Article 1

16th congress of the European Society of Biomechanics, Lucerne, 6-9 July 2008

On a beautiful spot in the middle of Lucerne with view on the lake the ESM-congress was held. The congress was visited by about 500 participants. There was an industrial booth with 21 companies.

During three days presentations were given about joint, spinal, dental and circulation biomechanics and implants, and on tissue mechanics.

Prior to the congress a pre-course was organised about modelling, especially meshless modelling using particles, and biological methods like gene expression.

Three keynote lectures were given:

·          Prof. Ross Ethier about ‘What cardiovascular biomechanics taught me about glaucoma’.

·          Prof. Ian Stokes about ‘Spinal stability - a lifelong challenge’.

·          Prof. Albert King about ‘Improvement of transportation safety through computational biomechanics’.

During the congress Prof Peter Niederer (member of the ESEM-board) was appointed as honorary member.

The next congress will be held in July 2010 in Edinburgh

Also two workshops will be organised, one in Regensburg in September 2009 in co-operation with ESEM, one in July 2009 in Zürich.

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Upcoming ESEM conferences

·          Workshop 'Multilevel and microstructural modelling of tissues' will be organized as Associated Workshop of the conference on Human Biomechanics of the Czech Society of Biomechanics Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2008,  Prague, Czech Republic (http://biomech.ftvs.cuni.cz/hb08/) 

·          Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie DGU, Berlin, 25 October 2008

·          MBEC/ESEM congress, Antwerp, 23-28 November 2008

·          Conference on diagnostic applications of light, Warsaw, spring 2009

·          One-day Congress for PhD-students, linked to the ESEM Summer School in Dublin July, 2009

·          ESEM-workshop during the World congress on Biomedical Engineering & Medical Physics, August 2009, Munich, Germany

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ESEM plans

ESEM focuses on bridging medical and BME-experts and on bridging the broad area of Biomedical Engineering. Main target groups are Medical students, PhDs, students in training and experts and Biomedical Engineering students, PhDs, and experts.

ESEM has five committees:

§ PR and publication committee: update the website, prepare frequent newsletters, improve flyers and posters.  Interesting  material for the Website can be send to the website-editor. Abstracts of PhD-studies, Master, Bachelor-reports are collected for publication on the website. Review articles (based on the first chapter of a PhD-thesis), suitable for other PhD-students can be submitted to the international peer reviewed journal Technology & Health Care.  

§      Network committee: Inventoring the expertise within our board and members, promote staff/undergraduates/postgraduates exchange, start Socrates agreement. Initiate interdisciplinary and international projects.

§      Workshop committee:

o     Starting ESEM-workshops at medical conferences.

o     Workshops for PhD-students, where they can present their research. About 8 BME-topics, for each topic a lecture by an expert will be given to give an overview of the field. Lectures in the morning and evening, entertainment in the afternoon. Subjects: new developments, telemedicine, robot surgery, virtual surgery for practising, imaging.

o     Small congresses with 100 participants in several BME-areas.

o     ESEM-conference on failures: what went wrong, what can we learn from it?

o     Hands-on workshops of 2 days. Limited number of participants (50-100). Program composed of lectures/talks to be held by ESEM members. Theoretical aspects are supported by experimental training in small groups.

§      Industrial committee: Universities and industries are linked; internships are offered, vacancies reported.

§      Educational committee: organize summer schools, European courses.

Article 4

GUEST EDITOR: Dr Dewar Finlay   School of Computing & Mathematics University of Ulster BT37 0QB Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, UK   Enquiries can be addressed to:   d.finlay@ulster.ac.uk       IOS Press Nieuwe Hemweg 6B, 1013 BG Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel.: +31 20 688 3355, Fax: +31 20 687 0039 E-mail: info@iospress.nl   www.iospress.nl   Abstracted / Indexed in: ACM Guide to Computing, EBSCO database, EMBASE, Health & Safety Science Abstracts, Inspec, MasterFILE, MEDLINE, SCOPUS.

CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue Technology & Health Care, March 2008 Smart Environments: technology to support healthcare   BACKGROUND AND GOALS: Ambient assistive living refers to the seamless integration of technology into a person’s everyday environment in order to provide some form of assistance or support. Smart homes are one particular approach where specific emphasis is placed on the person’s home environment. When extended beyond the home to the broader environments which the user may encounter on a daily basis the term “smart environment” is often favoured. Regardless of the terminology much effort is currently being expended in the development of these systems.  In all applications the primary goal is to provide systems that provide some form of assistance or support. This can range from providing mechanisms that allow individuals to conduct every day tasks to systems which can monitor and advise on health status. Contributions are invited for a special issue of Technology and Healthcare which focuses on reporting recent technological developments in this research area. Topics will cover aspects of smart home design, pervasive computing for smart environments and ambient assistive living research.  The special issue will be made up of a collection of high quality research articles presenting recent breakthroughs in these areas.    Topics covered may include: ·       Innovations in integrated devices in smart environments (intelligent sensors, actuation technology). ·       Emerging technologies for vital signs monitoring (device innovations for telehealth). ·       Location based services for smart environments (identification and tracking, personal area networks, wearable computing) ·       Architectures, protocols and emerging standards for communication and interoperability of smart environments. ·       Intelligent algorithms for data processing and modelling of smart environment data. ·       Developments in interactive systems (human computer interaction, multimedia feedback, usability, end user acceptance)   SUBMISSION DEADLINES: ·                                 4th July, 2008:   Submission of original papers ·                                 12th Sept 2008:  Notification of acceptance ·                                 21st Nov 2008:    Deadline for submission of final version ·                                   AUTHORS' GUIDELINES: Authors are requested to submit an electronic file of their manuscript to the Guest Editor. Papers should be 10 - 15 pages long (single line spacing, Times New Roman font size12)  and include original material that has not been presented or submitted elsewhere.    COPYRIGHT STATEMENT:  For legal reasons, the authors must sign a copyright transfer statement for their papers.

Please send all your materials for inclusion in the next issues of ESEM-News to : 
Prof. Bart Verkerke, g.j.verkerke@med.umcg.nl