my good wishes to my successor, Roger Leigh. He has already shown during his two years as Vice-President, a high level of enthusiasm, energy, organisational ability and vision and has thus hit the ground running. He will do a great job for the SEB as will Ian Johnston, our new Vice-President.

John Bryant

Treasurer's Report

To be published in October.

Publications Report

This is my first report as your publications officer and it has been a busy year. As you will have noted from the treasurer's report the Society survives on the income derived from two of our publications. This is not a healthy position. The society (that means all of us together) must find ways of publishing our science in high quality publications that will benefit the SEB. Any scientific session at a meeting should have something in it we can print. Do we need to restrict ourselves to just that? A portfolio of high quality different types of publication will steer us through the changing publishing scene.

My predecessor wrote about open access last year and I will not go over all the old ground again. There is a very large gap between an idea and making it practical. This year has seen a few more people, including a few journals, jump on the train but little evidence that it is not going to hit the buffers. Few people have the £2500 that will be required to publish a paper if everything becomes Open Access and certainly not those from overseas that many of us would wish to see have improved access to the literature. There will always be more readers of a paper than writers so is it so wrong to spread the cost of publishing across the readership? Don't misunderstand me, the idea of Open Access is obviously very laudable but the benefits that the Society brings to the community of science and the benefits that science brings to society is dependent on our journals making a profit. Do we want to limit Society membership only to the wealthy? The Society is testing the water with J Exp Bot but at the end of the day the outcome will be dictated by the politicians not by what society wants. There is a difficult road ahead.

Another issue that is challenging us is the increasing call for supplementary information and repositories. Again it sounds a good idea to have the raw data available and to have your papers safely deposited in your University server. However how many of us keep lab books that are readily interpretable to others and are prepared to spend time editing them? How many of us are going to remember when we resequence a gene or rerun a metabolomics analysis with a data set of 100,000 points and, because of improved methods discover a slight error, to correct it at 25 locations? But more importantly, the paper that was published was based on the data at the time as refereed. Should we be changing it without going back to referees. I could go on for the rest of the bulletin. The real question is do we need to make life so complex? Can't we just have one copy of a published paper archived correctly so we all know we are reading the same thing?

Our newest publication Advances in Experimental Biology is now getting off the ground with its first volume due out early 2006. The business model for this venture is a new one, which will immediately allow funds to flow directly to the animal section with Elsevier taking the initial launch risks. The first two issues, on nitric oxide and life with and without oxygen, look to be interesting topics even to a Plant Scientist and are due out early in 2006. Taylor and Francis has now taken over what used to be BIOS and our Experimental Biology Review series in which we publish our symposium meetings. We have renewed a revised contract to continue publishing with them and will be seeking to get a citation rating for this series. Neither of these ventures will be the money earners of our other journals but give us some diversification of publishing opportunities.

These two publications complement our other publications in two ways. They provide avenues for our members who work in animal related areas to publish in a society publication. They also mean that we have a range of publications, that cover the spread from primary research papers, through in depth reviews to broader reviews for those just getting into a subject. Should the society spread its efforts more widely? Should we publish text books and or the ever popular Methods /Protocols……..? I'd welcome your thoughts since at the end of the day it's you who will have to write.

Plant Biotechnology Journal is progressing steadily, attracting a good flow of papers. The rejection rate is fairly healthy. Our thanks should go to Keith Edwards and his staff for steering this journal through the difficult launch period. For those cognescenti whose life depends on impact factors, a recent assessment of its citation rating showed it compared well with its competitor journals, but don't expect to compare it with Nature.

