Noricum is the Latin name for the Celtic kingdom or federation of tribes that included most of modern Austria and part of Slovenia. In the first century AD, it became a province of the Roman Empire, its borders were the Danube to the north and Vindelicia to the west, Pannonia to the east and southeast, Italia to the south. The kingdom was founded around 400 BC, had its capital at the royal residence at Virunum on the Magdalensberg. Around 800 BC, the region was inhabited by the people of the local Celtic Hallstatt culture. Around 450 BC, they merged with the people of the other core Celtic areas in the south-western regions of Germany and eastern France; the country is rich in iron and salt. It supplied material for the manufacturing of arms in Pannonia and northern Italy; the famous Noric steel was used in the making of Roman weapons. Gold and salt were found in considerable quantities; the plant called saliunca was used as a perfume according to Pliny the Elder. The Celtic inhabitants developed a culture rich in art, cattle breeding, salt mining and agriculture.

When part of the area became a Roman province, the Romans introduced water management and the vivid trade relations between the people north and south of the alps boosted - Noric steel was famous for its quality and hardness. Archaeological research in the cemeteries of Hallstatt, has shown that a vigorous Celtic civilization was in the area centuries before recorded history, but the Celtic Hallstatt civilization was a cultural manifestation prior to the other Celtic invasions, The Hallstatt graves contained weapons and ornaments from the Bronze Age, through the period of transition, up to the "Hallstatt culture", i.e. the developed older period of the Iron Age. The Noric language is attested in only fragmentary inscriptions, one from Ptuj and two from Grafenstein, neither of which provide enough information for any conclusions about the nature of the language; the kingdom of Noricum was a major provider of weaponry for the Roman armies from the mid-Republic onwards. Roman swords were made of the best-quality steel available from this region, the chalybs Noricus.

The strength of iron is determined by its carbon content. The wrought iron produced in the Greco-Roman world contained traces of carbon and was too soft for tools and weapons, it needed at least 1.5% carbon content. The Roman method of achieving this was to heat the wrought iron to a temperature of over 800 C and hammer it in a charcoal fire, causing the iron to absorb carbon from the charcoal; this technique developed empirically: there is no evidence ancient iron producers understood the chemistry. This rudimentary methods of carburisation made the quality of iron ore critical to the production of good steel; the ore needed to be rich in manganese, contain little or no phosphorus, which weakens steel. The ore mined in Carinthia fulfilled both criteria well; the Celts of Noricum discovered their ore made superior steel around 500 BC and built a major steel industry. At Magdalensberg, a major production and trading centre, specialised blacksmiths crafted metal products and weapons; the finished arms were exported to Aquileia, a Roman colony founded in 180 BC.

From 200 BC the Noricum tribes united into Celtic kingdom, known as the regnum Noricum, with its capital at a place called Noreia. Noricum became a key ally of the Roman Republic, providing high-quality weapons and tools in exchange for military protection; this was demonstrated in 113 BC. In response, the Roman consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo led an army over the Alps to attack the Germanic tribes at the Noreia. Noricum was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 16 BC. For a long time the Noricans had enjoyed independence under princes of their own and carried on commerce with the Romans. In 48 BC they took the side of Julius Caesar in the civil war against Pompey. In 16 BC, having joined with the Pannonians in invading Histria, they were defeated by Publius Silius Nerva, proconsul of Illyricum. Thereafter, Noricum was called a province, although it was not organized as such and remained a kingdom with the title of regnum Noricum, yet under the control of an imperial procurator. Under the reign of Emperor Claudius the Noricum Kingdom was incorporated into the Roman Empire without offering resistance.

It was not until the reign of Antoninus Pius that the Second Legion, Pia was stationed in Noricum, the commander of the legion became the governor of the province. Under Diocletian, Noricum was divided into Noricum ripense, Noricum mediterraneum; the dividing line ran along the central part of the eastern Alps. Each division was under a praeses, both belonged to the diocese of Illyricum in the Praetorian prefecture of Italy, it was in this time that a Christian serving as a military officer in the province suffered martyrdom for the sake of his faith canonised as Saint Florian. The Roman colonies and chief towns were Virunum, Flavia Solva, Celeia in today's Slovenia, Ovilava, Lauriacum. Knowledge of Roman Noricum has been decisively expanded by the work of Richard Knabl, an

Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov was a Russian poet, human rights activist and dissident. For his political activities, such as founding and editing samizdat almanac Phoenix, he was incarcerated in prisons and forced treatment psychiatric hospitals, he died in a labor camp. Yuri Galanskov began his dissident activities in 1959, as a participant in the poetry readings in Mayakovsky Square. Several of his works were published in the samizdat anthology Sintaksis. After Alexander Ginzburg was arrested in 1960 for publishing Sintaksis, Yuri Galanskov became the leader of dissident publishing in the Soviet Union. Galanskov’s first publication, Phoenix came in 1961, contained direct criticism of the Soviet government in the form of poetry. Phoenix published works by Boris Pasternak, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Ivan Kharabarov, Galanskov himself; as a punishment for publishing Phoenix, the Soviet authorities convicted Galanskov and sentenced him to several months in a psychiatric hospital. Following his release, Galanskov formed a friendship with Alexander Ginzburg, together the two publishers made arrangements to have their work published in the West.

