THE highlight of this year's activity of the ETRS is the upcoming 17th Annual Meeting to be held in Southampton from Wednesday 26 September until Friday 28 September, with our new President-elect Raj Mani as the local organiser. The theme of this year's meeting is 'Measurements in wound healing - the conduit between the laboratory and the clinic'. Raj has informed me that there has been an excellent response in the number of abstracts submitted as well as the early registration of delegates. Our annual meeting is the major event of the Society and all of our meetings since the first in Oxford have combined the scientific advances in tissue repair with clinical outcome. This year's meeting's programme is designed to do the same and we look forward to seeing you at the ETRS stand in Southampton.

For any society to continue to prosper new members are essential, and young investigators and clinicians are a key factor in the growth of an organisation such as the ETRS. This year's programme will continue to foster this growth with our Young Investigator awards.

One of the benefits of becoming a member of the ETRS is having the option to receive the Society's official journal Wound Repair and Regeneration at a reduced rate. The majority of our members take this option and the journal has grown in esteem through the editorship of William Lindblad (since the journal began) and continuing now with its new Editor-in-chief, Patricia Hebda. I have asked Patricia to give us an update on the journal, which she has done in this issue, and I am sure that under her stewardship it will remain as one of the leading peer review journals in tissue repair and will continue to advance, as Patricia cites in her article on the journal's impact factor rating. Obviously, if you have any questions concerning the journal please discuss these with Patricia as she will be at this year's meeting in Southampton.

In this issue we also have a report from Magda Ulrich - one of our Board members - on the work that she is carrying out with her colleagues at the Association of Dutch Burn Centres in the Netherlands, which is extremely interesting. In all of our issues of the ETRS Bulletin we encourage members to send us such reports which will also be placed on our website: www.etrs.org.

David Leaper another Board member in this issue provides us with an article on clinical warming, work in which he and his colleagues have been involved for the last few years adding much information to the benefits of the maintenance of normothermia in wound healing. David Leaper is also organising next year's 18th Annual ETRS Meeting, which will be held in Malta 24-26 September 2008.

Lastly we have an interesting and important article by Frank Arnold on work that he has been doing on assessing wounds and scars for evidence of torture. In my opinion this is extremely important work and simply reflects the importance of wound and scar description and relating this to torture that many individuals throughout the world are undergoing.

We look forward to seeing you in Southampton.

Dr George W. Cherry
Editor