Both The Plant Journal and Journal of Experimental Botany continued to climb the impact factor league table and to produce a very healthy return for the SEB. Subscription income has stabilised a bit, which is good news. Harry Klee and his team have been working hard to keep The Plant Journal moving ahead. Unfortunately as many of you have noticed there have been production problems but hopefully we have them sorted out. Journal price increases are always a sensitive issue but for The Plant Journal we have agreed a modest increase with Blackwell for the next year. JXB has been testing the water with Open Access and thanks to Mary Traynor and Bill Davies have obtained JISC funding as a buffer against the potential loss of income. Despite the artificially low price authors have not been rushing to take up the offer of open access so as a testing the water exercise we have gained little. Fortunately, OUP, our publishers, have been gathering a lot of information and we will have a more balanced set of data to base judgements on. Hopefully we will be able to see the water in the diving pool before we jump off the board!

We are continuing to obtain benefits for members not only for access to our own journals but to many others, and discounts to books. The website will be continually changing so keep an eye on it.

I must conclude by thanking everybody involved in our journals for being so helpful during this first year but especially Chris and Nancy in the office who hide away behind the scenes but without whom we could not operate.

Mike Burrell
Publications officer

Plant Section Report

The year kicked off to a spirited start with the Annual Meeting at Heriot Watt. I hope it was the quality of the plant sessions, but the early morning fire alarm exercises may have helped rouse audiences. One of the later events at the Heriot Watt meeting was a superb Woolhouse Lecture from Prof Tony Trewavas, a worldly-wise exposition on the sense and nonsense, science and blarney surrounding genetically-modified crops in the wider context of the needs to change current farming practices. The perspective he brought to the meeting was widely appreciated.

Over the summer we helped organise a session at FESPB 2004 in Krakov, Poland. At this congress the SEB failed to win a bid to act as hosts for FESPB 2008, the honours going to the Scandinavian Society for Plant Biology who will host it in Finland. However, the SEB Plant Section contributed to a successful bid by Prof Christine Foyer to host the next International Photosynthesis Congress in Glascow in 2007. The SEB will act as the focus for organisation along with Christine and her scientific committee.

Christine Foyer also made a case for the SEB to host the website of the Plant Oxygen Group, part of the bigger Society for Free Radical research. Nick Smirnoff and Christine will host the next meeting of POG in December this year and it is hoped that the POG will consider the SEB as a more suitable home than SFRR.

Moving into 2005, the Section seized upon the Easter calendar gap left by SEB@Barcelona to organise a plant research community meeting at Sheffield. Billed as the Plant Frontier Meeting, a set of four high quality, focussed sessions was run in conjunction with GARNet and ICPR. The science is written up elsewhere in the Bulletin, but the meeting's success was dependent on the session organisers - Dr Owen Atkin, Dr Steve Rolfe, Prof Keith Lindsey and Ruth Bastow for GARNet - Nancy and Chris in the SEB office, Mike Burrell our local host and publication officer and, not least, the Journal of Experimental Botany for substantial sponsorship. Look out for the JXB special issues that will relate to the meeting, they will be superb collections of reviews. Having reviewed the success of this first Frontier Meeting, the Section has agreed to organise a similar crossdiscipline meeting in 2008. If you have ideas for the session topics, please contact the Section reps (www.sebiology.org/plant).

The Section has a healthy set of sessions at our Barcelona meeting. Registrations are high, this venture into Europe looks set to be both an attractive and rewarding exercise for the Society. Amongst the sessions organised by the Section is a tribute session in honour of the lifetime achievements of Prof John Boyer in the field of plant water stress management. JXB is supporting a timely and top-notch session on plant proteomics and reviews from a number of other sessions will also appear there.

With the Barcelona meeting in July it will not seem long after that until SEB@Canterbury which is back at Easter, 2006. A cross-Section meeting on Water Transport will give opportunities to compare-andcontrast between how different phyla move water. A joint Cell and Plant session will explain state-of-theart Systems Biology and as ever the Section is running a diverse set of sessions, Compartmentation, Metabolic Pathway Engineering, Photomorphogenesis, Imaging technologies for evaluating stress and, giving opportunity to all those not covered in the specialist sessions a general plant biology session Recent Developments in Plant Biology. It is not too soon to list sessions for 2007, Symbiosis is already on the list, but every member is welcome to send suggestions to the committee.

