• Sign up now for "Using MATLAB and CRS Tools for Vision Science" training course at the University of Durham
• AVA Meeting, Sept, Cambridge - Animal Camouflage: Questions, Answers and New Directions
• Abstract deadline extended for BriSCEV - Cardiff, September
• CRS' very first sponsored lecture for Professor Brainard gets published in the Journal of Vision
• Medal congratulations to CRS Customers Chris Chambers and Petroc Sumner
• Come and meet CRS to find out about MRI-Live! at HBM!
• The National Academy of Sciences votes CRS customers as new members for 2008!
• There is still time to sign up for the CRS Spring Newsletter!
• CRS attend AVA meeting.
• BrainVoyager QX Training - OHBM 2008
• CRS to sponsor Fred Kingdom at PICS08!
• Hanami - Japanese Cherry Blossom

We would like send our sincerest apologies to the attendees of Human Brain Mapping in Melbourne this week for our absence.

Having arrived at the Convention Centre and set up our stand, our representative was called away to an emergency back in the UK and therefore had to leave our stand unattended for the rest of the event.

We hope that you were able to gain some information from the CRS booth in our absence. Please contact us if you have any enquiries that couldn’t be answered at HBM and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

For more information about MRI-Live! and our other tools for Human Brain Mapping click here.

We would also like to thank the event organizers and other exhibitors for all their kind support.

Once again, our apologies and please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question either by email, phone or via our website.

We're pleased to announce a new short-course in MATLAB programming for vision science, with emphasis on the CRS ViSaGe and CRS Video Eyetracker Toolbox systems (click for information about the equipment). The course will run for the week of 29th September - 3rd October, in the newly formed CRS Robson Suite at the Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK.

Click here to find out more about the course and details on signing up.

The Applied Vision Association will hold a meeting at the Department of Zoology Museum, University of Cambridge on Tuesday the 23rd September to discuss current issues regarding animal camouflage and vision. Abstracts for presentations and posters will be accepted up until the 1st August.

Each session in the day will have one or two main themes to be introduced by a speaker in a short presentation, followed by a general discussion by the participants. In addition, there will also be at least one session of postgraduate-student and post-doctorate talks of 15 minutes including time for questions. There will also be space allocated for posters, for which application is open to all participants.

Suggestions for discussion topics and speakers are welcomed by email (contact details available through the AVA website). The organizing committee will select the most appropriate ones and send out details of these along with the final programme as soon as possible.

The deadline for talk or poster abstracts is the 1st August and details on how to submit these can be found on the AVA website

Arrival will be from 9:45 and the meeting will officially begin at 10:30. The meeting will be followed by a wine reception in the Zoology Museum until 7pm, followed by dinner in a local restaurant.

The AVA will also offering bursary funds to a number of students to support their attendance at the meeting, details can be found at the AVA website.

The 6th annual meeting of the British Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision (BriSCEV) will be held from the 15-16 September 2008 at the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences, Cardiff University.

There's still time to submit an abstract! Abstracts would be welcomed for both papers and posters, and the deadline for abstract submission has been extended to Friday 25th July.

The meeting will be set at the new, custom built School of Optometry and Vision Sciences which will provide a modern and spacious setting for an exciting and stimulating programme of papers, posters, clinical cases and invited speakers covering a diverse range of topics.

There will also be a full social programme allowing all delegates to appreciate the historic city of Cardiff. In the evening you are invited to a tour of the historic Cardiff Castle and a traditional Welsh banquet, complete with music and entertainment... a perfect way to appreciate the capital city of Wales whilst catching up with friends in a relaxed environment.

The organisers would like to extend the warmest welcome to anyone interested in vision and visual electrophysiology to join them for two days of discussion, education and some fun too! All are strongly encouraged to participate in the event.

For many years Cambridge Research Systems have attended and supported academic conferences worldwide. In 2006 we began to sponsor lectures at these events given by our customers and other world class vision scientists. Now, two years later we have recorded a total of 26 lectures, 12 of which are currently available to watch again online and another 12 more will be appearing in the Research Topics section of our site this year.

Click here to go to our Research Topics section.

The very first lecture recorded was given in 2006 by David Brainard “Understanding the Appearance of Small Spot Colours” at the Colour Group meeting of that year  and yesterday the related article was published in the Journal of Vision. Now you can read the publication and watch the presentation to hear Professor Brainard explain the research went into the paper. This and the rest of our dynamic lecture series are perfect for teaching, lab meetings and journal clubs.

Click here to sign up to our newsletter and be notified when new lectures are added to our site.

We are proud to announce that two long standing CRS customers Dr Petroc Sumner and Dr Chris Chambers of Cardiff University have won two very prestigious medals in recognition of their pioneering research.

For ground-breaking work in the understanding of how visual information results in action, School Lecturer Dr Petroc Sumner, has won the David Marr Medal from the Applied Vision Association. The medal recognises “the achievements of an outstanding vision scientist in the early part of his or her research career, in memory of one of Britain’s most distinguished vision researchers.” Dr Sumner said: “I feel very honoured to receive the Medal, particularly to be its first recipient.  It is also an accolade for the excellence of vision sciences in Cardiff, as well as CUBRIC– an environment that benefits both the quality and scope of my work.” 

