The International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue (lSOTT) held its 26th annual meeting from August 23-26, 1998, and met for the second time in Budapest. As captured in the design of the ISOTT'98 logo, the venue of the conference was the Budapest Hilton in the heart of the historic Castle District in Buda, across from Hungary's coronation church-the Matthias Church-and the fairy-tale-like Fisherman's Bastion; a special place with a historical touch situated atop the Castle Hill, from where participants enjoyed the spectacular panoramic views of Budapest exquisitely laid out on both sides of the Danube. In preparation for ISOTT'98, major emphasis was given to the application of informatics in collecting, presenting, and disseminating scientific and other information associated with the meeting. Electronic submission of the abstracts made it possible to publish the illustrated Abstracts on the ISOTT'98 Web Site well before the meeting. Following the meeting, an ISOTT'98 CD was published as a digital, searchable record of ISOTT'98. The scientific program was designed with the active participation of prospective attendees, in that priority and momentum was given to the topics selected by those visiting the Web Site. Poster and oral presentations were considered as equivalently effective formats, reflected by the fact that posters were on display throughout the meeting.

In 1996, for its 24th scientific meeting, the International Society on Oxygen Trans port to Tissue made its third visit to the United Kingdom. The previous two meetings were held in Cambridge in 1977 and 1986, but this was the first meeting to be held "north of the border" in Scotland. It was attended by some 186 delegates and accompanying persons and there were 128 presentations. The venue was the West Park Centre, the University of Dundee's residential conference centre, and ISOTT was only the second major meeting to be held there using the new Villa accommodation. Dundee's slogan is "City of Discovery" since it became the permanent home of the Royal Research Ship Discovery which was built in the city and was used by Captain Scott on his first ex pedition to the Antarctic. The ISOTT meeting also fulfilled its promise of being a meeting of dis covery with sessions on all aspects of oxygen transport to tissue. The inclusion of a session on oxygen transport in vascular disease reflected the interests of the local participants. All of the manuscripts were reviewed both for their scientific and editorial accept ability and in some 50% of cases, revisions were requested from the authors. Some manu scripts were ultimately rejected. However, in view of the importance of producing the Proceedings as quickly as possible it is possible that some minor errors may have slipped through, for which the editors apologise.