At the AGM in May members of the committee turn over. Thanks to Nick Smirnoff for his 4 years as Deputy chair, his place is taken by Jane Taylor who has ben co-convenor of the Plant Development Group. He continues as convenor of the Plant Metabolism Group. Also to Howard Griffiths who steps down from Council. He will be replaced on Council by Christine Raines and Noni-Franklin-Tong is re-elected to Council. I too step down after my allotted 4 years in the chair. My personal thanks to all those who have served on the committee over this time and to Nancy, Sarah and Chris in the SEB offices, without whom our grand plans would not happen. It has been a privilege to serve the Society and be part of the many activities which contribute to the thriving plant science community enjoyed by our membership. My place is taken by Keith Lindsey, I wish him every success.

Richard Napier
Plant Section Secretary
Warwick HRI

The Plant Transport Group

It has been another busy year for the Plant Transport Group. Although we did not have our traditional workshop meeting in 2004, we supported three sessions at the SEB Annual Main Meeting at Heriott-Watt, and many of our members attended the International Workshop in Plant Membrane Biology in Montpellier. At the SEB meeting, Anna Amtmann and Frans Maathuis organised a session on the transcriptional regulation of plant membrane transport, Robert Edwards and Freddie Theodoulou organised a session on the metabolism and transport of bioactive compounds in plants, and Malcolm Hawkesford organised a session integrating the complexity of sulphur metabolism. In Montpellier, Anna Amtmann, Mike Blatt, Julia Davies, Roger Leigh, Edgar Peiter, Mark Tester and Deri Thomas all gave talks.

In 2005, we are looking forward to the SEB Annual Main Meeting in Barcelona, where Philip White is organising a session on below ground processes, and there are sessions on salinity, organised by Tim Flowers, and on phloem-insect interactions, organised by Jeremy Pritchard. Papers from the work presented by José Barea, Antonio Márquez and David Johnson on below ground processes are scheduled to appear in a focus section of Journal of Experimental Botany, who are sponsoring this session. The traditional PTG workshop meeting will be held in the newly-rebuilt Bower Building at Glasgow University on 7-9^th September. It is being organised by Anna Amtmann and Mike Blatt, who are strongly encouraging young researchers to present their work. The deadline for booking accommodation is Friday 27^th May and further details can be found at www.gla.ac.uk/ibls/BMB/ptg2005/ptg05a.htm.

Finally, I would like to thank all my colleagues and friends who continue to contribute so much time and effort into energising the Plant Transport Group. Thankyou.

Philip J. White
PTG Convenor
Warwick HRI

Plant Gene Structure and Function Group

The Plant Gene Structure and Function Group continues to attract strong support for its sessions. At Heriot-Watt in March 2004, the group contributed to the running of a session on Plant Cell Architecture, organized by Simon Turner for the Plant Section jointly with the Cell Section; and a General Plant Biology session organized by Richard Napier. More recently (March 2005), Keith Lindsey organized a meeting on Meristems at the SEB Symposium Plant Frontiers Meeting at Sheffield. This was a great success, with a line-up of high quality speakers from around Europe. A volume is to be published from the meeting. The Gatsby Charitable Foundation kindly funded bursaries to assist students to attend the meeting, and two talks were sponsored by Blackwell Plant Science and The Plant Journal respectively. At Barcelona (July 2005), the group is supporting a session on Cereal Genomics (organized by Mike Holdsworth and Keith Edwards) and a general session on Recent Developments in Plant Biology.

Keith Lindesy
Convenor
University of Durham

Animal Section Report

The 2004/2005 academic year has already seen a great deal of activity by the animal section of the SEB. The animal section is running 11 sessions at the Barcelona meeting, and with more posters than we have done before. In addition, Ted Taylor has been nominated by the animal section to give the Bidder Lecture at Barcelona this year. Barcelona promises to be a busy and excellent meeting for the animal section.

