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BNA NEWS BNA NEWS POSTGRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE PRIZE WINNERS 2004: CONGRATULATIONS! William Davies (left) congratulated by his PhD supervisor, Lawrence Wilkinson. Katherine Carroll This year’s entrees to the BNA POSTGRADUATE PRIZE were, as usual, an exceptionally high standard. The runners-up were Leigh Felton, supervised by Hugh Perry in Southampton, and Tamara Curnow, supervised by Andrew Parker and Kristine Krug in Oxford. Leigh investigated how the chronic expression of cytokines in the brain, induced either by viral vectors or chronic degeneration, led to chronic sickness, or adaptation and tolerance. Tamara’s thesis compared the strength of choice probability signal for near-optimal and sub-optimal rotating cylinder stimuli in macaque middle temporal (MT) area. ‘Her work has added considerably to our understanding about how decision-related enhancements in neuronal firing are spread across the pool of relevant neurons in cortical area MT’, complemented Andrew Parker. Indeed, you can read more about her work in the review article in this issue of the BNA Bulletin (pages 12/13) Leigh Felton will be elaborating on his work for our next issue. However, the prize this year, after much deliberation, was justifiably awarded to William Davies for his outstanding investigation into the behavioural, particularly cognitive, effects of X-linked imprinted genes in mice. ‘We are only just beginning to realize the potential of imprinted genes for both normal and abnormal brain functioning and William has been to the fore of the debate’, extolled Lawrence Wilkinson, who supervised his studies at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. ‘[William] showed a very good understanding of the impressively wide range of experimental methods that he had employed on this ambitious programme of work’, commented Peter McGuffin, one of his examiners. Clearly, a worthy winner, indeed! Overall, William’s is a timely piece of work, contributing as it does to both the increasing evidence implicating genes in behaviour and emerging ideas that challenge the current orthodoxy placing hormonal influences as the sole determinant of sexual dimorphisms. Moreover, it points to epigenetic mechanisms that might contribute to the marked increased vulnerability of males to certain mental diseases, in particular the inflexible ‘stimulus-bound’ behaviours seen in autism. We are delighted that William, too, has offered to enlighten us more about his work by contributing a review article to a future issue of the BNA Bulletin. Many congratulations, indeed, to the runnersup and, in particular, to William Davies whose thesis shone just a little brighter – and he gets to spend the £500 prize money! The BNA Undergraduate Prize (£250) this year has been awarded to Katherine Carroll, an exceptionally gifted medical student who concentrated on neuroscience for her intercalated degree in Physiological Sciences in Oxford last year. Her undergraduate project was, coincidently, again supervised by Andrew Parker and Kristine Krug. Clearly, their lab is blessed with remarkable talent, though the quality of supervision must surely be instrumental in this success as well. Katherine used bistable images (a transparent cylinder with ambiguous direction of rotation) to probe perceptual psychophysical mechanisms in the brain. She found unambiguous stimuli influenced the perception of ambiguous stimuli, spreading globally across the visual field in a manner similar to feature attention signals spreading across the visual field representation in the cortex (the ‘feature similarity gain’ model). Katherine’s course tutor at Magdalen College, John Stein, describes her as ‘superlative’ and ‘not at all surprised that (Katherine) was the top First’. In addition to her academic prowess, Katherine is also a talented sportswoman and, remarkably, also finds time to share her favourite sport, riding, with underprivileged and disabled children. Congratulations, Katherine, for a welldeserved prize indeed! 6
BNA NEWS Want to find more time in the day? Here’s how i-kode can help you! The new, free-of-charge i-kode.com service is designed for life science researchers to help them take control of their mail. When you register via www.i-kode.com you can select a number of i- kode Partners (vendors of scientific products and services, academic societies and journal publishers) from whom you wish to receive mail (and/or e-mail). You can also request removal from mailing lists or give details of duplicate mailings you receive. All this is available via a single website. Then, say you move to another lab, it takes less than a minute to update your contact details and all of your chosen Partners will receive their new information in a fraction of the