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At the 2006 ASN meeting, Dr. Gary Gibson stepped down as Secretary of the ASN citing urgent personal matters, whereupon the ASN Council requested that I subsume the responsibilities of Secretary. The council made this request as I had been the second candidate for this position in the last election held. After a few moments of deliberation, I accepted the offer, and promise to do my best to uphold the high standards set by my predecessors. On behalf of the Society, I would like to thank Dr. Gary Gibson for his service to our society as the former Secretary.

I will work with Judy Grinspan and the Nominations Committee to prepare a nominations form and disseminate it to the membership. The nominations form will be posted on the website and a post-card also will be sent by mail.

I would like to reorganize the ASN website to add features to make navigating it simpler and to enable members to more easily find information. To implement these changes I will be working with the Stassines Advertising, as I presently have little web-page authoring experience.

We continue to rely on sporadic email announcements to alert the membership to important deadlines and other issues. Sheilah Jewart has offered to take charge of the listserve, with assistance of David Shine.

By implementing some cost savings, increasing interest income, increasing dues for ordinary members from $75 to $125, and experiencing an extraordinary fundraising effort by Ian Duncan and Doug Feinstein at the Madison meeting, we were able to show a profit in FY 2005 compared to 2004. At the end of FY2005, our income had exceeded our expenses by $81,711 compared to a loss in 2004 of over $48,000. Credit card processing expenses and Council expenses were reduced while interest from bank accounts and CDs was generated. Our Business Manager, Sheilah Jewart moved CDs from Bank of America to Washington Mutual increasing interest from 1.09% to 4.17%. She established a $50,000 savings account earning 2.97% interest and even the checking account which previously earned no interest earns a little, all this generating over $8000 in income. Additionally, as an impetus to attracting attendees to this meeting, Council lowered the registration fees for the Portland Meeting. Unless we generate a formal business plan to sustain the Young Investigator’s Award, an important source of funding for young scientists, we will be forced to dip into the residual account. At the moment this account is significantly in the red. Additionally, other funds like the Young Latin American Fund is in need of a financial foundation. Income from members’ dues was flat from 2004 to 2005. If all our members paid their dues, we could double the income. The Finance Committee encourages ASN members and Council to identify ways to increase the income from membership in 2006.

2006 Program Committee Report

Monica J. Carson, Chair

monica.carson@ucr.edu

The 37th annual ASN meeting had some very specific challenges. The meeting site was on the west coast and the meeting dates were 8 ½ months after the 36th annual meeting. This meant that abstract submissions were due a mere 4 months following the close of the highly successful 36th annual meeting in Madison, WI. The 2006 program committee wishes to thank the strong support of the ASN council, the 2006 local host committee and the ASN membership as a whole for their help in meeting these challenges.

The 2006 program committee was very large and scientifically diverse in an effort to have the diverse research interests of the ASN membership represented. As has been done for the past 5 years, the program committee was divided into 4 subcommittees representing the 4 major themes of the ASN annual meeting (Building the Nervous System; Glial Mechanisms and Injury; Metabolism and Cell and Molecular Neurobiology; and Neurodegeneration and Disease). The format of the 37th annual ASN meeting was modeled on that of the 36th annual meeting. Namely, a total of 28 sessions were selected from the 58 submitted proposals (8 symposia were selected, 17 colloquia and 3 workshops). In addition, a skills workshop on grant writing was selected for inclusion in the program.

Abstract submissions for 2006 were submitted entirely online and increased almost 10% from the previous meeting. Christian Schmitz designed the online abstract submission system and database for the 2005 ASN meeting. The program committee extends substantial gratitude to Christian for his continuing to optimize and to tailor the online system to the needs of ASN! This year, Christian added an online feature that allowed all registrants to search the ASN abstract database using keywords, authors, institutes, session codes and presentation type.