We are also making plans for Canterbury 2006 and our first draft of the programme is taking shape with 12 sessions which we have asked Chris Trimmer to fit into the timetable and venue (thanks Chris!). The proposed sessions are:-

A1. Calcium (Endocrinology) - Simon webster (1 day)

A2. Ion sensing receptors - Rod Wilson/Nic Bury (1 day)

A3. Evolutionary Physiology - Tobias Wang & Maurice Elphick (1 day)

A4. Tribute to Graham Shelton - Dave Jones (1 day)

A5. General Animal Biology - Tobias Wang & Nic Bury (2 days)

A6. Biomechanics (To be decided) - Alan Wilson (1 day)

A7. Biomechanics (To be decided)- Alan Wilson (1 day)

A8. General Biomechanics - Alan Wilson (2 days)

A9. Comparative Reproductive & Developmental Biology-Kevin Coward (1 day)

A10. Life with & without oxygen-Tobias Wang & Goran Nilsson. (2 days)

A11. Goal directed limb movements-Phil Newland (1 day)

A12. Genes to function to disease: lessons from Drosophila Phil Newland (1 day)

Obviously, we are still working on the details of these, and the precise themes of some of the sessions/session organisers are yet to be established. Nonetheless, this will give a flavour of what's coming up for next year's main meeting.

The SEB is also trying out a little experiment at Canterbury! We will be attempting a cross section session on “Water transport”. This was originally the idea of Martin Grosell and Erik Larsen for an animal section session on water. However, water is fundamental to life, and clearly of interest to plant, animal, and cell biologists. There was great enthusiasm from across the society for this topic, and so we will try an integrated session that involves all the main sections of the SEB. This will clearly involve some logistics and contributors from across the scientific disciplines, but the scientific benefits of such an holistic approach to such a fundamental molecule are great.

Looking ahead to 2006/2007, the animal section will also be involved with various satellite meetings and symposia. These include the Conference of European Comparative Endocrinologists, 29^th August - 2^nd September 2006 at the University of Manchester. Richard Balement, Nic Bury and Neil Hazon will be heavily involved in this meeting. Manchester is a fantastic venue, and it is a great opportunity for us to have this meeting in the UK. We have also proposed four sessions for the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) meeting in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 12-16^th August 2007.

The sessions we have proposed are:-

1. Osmoregulatory strategies in tropical fish & other aquatic vertebrates (Nic Bury & Richard Handy)

2. Physiology & Behaviour of long distance migration (Pat Butler & Peter Frappell)

3. Ecophysiology of reptiles (Ted Taylor & Tobias Wang)

4. The physiology of neotropical fish (Tedeu Rantin & Ted Taylor)

It is also the animal section's turn to host the SEB symposium in 2007. It has been proposed that a session originally put forward by Inna Sokolova for the Canterbury meeting, be developed into the animal symposium for 2007. The precise details of venue and dates are yet to be worked out, but the general theme will be around the topic of essential and non-essential trace elements in metabolism.

Reports from group convenors are also listed below. I would like to thank all the group convenors for their hard work and enthusiasm. This is so important, and the active involvement of all the groups is the life blood of the section. On that note, it is worth pointing out that anyone can get involved in organising the science we do. So, if you have an idea for a session or meeting, let us know! There is also an opportunity to get involved in Education and Public Affairs (EPA), and the animal section is looking to elect someone to represent the animal section on the EPA committee. Please contact me if you would like to help.

Richard Handy
Animal Section Secretary

Neurobiology group

In 2004, as Neurobiology Convenor, I was coorganiser of the session on "The Biology of Deuterostomian Invertebrates" at Edinburgh. This session attracted speakers from many countries and a short article (with photos) about this session was featured in the Bulletin. In 2005, I am co-organising with Simon Webster (Endocrinology) the session on "Neuropeptide structure, function and evolution." in Barcelona. This 1.5 day session will have an international gathering of scientists who work on neuropeptides in both vertebrates and invertebrates. It promises to be a very interesting session that brings together many scientists for the first time. In 2005 I will be standing down as Neurobiology Group convenor after a six year stint. Dr Phil Newland from the University of Southampton will be taking over as convenor. Phil organised a very successful session on Olfaction at the SEB meeting in Soton in 2003 so I am sure he will an excellent new member the SEB Animal Biology section.

