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. 808 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), 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, 3 workshops, and 1 refresher course, 1 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”.