APS News

APS Council Holds Fall Meeting in Virginia

Introducing Irving H. Zucker

APS Council Holds Fall Meeting in Virginia

    The APS Council held its fall meeting at the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, VA, October 31–November 2, 2003. The Council approved increasing the size of the Finance Committee from four members to five members. The Council also approved a motion that will allow the nomination and election of Society officers by electronic ballot. Since these amendments will require a change to the APS Bylaws, these issues will be put before the membership for a vote at the APS Business Meeting. The Business Meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 20, at EB 2004. (For additional information, please see APS Bylaws Changes in the December issue of The Physiologist available at http://www.the-aps.org/publications/tphys/index.htm.) 
    Council was presented with reports from the Publications, Finance, Membership, Public Affairs, Education, and Careers Committees. APS staff members Linda Allen, Marsha Matyas, Robert Price, Alice Ra’anan, and Margaret Reich joined the meeting to assist with the committee report presentations. 
    The Publications Committee announced that, with the approval of the IUPS, the title of journal News in Physiological Sciences (NIPS) would be changed to Physiology beginning in 2004. The journal is being redesigned, and the new title and design will be implemented in August 2004. The main body of the journal will still contain short review-type articles. In addition, the redesigned journal will have several new features, such as culled abstracts from other important papers, short articles on emerging topics and on emerging technologies, and reviews of web sites and occasional historical perspectives. 
    The Publications Committee announced that Michael M. Mueckler, editor of AJP-Endocrinology and Metabolism was evaluated in October and has been reappointed for a second term as editor. The Committee also announced that four articles have been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. A fifth article was scheduled for publication at the beginning of November. It was reported that 172 subscriptions to the Legacy Project have been sold, and that the last phase should be online by the second quarter of 2004. 
    The Finance Committee presented Council with the final 2003 budget and the proposed 2004 budget, both of which were accepted and approved by Council. Both are essentially balanced budgets.
    The Public Affairs Committee updated Council on the status of the NIH budget, The NIH Roadmap, and the “Bridging the Sciences” Coalition. In July 2003, the House voted for an NIH appropriation of $27.66 billion in FY 2004, the same 2.5% increase as in the President’s budget request, and in September 2003, the Senate approved a $27.98 billion budget that would provide the NIH with a 3.7% increase. In the post-doubling era, NIH funding increases will be competing with health, education, and human services programs that were held back while the NIH budget was doubled. At the same time, perceived public health priorities such as bioterror defenses and emerging diseases such as SARS and West Nile Virus may absorb most of the increases allocated to NIH. Also, NIH Director Zerhouni wants to spend $2 billion over five years to the priorities identified in a strategic planning process he calls the NIH Roadmap. The major themes of the Roadmap are: new pathways to discovery; research teams of the future; and reengineering the clinical research enterprise. 
    The Public Affairs Committee reported that the “Bridging the Sciences” Coalition now proposes to work toward legislation that would create a new entity—the Center for Bridging the Sciences within National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The Coalition, which APS joined last year, is led by the Biophysical Society, and is comprised of basic-science physical and biomedical research societies seeking major new federal support for research at the interface between the biomedical sciences and the physical/mathematical sciences. The Committee reported that a preliminary review of Zerhouni’s Roadmap indicates that many elements of the Coalition’s initiative are addressed in the Roadmap. 
    The Education Committee reported that the APS/ACDP Professional Skills document had been distributed to the membership of both the APS and ACDP for comments. The document will undergo a final revision by the Education Committee and then be presented to both the APS and ACDP Council for final approval before distribution. The primary purpose of the document is to serve as a professional development tool for physiology trainees and their mentors. 
    Council endorsed efforts by the Education Committee to identify institutions with undergraduate physiology programs and to determine the course structure of these programs. Using this information, it was proposed that the APS work with the members of the ACDP to increase the number of undergraduate physiology degree programs and the teaching of physiology in the undergraduate curriculum. The Council also directed the Education Committee and Animal Care and Use Committee to work with the ACDP to examine the benefits of various teaching techniques, ranging from simulations, animal laboratories, models, etc., to students’ acquisition of knowledge of physiology. 
    The Council also began planning for a Strategic Planning Retreat in the Fall 2005. The first step is to revise the Member Needs Survey distributed to a sampling of members prior to the 2000 Strategic Planning Meeting. The survey will be web-based and the entire membership will be asked to complete the document, helping to shape the future of the Society. The Survey should be available online in May 2004.
    Additional details of the Council’s fall meeting will be presented to the membership at the 2004 APS Business Meeting. The Business Meeting will be held at EB 2004 on Tuesday, April 20 at 5:45 pm in the Washington, DC Convention Center. All APS members are invited to attend.

