Nuclear processes controlled by molecular machines

A report on the 'Nuclear Structure and Function' symposium at the joint spring meeting of the British Society for Cell Biology, British Society for Developmental Biology and Genetics Society, York, UK, 20-23 March 2002.     

When cell biology and neurobiology meet

A report on the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB) meeting on 'Cell Biology and Neurobiology: A Meeting for Martin Raff', London, UK, 3-5 July 2002.     

Developmental diorama

Spring meeting of the British Society for Developmental Biology, held April 2003 at the University of Warwick, UK.     

Trends in genomic 'evo-devo'

A report on the joint Spring meeting of the British Society of Developmental Biology and the Genetics Society, York, UK, 20-23 March 2002.     

Evolution of developmental mechanisms

A report on the joint Spring meeting of the British Society of Developmental Biology and the Genetics Society, York, UK, 20-23 March 2002.     

Mitosis at St Andrews: pulling the threads together

The following is a report of a meeting of the British Society for Cell Biology on ‘The Cell Cycle’, at St Andrews University, 4-6 April, 1989.     

Variations on a 'T': orchestration of T-box signalling in development

The British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) autumn meeting on ‘T-box Genes in Development and Disease’ was held in Nottingham, UK, from 16 to 18 September 2002.     

Besprechung

Book reviews in this article:
The Biology of Weeds. British Ecological Society Symposium Number One . Herausgegeben von J. L. H arper .     

Shelling out for genomics

A report on the symposium 'Genomic and Proteomic Approaches to Crustacean Biology' held as part of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology 2006 Annual Meeting, Orlando, USA, 4-8 January 2006.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF MAMMALS Edited by M. Balls & A. E. Wild. British Society for Developmental Biology Symposium No. 2. 1975
MOUNTAIN SHEEP AND MAN IN THE NORTHERN WILDS By Valerius Geist     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reivew in this article:
The Pathogenesis of Colorectal Cancer. By B. C. Morson. W. B. Saunders
Stem Cells and Tissue Homeosasis Proceedings of the 2nd British Society for Cell Biology Symposium. Ed. B. I. Lord, C. S. Potten and R. J. Cole     

Proteomics gets faster and smarter

A report on the third annual joint meeting of the British Society for Proteome Research and the European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK, 12-14 July 2006.     

REVIEWS

Census Catalogue of British Lichens. By W. W atson .
Endosymbiose der Tiere mit pflanzlichen Mikroorganismen. By P aul B uchner , formerly Professor in Leipzig. 1953.
Evolution. Symposium of the Society for Experimental Biology , No. 7.
New Zealand Pollen Studies. The Monocotyledons. By L ucy M. C ranwell .
Spät-und nacheisseitliche Waldgeschichte Mitteleuropas nördlich der Alpen. Zweiter Band: Waldgeschichte der einzehien Landschaften. By F ranz F irbas .     

Book Reviews

ELECTRON TRANSPORT AND PHOTOPHOS-PHORYLATION, TOPICS IN PHOTOSYNTHESIS , VOL. 4. Edited by J. B arber
THE MATHEMATICS OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND PRODUCTIVITY . Experimental Botany. An International Series of Monographs, Vol. 16. By D. A. C harles -E dwards
DIFFERENTIATION IN VITRO . Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium of the British Society for Cell Biology. Edited by M. M. Y eoman & D. E. S. T ruman
PLASMALEMMA AND TONOPLAST: THEIR FUNCTIONS IN THE PLANT CELL . Edited by D. M armè , E. M arrè & R. H ertel
THE PLANT COMMUNITY AS A WORKING MECHANISM , Special Publications Series of the British Ecological Society 1. Edited by E. I. N ewman
THE NATURAL COUMARINS: OCCURRENCE, CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY . By R D. H. M urray , J. M endez & S. A. B rown
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL IN CROP PRODUCTION . Edited by G. C. P apavizas     

A call for more physiology at conservation conferences

Scientific conferences are more impactful when they foster novel ideas, create new networks, and promote inter-disciplinary collaboration. The field of conservation physiology is inherently cross-disciplinary, representing the application of physiological techniques and knowledge to address conservation issues. Ideally, knowledge transfer comes from both directions: conservation biologists seek input on physiological techniques that can contribute to the success of their programs, and physiologists collaborate with conservation biologists to plan relevant applications for their work. To assess whether the level of integration between conservation and physiology has been increasing since the formal naming of the discipline of conservation physiology in 2006, we reviewed abstracts from conferences of three societies: Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), and Society for Experimental Biology (SEB). Specifically, we searched for physiology-related keywords in abstracts from SCB meetings, and for conservation-related keywords in abstracts from SICB and SEB. Our results indicate that the percentage of presentations incorporating physiology at conservation meetings has remained relatively steady (2–3%). In contrast, the percentage of presentations citing conservation applications has been rising at both of the integrative biology societies’ meetings and has reached 4.4 and 7.9% at SICB and SEB, respectively. We provide suggestions for why there may be discrepancies between conference types and ways to encourage the presence of physiological topics at future conservation meetings.     