Maurice Elphick
Convenor

Animal Genomics Group

The year 2005 is important year for the Animal Genomics Group of the SEB. A number of our members are part of the new EU “Marine Genomics Europe” (MGE) Network of Excellence (http://www.marine-genomics-europe.org/). This is a large group of 45 laboratories collaborating on a variety of high level marine genomics programmes from microbial to fish. As result of this association the group has been able to secure up to 10K Euros from MGE to support sessions at the Barcelona meeting. This will allow us to invite a number of International speakers and also support our own members. Thanks to Pedro Martinez and Jordi Garcia Fernandez in Barcelona for organising the session in Barcelona. One of the major genomics events this year will be the release of the sea urchin genome (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). This project is being carried out by Caltech and Baylor College. We were fortunate last year in Edinburgh to have Andy Cameron speak who is the main coordinator for this project. This year in Barcelona we shall have updated reports from a number of speakers directly involved in the project. It is also worth noting that two members of the Animal Biology Section Committee (Mike Thorndyke and Maurice Elphick) are members of the annotation team, responsible for neuropeptides and neural growth factors. This ensures that the SEB will be at the heart of this important and exciting project.

We have no special plans for Canterbury yet but should like to offer to join the Comparative Reproduction and Development session organised by Kevin Coward.

Mike Thorndyke
Convenor

Respiration group

The respiration group is involved in several of the sessions at the Barcelona meeting and there are a number of the scheduled sessions for SEB 2006 that contain elements from the respiration group. While this high level of activity is gratifying and has resulted in very large attendance from most parts of the world, it is somewhat sad that several of the sessions are devoted to colleagues that have passed away within the past year. Most recently, Professor Peter Lutz, who has attended the SEB meeting regularly over the past two decades, died and he will be honoured though a session arranged by Professor Göran Nilsson (University of Oslo) at the SEB meeting in 2006. This session will deal with various aspects of oxygen lack. While there will be some overlap with the session that has been arranged in memory of Dr. Bob Boutilier for the Barcelona meeting, the role of hypoxia and anoxia on animals is such an important area of research, that many of us welcome a continued meeting activity of this topic.

As convenor, I have also been extremely pleased with the very large number of submissions to the general session that contains elements of metabolism and respiration, and it seems that the success of the general session is so high that it will continue as a core element in the SEB meetings for many years to come. I would like to thank Dr. David McKenzie from the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, whose help and enthusiasm has been essential for managing the great number of abstracts and titles that have been submitted to the general session this year.

The respiration group has also been active by arranging a number of PhD courses, which so far have been held at Aarhus University. This summer Professor James Hicks from University of California, Irvine, is responsible for a course on Comparative Physiology of Exercise. We are currently planning to arrange a course on Evolutionary Physiology for 2006, which would fit very well with the academic program for the SEB meeting.

Lastly, it is with much delight for the respiration group that Professor Ted Taylor from the University of Birmingham will be giving the Bidder lecture this year and many of us are anxiously awaiting this talk, which should be both entertaining and illustrious. Equally, the session for Barcelona that has been arranged in his honour contains a number of interesting and entertaining speakers, and I am sure we will have some eventful days during the meeting in Barcelona this summer.

