As agreed and discussed with Council prior to the ICSU meeting, IUPAB presented a poster that focussed on IUPAB workshops and taskforces, especially as they related to Africa.  The poster can be viewed here.

Outcomes of the IUPAB presentation: The Secretary-General presented this poster and provided 25 copies as A4 printed sheets. The poster was located just outside the meeting room for African delegates. All copies were taken on the first day of the four day meeting. The content of the poster was discussed with delegates from African countries and organizations, and the laminated poster was presented to Professor Sospeter Muhongo, Regional Director ICSU Office For Africa where it will be displayed at their regional office in Pretoria.

The Secretary-General provided names, titles and email addresses of a number of African contacts requested by Professor Greta Pifat-Mrzljak who will encourage African students to attend the workshop she has organized in Croatia in 2009.  This list of contacts will also be sent to the organizers of other IUPAB-approved Workshops (Sofia Bulgaria, Mumbai India, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) in 2009.

Cooperation between the Scientific Unions in Africa:  The Secretary-General had discussions with the following Union representatives:  (1) Professor de Leon (Union of Mathematical Sciences, UMS) was positive about cooperating on educational aspects of  mathematics in Africa and was supportive of the proposed IUPAB Taskforce on Computational Biophysics; (2) Professor  Jacques-Henry Weil  said that IUBMB has already send a workshop into African and will continue to do so. He expressed an interest in coordinating with other scientific Unions; (3) Professor Bruce McKellar representing IUPAP (Pure & Applied Physics, a very large Union with a significant subsection on biophysics) who agreed we should cooperate in this field and that there was a need to develop educational capacity in Africa. IUPAP is also active in the area of ethical conduct in science so there it may be possible to introduce this into African PhD courses. The Secretary-General will contact other Unions including Biology and Physiology (Professor Ann Sefton, International Union for Physiological Sciences, IUPS).

Actions: The Secretary-General will contact the Regional Office in Africa (ROA), the  Third World Academy of Science (TWAS), and representatives of IUPAP, UMS, IUPS, and IUIS.

from Jean Garnier

Bioinformatics has become a discipline in itself and is well integrated into Biophysics. This is not because biologists need to digitalized their data and analyze them with computers but because this discipline needs to apply algorithms which come from concept or techniques developed in Physics or in Mathematics or to implement rigorous statistical tools for biological data analysis. These data can be obtained by molecular biological techniques, more exactly biochemical ones but also from physical analysis for macromolecular structure determination with synchroton radiation for instance. Bioinformatics is going also to be involved in the developing field of macromolecular interaction networks in systems biology or in the metagenome projects.
The Inter-Unions Bioinformatics Group had its last follow-up meeting at the CODATA Conference in Beijing (China) on 23-25 October 2006. A round-table on Primary Biological databases attended by about thirty participants followed a session on this subject with Jean Garnier as chairman. This round-table was animated by H. Berman, Protein Data Bank, Rutgers University, USA, C. O’Donovan and G. Cochrane from the European Bioinformatics Institute, Hixton, UK, H. Sugawara from the DNA Data Bank, Japan and Jean Garnier. It underlined the importance of biological databases not only in biology in general but also more specifically in Biophysics.
The membership of IUPAB to CODATA has been renewed at the 17th General Assembly in Long Beach, Feb 4, 2008. From 2002 to 2008 Jean Garnier has been a member of the executive committee of CODATA and he has represented IUPAB at the last 26th General Assembly of CODATA in Kiev, Ukraine on October 9 and 10, 2008 and chaired two sessions: Biomedical data sharing and informatics and Biological and Genetics Data at the 21st International CODATA Conference also in Kiev on October 5-8, 2008. See also the report on CODATA.
The Task Force on Bioinformatics has been renewed at the last General assembly of IUPAB. Since Jean Garnier is not any more member of the IUPAB council, a new member will have to be nominated among the Council members and if possible as Convener of the Task Force.

Biophysical Reviews publishes short and critical reviews from key figures in the field. Authors are encouraged to discuss with the Editor the possibility of contributing a review. Biophysical Reviews covers the entire field of biophysics, generally defined as the science of describing and defining biological phenomenon using the concepts and the techniques of physics. This includes but is not limited by such areas as bioinformatics, biophysical methods and instrumentation, medical biophysics, biosystems, cell biophysics and organisation, macromolecules: dynamics, structures and interactions, and membrane biophysics, channels and transportation.

From the publisher’s description.

The Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) was created in 1966 as an interdisciplinary Scientific Committee of the International Council for Science (ICSU). Its seat is located in Paris, 5, rue Auguste Vacquerie at the ICSU headquarters where their secretariat is housed. We may note that it is also the legal seat for IUPAB.

The aim of CODATA is to improve the “quality, reliability, management and accessibility of data of importance to all fields of science and technology”.  Consequently CODATA is concerned by a large spread of disciplines as, but not limited, physical sciences, biology, geology, astronomy, engineering, environmental science, ecology. CODATA is involved in several international co-operations through their task groups. I will site some of them: Polar Year Data Policy and Management, eGY Earth and Space Science data Interoperability, Biodiversity, Observation and Specimen Records, Preservation of and Access to Scientific and Technical Data in Developing Countries. Other task groups are of a more traditional type such as the task group on Fundamental Physical Constants, which makes the reputation of CODATA or some that are related to geologic sciences or energy resources like the task Group of Data on Natural Gas Hydrates. Altogether the last CODATA General Assembly held in Kiev, October 9-10, 2008, has approved the funding of ten task groups and two working groups (one of the two is the working group on UV/Vis+ Spectra Data Base of interest to IUPAB).
The membership of CODATA is composed of National members (25), International Scientific Unions (16, including IUPAB), Co-opted organizations (4) and 20 supporting Organizations including the Protein Data Bank or the Japan International Protein Information Database (PIR). Only the National members pay annual dues with a structure similar to the ICSU dues that are based on the Gross National Product (GNP). The other sources of revenues of CODATA are the grants from different organizations, ICSU, UNESCO for instance (about 50% of the amount received as membership dues). CODATA has a scientific publication, Data Science Journal since three years and an older one, Newsletter, but both depends financially from the CODATA funding and are not beneficial. The same for the International CODATA Conferences held every two years, the last one of which was in Kiev, October 5-8, 2008.

In its Strategic Plan for 2006-20012, three major initiatives have been retained.  First, a Global Information Commons for Science Initiative (GICSI) already launched by CODATA following the World Summits for the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, in 2003 and 2005. The goal is to promote full and equitable access to scientific data in the world. Second, a Scientific Data across the Digital Divide (SD3 ) Program aims at “making critical scientific data and associate tools and resources related to sustainable development widely accessible in developing countries” (CODATA Strategic Plan). For that purpose CODATA is working with the International Polar Year (IPY) or the electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) through its task forces. The third initiative is to strengthen the links between data mining, data integration, artificial intelligence and other techniques under the heading of Advanced Data Methods and Information technologies for Research and Education (ADMIRE). Naturally this strategic plan is related to the final report of ICSU on June 2008 from the ad hoc Strategic Committee on Information and Data.
If the share devoted to biology itself and biophysics seems limited in regards to the diversity of stakeholders, IUPAB has a great interest to be represented like other Union members of CODATA, if it is only in the definition of the task groups that are renewed every two years or in the elaboration of the CODATA Conference program.

Jean Garnier, October 2008.