The Spearman Medal is awarded by the British Psychological Society “in recognition of outstanding published work in Psychology”. The latest recipient is Dr Chris Chambers - a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council David Phillips Fellow at the School of Psychology – for his research on human cognition using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.  Dr Chambers commented: “My research involves stimulating the human brain with a magnetic field, which can tell us which areas of the brain are important for perception, attention, and higher cognitive abilities.”

Commenting on the two awards, Head of School Professor Dylan Jones said: “Of course, we are very pleased that our colleagues have been recognised in this way, but it is important to recognise that in a School like ours research excellence of this standard is the rule, not the exception, and that’s a pleasing thing to know.”

The medals follow Dr Alexander Leemans, from Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), who won recently in the General Electric (GE) Brain Expert competition. 

Come to booth number 36 at Organisation for Human Brain Mapping meeting, Melbourne from 15th - 19th June 2008

We are really excited to be going to HBM this year to exhibit during the meeting with MRI-Live! our unique tool for Human Brain Mapping along with our other Functional Imaging products.

Jill Legane will be at our stand during the meeting, contact us beforehand if you would like to arrange a personalised meeting

Click here to find out more

The National Academy of Sciences have this month announced the election of 72 new members. We are proud to see that three of the new electees are long tme CRS customers, using our equipment in their research for many years.

The National Academy of Sciences announced the election of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 9 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Congratulations to CRS customers Tom Albright, Bill Geisler and Tony Movshon who were elected during the business session of the 145th annual meeting of the Academy, bringing the total number of members up to 2,041.

Foreign associates are nonvoting members of the Academy, with citizenship outside the United States and the election brings the total number of foreign associates to 397.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.  It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the Academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.

One of today's BBC Headline News items is about a Gene Therapy trial at Moorfields Eye Hospital. This has demonstrated that rod photoreceptors can be functionally restored in patients with Retinitis Pigmentosa by introducing a specific gene into the damaged retina:

This is truly ground-breaking research and may lead to certain types of congential defects that would normally lead to blindness being cured. CRS customers at the Institute of Ophthalmology, the research wing of Moorfields Eye Hospital, have been participating in this study to assess the patient's vision before and after the treatment. Part of this assessment has been done using the VSG system as it has special features (paticularly high-resolution luminance and colour control and very precise stimulus presentation durations) that are not available in other computer-based vision testing systems.

To read the BBC News report on this story click here.

To read the Moorfields Eye Hospital press releases on the topic, click the links below:

• "Patient information for gene therapy" 26th April
• "World’s first gene therapy for inherited blindness" 27th April

For more information about the ViSaGe System that has been used in this research click here.

CRS will be sending out their Spring 2008 quarterly e-newsletter very soon which is jam-packed full of research and news from the vision science community.

There is still time to sign up for this bumper edition of the e-newsletter. It features research from Professor Stuart Anstis, USCD and Professor Vince DiLollo, Simon Fraser University, along with the very latest on CRS products and news from the vision science community.

Click here to sign up today!

CRS were proud sponsors of the AVA meeting held at the University of Manchester on the 1st April 2008.

Steve Elliott, Amanda Hurrell and Katy Smith attended the event, where they set up and demonstrated the latest Eyetracking equipment from CRS.

CRS also sponsored the G J Burton memorial lecture given by Dr Kate Plaisted, titled "Magnocellular processing in Autism". This will be available to watch again on our website very soon, in the meantime why not check out our growing library of Research Topics, including lectures and research notes from some well renowned vision scientists.

Brain Innovation will be holding a BrainVoyager QX Training Course from the 20th - 21st June, straight after the OHBM meeting in Melbourne Australia.

The course is intended for beginners as well as for users with an intermediate level of experience with BrainVoyager 2000 or BrainVoyager QX.

There will be lectures focusing on background knowledge of basic and selected advanced analysis methods as well as practical sessions that offer the opportunity to work with BrainVoyager QX on sample data sets. Attendees should be familiar with essential concepts of functional MRI and possess basic knowledge of statistical concepts.

Note that the number of participants is limited to 20 persons. The costs for participation are Euro 300. This will cover the course, lunch, refreshments and dinner at the first day but do not include accommodation.

CRS will be at the OHBM meeting with MRI-Live! - be sure to come by and see us!

CRS will sponsor long time customer Fred Kingdom at the upcoming Progress in Colour Studies meeting in a lecture titled "Illusions of Colour and Shadow".

The meeting will be held at Glasgow University from Monday 14 July until Thursday 17 July 2008 and Fred's talk will be available soon after to watch again on our website. Why not sign up to our newsletter and be notified when the talk goes live?

Click here to find out more about the meeting.

Our Japanese distributor, Namoto, has kindly sent us this photo of the Cherry trees in full blossom in Tokyo.

This photo was taken in downtown Tokyo in a place called "Chidoriga fuchi" on the moat of the Imperial Palace. Hanami is the tradtional custom of enjoying the beauty of the spring cherry blossom, and usually involves an outdoor party underneath the blooming trees during the brief two week period that the blossom is out.

Namoto have represented us as our sole Japanese distributors for over 10 years, and support customers with a welath of knoweldge and experience of our products. We wish our them and our Japanese customers the very best for Hanami.

Namoto's Japanese language web site is at www.Namoto.com, and you can email them at mid@namoto.com.