Tobias Wang
Convenor

Osmoregulation group

The year 2004 saw Richard Handy stand down as osmoregulation group convenor and move “upstairs” to take over from Rod Wilson as Animal Section leader. The void left by Richard has been taken up by myself, Nic Bury. The osmoregulation group is supporting the Genomics in Aquaculture session at Barcelona, which brings together researchers with the vision of applying genomic techniques to enhance productivity in aquaculture, building from the EU funded projects under the AQUAFIRST banner, and more specifically those scientists associated with the BRIDGEMAP, STRESSGENE, and PLEUROGENE consortium. We also invited keynote speakers from agriculture and the domestic canine research fields to shed light on the use of new genetic techniques. There are a variety of sessions at Barcelona that will appeal to the osmoreg group, with the tribute sessions to excellent comparative physiologists Ted Taylor and Bob Boutilier. Canterbury also offers a plethora of sessions that are of interest to the osmoreg group including water transport and ion sensing receptors.

Nic Bury
Convenor

Cell Biology Section Report

The Cell Biology Section, with its four Groups (Thermobiology, Cell Signalling, Cell Cycles and Cytoskeleton) has had another successful year with some excellent conference sessions and strong proposals coming forward for future years. Heriot Watt 2004 saw well-attended, successful sessions including a Cell Cycles workshop and sessions on Plant Cell Architecture and Stem Cells and Reprogramming. Planning for the 2005 Barcelona meeting is already complete and the Section is sponsoring a wide range of topics; Salinity (organised for the Section by Tim Flowers and Jose Pardo); Mechanisms of Thermal Limits and Plasticity to temperature in ectotherms: genes to organisms (both organised by the Thermobiology Group); NO Signalling (Cell Signalling Group) and Cyto- and Nucleo- Skeleton (Cytoskeleton Group). This year, the Section nominated Adam Benham (Durham) for the President's medal for his work on processing in the endoplasmic reticulum and the Woolhouse Lecturer is Professor Russell Jones, a renowned plant cell biologist and long-term contributor to the Cell Biology Section from the University of Berkeley, California.

Planning is also advanced for Canterbury 2006 with sessions planned on Nanobiology, Integrative Biology (joint plant section), Adaptations to Temperature Extremes and Thermal Biology of Coral Reefs. In addition, a new initiative to work more closely with the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) has resulted in a session on Cell Micromanipulation. It is intended that this last session will be accompanied by an exciting 'hands on' workshop.

'The Nuclear Envelope' edited for the Section by David Evans, John Bryant and Chris Hutchison was published by Taylor and Francis in July and has been received favourably. It is one of the Society's 'Symposium' volumes. Claire Grierson has agreed to co-edit a similar volume based on the 'Integrative Biology' sessions at Canterbury. The 2006 Symposium will be the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle (organised by the Cell Cycles Group) and promises to be a very exciting meeting that will result in a very valuable symposium volume. Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt is to give one of the plenary lectures. The next opportunity for a Symposium run by the Section is in 2009 and 'Signalling to the Eukaryotic Cytoskeleton' has been suggested as a topic, to be organised by the Cytoskeleton Group.

Future meetings of the section are being planned with a possible SEB/ Polish National Academy mini-symposium and sessions for annual main meetings from 2007 onwards . Members of the Section are encouraged to be involved by suggesting sessions and topics, nominating young scientists for President's medals and by nominating members for the Section committee. The committee meets twice a year - in November and April- to plan and review its activities. In 2004/5, David E. Evans as Hon. Secretary led the Section, with Matthis Riehle as Deputy; Susan Brooks joined as a co-opted member from the RMS and Claire Grierson and Jim Murray were proposed for second terms. David Evans, Mathis Riehle Chris Hutchison and Trude Schwarzacher were representatives to Council of the Society; Jim Murray replaces Chris in this role.

We congratulate Ian Johnston (former Convenor of the Thermobiology Group) on his nomination to Vice President of the Society; in consequence Hans Poertner is to be Convenor of the Group. Finally, the Section contemplated John Bryant's final term associated with the committee (upon his retirement as President) with some dismay given his very considerable contribution to it and to the Society. In recognition of his role in the Cell Cycles Group, it is proposed that he work with Dennis Francis as the group's joint convenor and his contribution to the committee will therefore continue.