The number of oral presentation sessions generated from submitted abstracts was increased to 6 sessions (up from 4 in 2005) in response to input from surveys completed by the 2005 ASN meeting attendees. Preference for oral presentations was given to graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty. Poster presentations were displayed for two days to allow for sufficient discussion. One innovation suggested by the 2005 meeting attendee survey responses was introduced this year: late breaking abstracts. Acceptance of late-breaking abstracts was allowed until 3 weeks before the final meeting. 15 late-breaking abstracts were received and were divided into a poster session (10 abstracts) and an oral presentation session devoted only to the late breaking abstracts (5 late breaking oral presentations).

The 2006 pre-meeting workshop was organized by Vlad Parpura, Bruce Ransom and Monica Carson. The topic was “Neuronal-glial interactions: New approaches and new insights. At the time of this report, the preregistration for the pre-meeting workshop was 30% higher than in 2005.

The Host Committee for the Portland meeting was initially formed in February 2005 with eight members. With additional volunteers, the committee grew to sixteen members, including, students, research assistants, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members and two heads of the departments. These senior colleagues not only provided excellent advice, but provided funds and volunteers for the ASN.

Steve Back	Dennis Bourdette
Neelima Chauhan	David Grandy
Richard Jones	Pam Lein
Malcolm Low	Charlie Meshul
Helina Offner	Bruce Patton
Hemachandra Reddy	Lawrence Sherman
Peter Spencer	Desire Tshala-Katumbay
Govind Vatassery	Mohammad Sabri, Chair

The committee was very active during 2005 and generated $11,000 for the ASN. The chair of the Committee met with ASN business manager and Scientific Program Chair to check out meeting rooms at the Hilton hotel and selected a place for hosting the ASN Closing Party. Recruiting volunteers was a challenge, because few wanted to volunteer on Saturday and Sunday.

Public Policy and Education Committee

Monica J. Carson, Chair

monica.carson@ucr.edu

This committee has two major tasks: to organize a forum to educate the lay public about a subject of medical/scientific interest and to publicize the Society to the scientific community.

The topic of this year’s public forum that was chosen by the committee was “New Directions in Stroke Prevention and Treatment for Children and Adults”. Dr. Stephen Back from OHSU organized the public forum and worked with the local Oregon chapters of the American Heart Association to publicize this event to the community. In the past several years, their have been complaints from the lay community (the primary target audience for the forum) that the forum was held on Sunday evenings, a “work/school” night. To respond to this issue, this year’s public forum was shifted to late Saturday afternoon on the first day of the annual ASN meeting.

The second charge of this committee is to publicize the Society and the meeting. Due to budget constraints, the committee has sought to develop low-cost and no-cost opportunities to announce and publicize ASN and its annual meeting. For the last three years, this committee with the help of Sheilah Jewart has been developing a database of email address lists designed to target ASN announcements to neuroscience training programs, neuroscience departments, recipients of neuroscience related NIH grants, member and non-member attendees of the annual ASN meetings and of other neuroscience related meetings. In addition, the committee has continued to post ASN announcements on the webpages of other neuroscience related societies (for examples, see postings on the SFN, PNI and ADNP websites).

Finally, this committee asks that all ASN members with web pages add a link to the ASN website to their webpages to help increase the visibility of our society within the neuroscience community.

The 7th edition of Basic Neurochemistry: Molecular, Cellular and Medical Aspects [Editors:GJ Siegel, RW Albers, ST Brady, DL Price], Academic/Elsevier, 2006 was available November, 2005. The first printing is selling rapidly and a second printing is planned. A meeting of editors and section editors will be held in Woods Hole Aug. 14,15, 2006 to review the book and to start planning for the eighth edition.

