Greetings from the Senior Members

Greetings from Prof. Diethelm Richter
Dear Colleagues,

I am sorry that I cannot come to the conference, because I am ill and under clinical controls. Nevertheless I wish you an interesting conference with your new data and intensive communications and discussions.

I am very sorry not being able to join.

Yours Diethelm

Greetings from Prof. Peter Scheid

Message to the participants of the 15th Oxford Conference held in Odawara, Japan
I well remember the first meeting on Modeling and Control of Breathing to which Dan Cunningham and his colleagues had invited us in September 1978. It was held at the University Laboratory of Physiology in Oxford. The 90 participants from 10 countries presented their papers in an old, venerable lecture hall, with old, uncomfortable seats. But the presentations were exceptional, and meeting so many famous colleagues was fascinating for me as young scientist. The scientific outcome of this meeting was so significant that some colleagues decided to hold this meeting regularly. I had the pleasure to participate in several of the successors, e.g., in Solignac, Fuji, Paris, Lake Louise, Almelo.

The topic of the Oxford Conferences has shifted with time to all modern aspects of Respiratory Neurobiology. Many of the proceedings have been published in the journal Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology, and I am pleased to note that a Special Issue of the 15th Oxford Conference will also be published in this journal.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate in the 15th Oxford Conference, although it is organized by one of my dear colleagues and friends, Yasumasa Okada. May I convey to him, his coworkers on the organizing committee as well as all to participants cordial greetings from Germany. I am pleased and fond to see that the international scientific community has common goals, which unities them in peaceful collaboration. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if some political outlaws took your peaceful and fruitful meeting as a model for their own actions?

In this sense, I wish you all an exciting scientific and personal meeting and thank Yasumasa in particular for organizing the 15th meeting in the series of the Oxford Conferences.

Peter Scheid, Goettingen, Germany

* He is Professor emeritus, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, FRG.
* He was Professor of Physiology and Chairman, Medical Faculty, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, FRG, President of Deutsche Physiologische Gesellschaf, and Editor-in-Chief, Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology (former Respiration Physiology)