Georgy Shchedrovitsky, who had taught Galanskov at school, signed a letter in support of Galanskov and Ginzburg during their show trial in February 1968. During the years of Nikita Khrushchev’s leadership, frustrations had been mounting in the Kremlin over the difficulty of suppressing the Samizdat literary movement. In 1965, the Soviets arrested Andrei Sinyavsky, two prominent samizdat writers; the trial was made a media spectacle, with Pravda issuing passionate condemnations of the defendants. The trial did not, discourage the underground literary movement. Instead, it provoked the first spontaneous political demonstration to occur in the Soviet Union in 30 years, which Galanskov helped organize. Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg compiled detailed notes of the trial and released their observations in a four-hundred page report known as The White Book; this work was circulated among the dissident writers and was smuggled out to the West. Shortly after the release of The White Book, Galanskov released the second edition of Phoenix, titled Phoenix'66.

This issue featured works by Gorbanyevskaya, Yuri Stefanov, Vladimir Batshev. It was regarded as being more daring than the first issue; the KGB arrested him and four others in January 1967. In what came to be known as The Trial of the Four, the Soviet Union brought charges against Yuri Galanskov for publishing Phoenix; the prosecutors charged Alexander Dobrovolsky with contributing to the magazine, Vera Lashkova with assisting the typing of the manuscript, Alexander Ginzburg with collaborating with Galanskov on The White Book. Lashkova was sentenced to a year in prison. Dobrovolsky was sentenced to two years at hard labour, while Ginzburg received five years at hard labour. Galanskov was sentenced to seven years at a labor camp in Mordovia. In 1968 Galanskov was sentenced to 7 years in a labor camp and was sent to a facility next to Ozyorny in the Republic of Mordovia. During his years in prison, Galanskov advocated the rights of prisoners. In collaboration with Ginzburg, he wrote a letter describing the poor conditions and cruel guards of the labor camp.

The letter was published in the West. According to accounts that reached the West at that time, Galanskov who suffered from bleeding ulcers, was not allowed to receive medical care after his imprisonment, was fed prison fare of salt fish and black bread, he died after being operated for a perforated ulcer by another inmate who had no qualification in surgery. After the operation camp administration refused to transfer him to a hospital or allow qualified doctors to visit him. Prior to his death Galanskov managed to sneak a letter home saying: "They are doing everything to hasten my death." Diacritica.com, Sobaka: The Canvas is the Crime by Cali RuchalaWorks by Yuri Galanskov Diacritica.com, For an End to the Policy of Reprisals The Human Manifesto, Translated from Russian by George Reavey in "The New Russian Poets 1953 - 1968" Galanskov, Youri. Le manifeste humain précédé par les témoignages de Vladimir Boukovsky, Nathalia Gorbanevskaïa, Alexandre Guinzbourg, Edouard Kouznetsov. Lausanne: Editions L'Age d'Homme.

ISBN 2825109207

The International Conference on Bioinformatics is a scientific conference on bioinformatics aimed at scientists in the Asia Pacific region. It has been held annually since 2002. Organised by coordination between the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network and the Thailand National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in 2002, the meeting has since been the flagship conference of the APBioNet, where APBioNet's Annual General Meeting is held. Since 2006, InCoB has been partnering with BMC Bioinformatics to publish an InCoB Special Conference Issue of top papers presented at the conference. In 2007, an additional tie-up with the Bioinformation journal was established in addition to the BMC Bioinformatics issue. Since 2007, InCoB held in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has been placeshifted in an additional location in a developing country venue, namely the Vietnam National University, Hanoi through the advanced videoconferencing project of APAN and TEIN2. In 2015, InCoB was organised jointly with the International Conference on Genome Informatics in an attempt to increase effectiveness and scalability.

Since 2007, at the VNU site coordinated by the Institute of Biotechnology Hanoi, InCoB coordinated with the International Union for Biochemists and Molecular Biologists, the Federation of Asian Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists and APBioNet to hold a two-week bioinformatics training course with course faculty from Karolinska Institutet, NCBI and National University of Singapore, supported by the S* Alliance for Bioinformatics Education and BioSlax, a software development project hosted at NUS as part of an ASEAN SubCommittee on Biotechnology project. This collaboration with IUBMB and FAOBMB continues in 2008 with a bioinformatics education workshop in Taipei, where the main meeting of InCoB 2008 will be situated. APBioNet Website InCoB Website