time it would take you to notify each one individually. Not only does the i-kode.com service save time, it also reduces waste. As well as reducing duplicate mailings, the service will reduce the number of items of scientific mail (over 50 million a year worldwide) that are sent to scientists who are no longer at the address used. The i-kode.com service also allows colleagues, such as lab managers or departmental secretaries, to pass on details of scientists who have left, so that their names can be removed from mailing lists. Scientists who have just moved to a new lab find the i-kode.com service provides a quick and easy way for them to request information from a number of vendors without having to contact each one individually. Other features of the service allow vendors to be more targeted in the type of mail that they send, so the scientist is more likely to receive information about products or services that are of relevance to them. Strict procedures are enforced to ensure the confidentiality and security of personal data stored on the i-kode.com system. Scientists’ details are only passed to those Partners that the individual scientist has selected and i-kode.com does not sell or rent out mailing lists. Future enhancements to the service will allow groups of scientists to form online communities, for example to share documents or diaries online. Here are some of the things that scientists have said about the i- kode.com service: "I have just moved to a new lab, so it was useful to be able to request information from all the vendors I need without having to contact them all individually" (Research Scientist, Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Glasgow) ‘This is a brilliant idea, I have changed jobs seven times in the last 10 years and this system will keep me up to date with companies’ literature, and will remind me that the companies exist when someone has walked off with my catalogue. I would like to see all companies and journals as part of this system’. (Lab Manager, Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Imperial College, London) "I like the ability to request information from a number of companies without having to contact each one" (Lab Manager, Pathology, University of Oxford) For further information about the i-kode.com service, please visit www.i-kode.com Nominations now sought for the BNA Committee There will be one vacancy on the BNA Committee this summer and all members are eligible to contend for this position. If you feel you would like to contribute to the future development of the BNA and really influence its activities, then why not consider standing for election? You must be proposed and seconded by extant BNA members, and your nomination must reach the BNA Office by 1st June, 2005. For further details, contact Yvonne Allen (y.allen@bna.org.uk, or 0151 794 5449), or discuss the idea with any of the other committee members (below). BNA Committee 2005 Professor Richard Frackowiak (President) rsjf@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk Dr Debbie Dewar (Honorary Secretary): d.dewar@udcf.gla.ac.uk Professor Colin Ingram (Treasurer) c.d.ingram@ncl.ac.uk Professor Nancy Rothwell (IBRO Rep) nancy.rothwell@man.ac.uk Professor Mike Stewart (FENS Rep) m.g.stewart@open.ac.uk Dr Duncan Banks (Website Manager) d.banks@open.ac.uk Dr Mike O’Neill (Corporate Rep) oneill_Michael_j@lilly.com Dr Huseyin Mehmet (co-opted member) h.mehmet@ic.ac.uk Dr Elizabeth Warburton (co-opted member) eaw23@medschl.cam.ac.uk Dr Richard Ribchester rrr@ed.ac.uk Dr Chris Thompson c.l.Thompson@durham.ac.uk Dr Stefan Przyborski stefan.przyborski@durham.ac.uk Dr Andy King andrew.king@physiol.ox.ac.uk Dr Narender Ramnani n.ramnani@rhul.ac.uk Secretariat: Dr Yvonne Allen (Executive Secretary/BNA Bulletin Editor): y.allen@bna.org.uk Ms Victoria Gill (BNA Administrator): vic.gill@bna.org.uk 7
Page 1: ulletin I N S I D E a newsletter fo
Page 4 and 5: INTERVIEW Professor Anders Bjorklun
Page 8 and 9: BNA NEWS BNA NEWS Geoffrey Raisman
Page 10 and 11: BNA EVENTS CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN
Page 12 and 13: SCIENTIFIC REVIEW Seeing is believi
Page 14 and 15: SCIENTIFIC REVIEW THE CHICK BRAIN -
Page 16 and 17: SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION Your amaz
Page 18 and 19: SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION there are
Page 20 and 21: MEETING REPORTS MEETING Report of t
Page 22 and 23: MEETING REPORTS MEETING subunits, s
Page 24 and 25: MEETING REPORTS MEETING Treating de
Page 26 and 27: MEETING REPORTS MEETING At the end
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Page 30 and 31: MORE NEW PRODUCTS FROM GRASS... Gra
Page 32 and 33: NOTICE BOARD Neurology for Neurosci
Page 34: VACANCIES VACANCIES JOBSJOBSJOBSJOB

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