Introducing Irving H. Zucker

    On January 1, 2004 Irving H. Zucker succeeded William Talman as Chair of the Public Affairs Committee. Zucker is the Theodore F. Hubbard Professor of Cardiovascular Research and Chairman of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha, NE. A native of New York City he came to UNMC in 1972 following the receipt of his PhD from the Department of Physiology at New York Medical College. His PhD was directed by Gabor Kaley who remains Chairman of Physiology at New York Medical College. Zucker did his postdoctoral training under the direction of Joseph P. Gilmore, the then Chair of Physiology and Biophysics at UNMC. Zucker rose through the ranks to Professor by 1983. He was appointed Chair in 1989. 
    Zucker serves on the Editorial Boards of nine journals including AJP: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, AJP: Regulatory Integrative Physiology, Hypertension and Circulation Research. He is the Past President of the Association of Chairs of Departments of Physiology. He has served on the APS Animal Care and Experimentation Committee (1985-1988) and on the Public Affairs Committee (2000-present). He served on the Executive Council of the American Heart Association’s Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences (2000-2003). He was a councilor for the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (1998-2002). Zucker also served on the Clinical Physiology Committee of IUPS (2000-2002). Zucker was a member of the NIH Cardiovascular and Renal Study Section (2002-2003) and is now a member of the Clinical and Integrated Sciences Study Section (2004-2007). He currently serves as a member of the American Heart Association’s national research committee.
    Zucker has been an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association (1977-1982) and has received an NHLBI MERIT Award (1992-2002) for his research. In 1993 he was awarded the University of Nebraska’s Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award. 
    Zucker’s research focuses on autonomic regulation in experimental heart failure. The roles played by various cardiovascular reflexes and alterations in central mediators of autonomic outflow are a major emphasis of investigation in his laboratory. Zucker and his group have evaluated and determined the mechanisms for alterations in sympathetic nerve activity in heart failure. Early on, these studies focused on cardiovascular sensory transduction. These included abnormalities in baroreflex, cardiopulmonary reflex, chemoreflex and cardiac sympathetic reflex function. Recently, the research has focused on major changes in central gene expression and production of nitric oxide synthase and angiotensin II receptors which have been implicated in alterations in resting sympathetic outflow and cardiovascular reflex function. Changes in these regulatory mechanisms following exercise training in heart failure have also been elucidated from Zucker’s research. Zucker’s research has been funded for his entire career by NIH, AHA and other sources.
    The Public Affairs Committee’s primary responsibility is to monitor major issues that impact the discipline of physiology. The Committee is advisory to the APS council. The issues that have been addressed in the past and are likely to continue to be of primary importance are: NIH funding; biomedical research funding of various other agencies, including the NSF and the VA and peer review. The effects and implications of the NIH roadmap implementation on the constituency of the APS will be a major issue of discussion in the coming years. The nature of integrative physiology as it relates to the implementation of the roadmap and the impact on physiology departments will be an additional issue of scrutiny by the committee. Because the Chair of the PA Committee serves as an ex-officio member of the Animal Care and Experimentation Committee, issues relating to animal welfare and the animal rights movement have been and will continue to be important issues of discussion and advice to council. The PA committee will continue to monitor and advise the council on issues related to the interactions between other societies, the media and various national issues as they arise on an ad hoc basis. Finally, the Chair of the PA committee acts as the APS representative to the FASEB Science Policy Committee.