David Evans
Cell Section Secretary
Oxford-Brookes University

Education & Public Affairs Report

Looking forward to the future

Another busy year goes by and we can look back and thank the SEB for formally recognising the important contribution that the Education and Public Affairs (EPA) committee is making to the Society by officially incorporating the committee into its statutes for the first time. The EPA remit is, in summary, to formulate education and public affairs policy for the Society, and to run training and educational activities for its members, related to technical aspects of experimental biology as well as ethical and social issues. It is also tasked to assist young scientists in their career development and to involve the public, especially schools, in debating issues arising from experimental biology.

The broad and far-reaching remit of EPA committee function provides a broad base for activities with the capacity to be inclusive of all sectors of the biological community as well as the public, and to address the many crucial issues facing biology today. In this regard (and many others) the EPA has been targeting its energies into the following key areas this year: biology as a subject of study; a career and as an integral contributor to technological progress within society.

In Barcelona, the EPA committee is running two science communication workshops. One centres on publishing and encompasses expert perspectives and opinions on the future of consolidation of research effort by publication for the scientist and for the publisher with particular emphasis on the immediate challenges for book and journal publishing in the light of unrelenting focus on high citation indices and open access. The second workshop provides an opportunity for delegates to develop new insights into communicating their research effectively to non-specialist audiences and methods for liaising with non-academic professionals and related interest groups within the media, schools and the public at large. The workshop will provide Europe-wide perspectives and views and include a comprehensive outline of the underpinning ethics of communication and its challenges for the scientist. In addition, we will again offer the very popular annual women in science event. This year we expect up to 100 delegates to participate and share their views and experiences. In place of our usual outreach event, we are running a competition for the students of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. We aim to provide an enjoyable and inspirational environment that gives them the opportunity to get a flavour of a major scientific conference, which takes on a character of its own as the dynamic interface between researchers providing a valuable arena and focus of science communication in action.

For the first time, we organised a stand-alone workshop in Oxford-Brookes University, which was a longer and more hands-on version of the one organised in Barcelona. In collaboration with our Cell Section Secretary, David Evans, we attracted a full audience of over 40 delegates to this session from as far and wide as St. Andrews, Norwich and Exeter. We hope to run similar events in the future.

The EPA committee is already in the process of planning other events for the 2006 calendar. For example, teaming up with the Systems Biology session at the SEB main meeting in Canterbury 2006 allows provision for a Bioinformatics training workshop. In addition, a problem-based teaching workshop is also in the planning stages where well-trained and seasoned providers will impart their knowledge, wisdom and experience to delegates, who range from hardworking full time lecturers to those taking a bit of time out from research to don their 'teaching hats'. In addition, the EPA committee will address key issues of career management and development for our earlycareer scientists. Moreover, the science offered by the Society will reach out to the public through our own “café scientifique”, to be staged in Canterbury city.

The SEB continues to contribute to education, careers and outreach on a broader scale through the UK Biosciences Federation (http://www.bsf.ac.uk/) for which Sarah Blackford acts as the Education secretary, and through organisations such as the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology (FESPB) and the International Society of Photosynthesis Research (ISPR) through which the EPA committee will be organising science and society events in 2006 and 2007.

Thus a busy year passes and an even busier year is on the horizon. The future is bright for SEB outreach activities, as the EPA continues to develop and elaborate its strategies making science accessible not only to scientists but also to the public at large so the impact of the society is felt and appreciated by a wider audience. The primary aim of all EPA activities is to benefit all our members and give added value either directly or indirectly though training workshops, access to press coverage for research work, developing career management skills, learning about new teaching techniques or improving science communication skills. Our committee is growing and evolving to meet the needs of the changing demands placed on science and scientists and we welcome nominations to join our committee in April 2006.

Sarah Blackford and Christine H. Foyer
EPA officer and committee chair

Contents

Report from President and Council