Committee for the Advancement and Encouragement of Neurochemistry in Latin America (CAENLA)

The ASN thanks Dr. Georgina Rodriguez de Lores Arnaiz, Dr. Nick Bazan, Dr. Francisco Nualart, and Dr. Herminia Pasantes for their services during the past 4 years. We also welcome two new committee members: Dr. Juana Pasquini and Dr. Robin Miskimins. The major function of CAENLA during 2005 has been the selection of the 2006-Young Latin American Scholars (YLAS). As in previous years, the availability of this award was announced in the ASN newsletter, the ASN website, the ASN meeting program and in various scientific societies throughout Latin America. This year we received 3 applications, all from Argentina, which were promptly evaluated by the committee. All three applicants were considered outstanding and were awarded YLAScholarships. The awardees are Verónica Cheli (graduate student; Host Lab: Dr. Pedro Lowenstein, UCLA), Cecilia Catalayud (graduate student; Host Lab: Dr. Robin Miskimins, USD), and Gonzalo Sanchez (graduate student; Host Lab: Dr. Andres Barría, UW). The plan for next year is to grant another 3 awards.

As in previous years, the committee has been responsible for maintaining the society’s web page. The website is updated almost daily upon request of individual members. Eric Klann was receiving these requests and was updating the web page as soon as possible. One change that will be implemented in the next year is to shift the day-to-day maintenance of the website to Sheilah Jewart. The reason for this change is that Eric Klann is often traveling and is unable to make these changes as promptly as the society officers and members would like. Sheilah will consult with Eric and the committee with respect to any major changes that are made to the website.

2) Supporting and troubleshooting issues with respect to the online abstract submission

During the past year, these issues have been dealt with in a very efficient manner by Sheilah Jewart.

We have been fortunate to utilize the listserver at Baylor College of Medicine to maintain the society membership list and to send mass e-mail announcements. However, Eric Klann will be moving from Baylor College of Medicine to New York University in August and will no longer have access to the Baylor listserver. David Shine has generously offered to maintain this list and to assist Sheilah with the mass e-mail announcements when they are necessary.

Intersociety Liaison Report

Mary C. McKenna

Most of the intersociety information this year relates to the current ASN meeting in Portland, the upcoming joint ISN/ASN Meeting in Cancun in 2007, and activities of the ISN CAEN Committee.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Neurochemistry, the ISN has given funds ($5,000) to support a plenary speaker at the ASN Meeting in Portland, Oregon. ISN President Roger Butterworth will introduce the speaker Dr. Richard Tsein.

A request was forwarded to the ISN CAEN Committee to support students and postdocs from Latin America to attend the ASN meeting in Portland. All of the applicants were from labs in Buenos Aires Argentina. None of these applicants were funded by the CAEN Committee. The committee had several concerns about these requests including that three applicants had been supported by CAEN to attend the ASN meeting in Madison Wisconsin less that a year ago. It is important that CAEN funds be distributed fairly to students and postdocs throughout all developing countries including Latin America. Last year several applicants received funds from both CAEN and the ASN Young Latin American Scholars Committee.

The generosity of the ISN has been extremely important for enabling investigators from Latin America to attend the ASN meeting. However, we (the ASN) must come up with new mechanisms to assist students from Argentina and other Latin American countries to attend the meetings because it is not the mission of CAEN to repeatedly fund the same candidates.

There should be few, if any, intersociety problems with regards to the joint meeting in Cancun because ASN member Roger Butterworth is the current ISN President and ASN member David Shine is the current ISN Treasurer. They have the interests of both societies in mind, and have a good working relationship with ASN President Wendy Macklin. David Shine, ISN Treasurer visited Cancun in 2005 and met with Ricardo Tapia about the Joint meeting arrangements and costs. (The local organizing committee is Julio Moran - jmoran@ifc.unam.mx, Herminia Pasantes - hpasante@ifc.unam.mx and Ricardo Tapia - rtapia@ifc.unam.mx (Instituto de Fisiologia Celular, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Tel - 52-55-56225588). Through David’s efforts and negotiations they were able to significantly reduce costs for the banquet. David’s experience working and negotiating with conference planning organizations (PCOs) was really helpful in containing costs. David will visit Cancun again after the ASN meeting in Portland. David is also assisting Phil Beart in finding a site for the Advanced Neurochemistry School.

