2008 Joint Program Committee Report
Experimental Biology 2008
The 2008 EB Meeting was held in San Diego April 5-9
under the meeting-wide theme of “Today’s Research: Tomorrow’s Health.” All
scientific and poster sessions were well-attended and overall enthusiasm for
the meeting remains high. The primary participating societies were: APS,
ASPET (pharmacology), ASN (nutrition), ASBMB (biochemistry), ASIP
(pathology), AAI (immunology), and AAA (anatomy).
The APS portion of EB 2008 featured two unopposed
Techniques and Technology in Physiology Workshops on Saturday entitled
“Mining the Metabolome” and “Exercising the Metabolome.”
APS also sponsored four “Cross-Sectional” Symposia
entitled “Systems and Computational Biology: A Direction for Physiology in
the 21st Century,” “Regulatory Mechanisms in Diseases of Epithelial
Transport,” “Using Nanotechnology to Answer Physiological Questions,” and
“Role of Endogenous Hydrogen Sulfide Signaling in Health and Disease.”
As in past meetings, APS hosted five guest societies:
the Microcirculatory Society (MCS), the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES),
American Federation for Medical Research (AFMR), the Society for
Experimental Biology and Medicine (SEBM), and the Association of Latin
American Physiological Societies (ALACF).
Out of a total of 7,738 volunteered abstracts submitted
by the deadline of November 7, 2007, 2,582 (33%) were programmed by APS; a
decrease of 5% from EB 2007 when only six societies met. Eight hundred and
eight abstracts were submitted by the late-breaking deadline of February 6,
2008. Of that, 153 (19%) were submitted to APS for programming.
Meeting attendance was excellent. The total meeting
attendance was 15,546. This is comparable with EB/IUPS 2005 meeting, also
held in San Diego, which included the same six primary participating
societies plus IUPS, and had a total attendance of 15,868. The EB08
attendance figure represents 13,420 registered scientists (including 281
high school students and teachers and 761 undergraduates), There were 2,024
exhibitors and their guests, 30 press and 72 scientific guest registrants.
APS programmed 311 sessions in total: 184 poster
sessions, 60 symposia, 44 featured topics, 17 lectures, three workshops, and
one refresher course, one poster discussion and a movie entitled “Flock of
Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus,” which served as the
back-drop for the Claude Bernard Distinguished Lectureship presented by
Randy Olson.
The Physiology InFocus program entitled, “One
Physiology,” was organized by Hannah V. Carey and included four symposia
scheduled throughout the meeting. These were entitled “Physiology and
Global Health,” “Physiological Basis of Ecosystem Health,” “Global
Physiological ‘Omics’: Microbes to Medicine,” and “Physiology and
Lifestyle.”
The lectures included the 12 Section Distinguished
Lectureships, the MCS Landis Award Lecture, the WEH Section Young
Investigator Award lecture, the Physiology in Perspective—The Walter B.
Cannon Memorial Award Lecture, presented by Barbara A. Block; The Henry
Pickering Bowditch Award Lecture, presented by Stephanie W. Watts; and The
Walter C. Randall Lecture in Biomedical Ethics, presented by Jerrold
Tannenbaum.
Experimental Biology 2009
The JPC met at EB 2008 to begin organizing EB 2009. EB
2009 will be held Saturday, April 18 through Wednesday, April 22 in New
Orleans, LA. The meeting will mark the departure of AAI as a programming
entity at EB now and for the foreseeable future.
Attendance is anticipated to be around 11,000. The
abstract deadline will be November 5, 2008. EB 2008 will again provide for a
late-breaking abstract deadline, anticipated sometime in February 2009.
The JPC received 17 Cross-Sectional symposium proposals
of which four were approved: “Novel Insights into Nitric Oxide Signaling,”
“ENaC/ASIC Proteins as Cardiovascular Sensors,” “Breaking the Diffraction
Barrier in Imaging of Molecules in Living Cells,” and “Adrenal
Corticosteroid Effects in the Central Nervous System on the Long-Term
Control of Blood Pressure.”
In addition, two Techniques and Technology workshops
will be scheduled on the first day of EB 2009; one will cover intravital
microscopy and the other will be a repeat and expansion of the EB 2007
chronic instrumentation in conscious small animal workshop.
The Physiology InFocus program, organized by APS
President Irving H. Zucker, is entitled “Integrative and Systems
Physiology: An Approach to Understanding Organ Systems and Disease,” and
will feature a series of four symposia: “A Systems Approach to Disease
Mechanisms,” “Cardiac Ion Transport and Arrhythmias,” “An Integrative and
Systems Analysis of Membrane Transport,” and “Omics: The changing Face of
Integrative Physiology.”
As is customary, the meeting will also feature sessions
organized by the APS Publications Department, Careers in Physiology
Committee, Public Affairs Committee, Women in Physiology Committee,
Education Committee, Liaison with Industry Committee, and Trainee Advisory
Committee.
Finally, the meeting will include two offerings from
The Physiological Society (UK). One wholly sponsored by The Journal of
Physiology, entitled, “The World Within: Impact of the Intestinal Microbiota
on Whole Body Physiology and Pathophysiology,” and the other jointly
sponsored by APS and TPS entitled “Rapid Effect of Steroid Hormones.”
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