Jordan Raff

Jordan Raff is a Cancer Research UK funded group leader at the Wellcome/CR-UK Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Biochemistry at Imperial College, London, and he worked as a Post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco. He is currently a Director of the Company of Biologists, and on the committee of the British Society of Cell Biology. He has studied centrosomes and cell division in fruit flies throughout his scientific career.     

A brief history of the Japan Society for Cell Biology

The Japan Society for Cell Biology (JSCB) was first founded in 1950 as the Japan Society for Cellular Chemistry under the vigorous leadership of Seizo Katsunuma, in collaboration with Shigeyasu Amano and Satimaru Seno. The Society was provisionally named as above simply because cell biology had not yet been coined at that time in Japan, although in prospect and reality the Society was in fact for the purpose of pursuing cell biology. Later in 1964, the Society was properly renamed as the Japan Society for Cell Biology. After this renaming, the JSCB made great efforts to adapt itself to the rapid progress being made in cell biology. For this purpose the Society's constitution was created in 1966 and revised in 1969. According to the revised constitution, the President, Executive Committee and Councils were to be determined by ballot vote. The style of the annual meetings was gradually modified to incorporate general oral and poster presentations in addition to Symposia (1969-1974). The publication of annual periodicals in Japanese called Symposia of the Japan Society for Cellular Chemistry (1951-1967) and later Symposia of the Japan Society for Cell Biology (1968-1974) was replaced by a new international journal called Cell Structure and Function initiated in 1975. This reformation made it possible for the Society to participate in the Science Council of Japan in 1975 and finally in 1993 to acquire its own study section of Cell Biology with grants-in-aid from the Ministry of Education and Science, Japan. The JSCB hosted the 3rd International Congress on Cell Biology (ICCB) in 1984 and the 3rd Asian-Pacific Organization for Cell Biology (APOCB) Congress in 1998, thus contributing to the international advancement of cell biology. Now the membership of JSCB stands at approximately 1,800 and the number of presentations per meeting is 300 to 400 annually. Although a good number of interesting and important findings in cell biology have been reported from Japan, the general academic activity of the JSCB is far less than one might expect. This is simply due the fact that academic activity in the field of cell biology in Japan is divided among several other related societies such as the Japan Society for Molecular Biology and the Japan Society for Developmental Biology, among others.     

Complex cell behaviors in development: recent progress and emerging challenges

A report on the British Societies for Cell Biology and Developmental Biology Joint Spring Meeting, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, 6-9 April 2005.     

To The Abercrombie Meeting and back again

The 7th Abercrombie Meeting took place in Oxford this past summer. It was organized by The Royal Microscopical Society with the support of The British Society for Cell Biology. Michael Abercrombie was a pioneer in the field of investigating cell behavior using time-lapse microscopy. The meeting was focused on “multi-dimensional cell migration in development and disease” and it brought together many of the world's leading researchers in the area, providing an opportunity to discuss the very latest advances and possible future developments in the field. The meeting sessions included Invasive Migration, Invasive Adhesions in Migrating Cells, Signaling in Migration, Immune Cell Migration, Migrations during Morphogenesis and Migration and Disease. As with all Abercrombie meetings, the conference delegates were treated to a staggering array of live cell imaging, in vivo imaging and images generated by the latest developments in microscopy.     

A bold step toward 2012: JIPB's 2011 Editorial Board Meeting report

The 2011 JIPB Editorial Board Meeting,which coincided with the 2011 International Symposium on Integrative Plant Biology,was held at Lanzhou University,China,on August 26,2011.Over thirty editors were in attendance for this extremely productive event (Figure 1).The symposium,jointly organized by JIPB,Lanzhou University and four Chinese societies involved in plant science research,the Chinese Society for Cell Biology,Botanical Society of China,Genetics Society of China,and Chinese Society for Plant Physiology,drew nearly 400 participants from all over China and abroad.