Herminia Passantes from the local organizing committee will be at the ASN Meeting in Portland; Ricardo Tapia is not able to attend.

One of the most important things for ASN is to insure that the program committee includes both the Jordi Folch-Pi and Marian Kies Symposium in the program for the joint meeting in Cancun. There are several ASN members on the joint meeting Program Committee so they should be able to be sure these sessions are included.

Activities of the ISN CAEN Committee (Committee for Aid and Education in Neurochemistry):

The CAEN Committee chaired by Dr. Francisco Barrantes (rtfjb1@yahoo.com) approved $980 to Mr. Ramirio Iglesias Bartolome from Cordoba, Argentina to conduct research on “Intracellular transport of glycolipids” at the Lady Davis Institute-Jewish general Hospital in Montreal.

The CAEN committee also approved funds ($4,650).for partial support of the IBRO School in Neuroscience "Neuron and Glia: Life, Death and Resurrection" organized by Dr. Juana Maria Pasquini (jpasquin@qb.ffyb.uba.ar) that will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in September 2006. The school, which will have 30-40 students from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay and Cuba is also funded by the IBRO Latin American Regional Committee ($15,000) and by the Fogarty Foundation ($25,000). The CAEN funds will be used to cover the cost of airline tickets and meals for the students coming from abroad and seven professors from outside Argentina.

Request for information about visa difficulties of scientists attending our meeting and other meetings in the US.

Monica Carson was contacted by science writer Anne Harding to find out if we had any information about scientists from abroad having difficulties obtaining visas to come to the ASN meeting. She is collecting information for an article for The Scientist. Monica forwarded her email to me and I have sent out some emails to colleagues from overseas to inquire about visa problems. It would probably be a good idea to send out a request for information about this to all ASN and ISN members so that we can get as much information as possible.

The Jordi Folch-Pi Award Committee is pleased to announce that Dr. Tammy Kielian from the University of Arkansas is this year’s recipient of the Jordi-Folch Pi award. Dr. Kielian’s research centers on the neuroinflammatory response of the CNS. Dr. Kielian has been very successful in securing funding for her studies and in publishing her work in excellent journals. Moreover, Dr. Kielian has been an active ASN member.

The Marian Kies Award Committee is pleased to announce that this year's recipient is Dr. Eric A. Sribnek, who is an MD/PhD student who completed his PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Narendra L. Banik in the Department of Neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Scribnek’s research focused on estrogen as a neuroprotectant, and in particular on estrogen treatment of spinal cord injury. In work recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research he reported that estrogen attenuates significantly attenuated 68 kD NFP degradation, calpaincontent, calpain activity, levels of cytosolic cytochrome c, and ERbeta degradation. Estrogen treatment also significantly attenuated cell death marker. Dr. Scirbnek plans to organize a symposium for the combined ASN/ISN meeting.

Abel Lajtha was selected for this award last year, but could not attend the meeting to receive it. Thus, Abel will be presented with the award this year. The committee had one other candidate. Nominations were solicited from the council and the membership at the business meeting.

In 2006 the membership committee reviewed and submitted 23 applications to council for approval. A majority of these were from students and postdoctoral fellows.

Members of the committee still need to be appointed. No elections were scheduled for the current year. In the coming year, we will be soliciting nominations and electing the following positions: Secretary-elect, Treasurer-elect, and six council members. We encourage nominations from all ASN members for these positions. Calls will go out for nominations and elections later in the year with the necessary information for on-line responses.

The committee has not met in over a year, although Wendy Macklin has mentioned that the committee was to be re-activated. No action has been taken to date.

Generally, the committee finds out what needs to be added when people indicate that their committee doesn't function the way it is indicated in the rules. For instance, George DeVries established the Presidential advisory committee, but there is no description of this committee in the Standing Rules. If this committee is to be a permanent committee then the standing rules require revision. Council will be solicited for input.