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Our participation in the
International Union of Physiological Sciences and Experimental Biology in
San Diego, CA, USA, March 31–April 5, 2005 meeting was possible because of
the XXXV IUPS Congress Travel Grant Program, and an affiliate travel grant
program of The Physiological Society of Great Britain. We want to express
our deep gratitude for supporting both my wife and myself. We both won
travel grants ($1,500 each), and used them for both travel (it was rather
long–approximately 15 hours flight), and accommodations in San Diego during
the Congress.
Unfortunately, the economics of our country is unable to cover travel
expenses for young scientists, as we are, so grants were the only source of
funding for our trip to the USA. The spirit of nobility has nearly started
to become extinct among scientific professionals, and, as we were able to
learn, our task is to bring the best experience from the most developed and
powerful countries to support building a progressive and democratic society
in the Ukraine.
Participation in the XXXV IUPS Congress brought us a number of benefits.
First of all, we presented theses of our scientific work. It is of great
importance for us to display our results and discuss them with scientists
from the entire world during this type of meeting.
My poster was “Individual Typological Aspect Of Human Psychophysiological,
Psychophysical, Psychological And Autonomic Functions.” My studies have one
principal aim—to improve the level of life by making deeper our
understanding of the mechanisms underlying individual behavior properties.
This meeting has brought to us a fresh view of our results and made us more
critical in estimating the quality of our conclusions.
The conversations with both internationally known scientists and junior
investigators were unexpected and highly stimulating. Discovering numerous
mistakes in my speculations surprised me, but it was really useful for
writing my PhD thesis. Also, I met some interesting, nice people and had
discussions with them. They were: Virginia Huxley, Karen Sogaard, Bikash
Medhi, Vladimir A. Golovko, Heidi L. Shafford, W. Michael Panneton, Dmitri
Zaretsky, Wesley Miner, Manuhina Evgenia Borisovna; Fred Downey, H.D.
Critchley. I collected copies of their scientific papers and planned to use
them in my future studies.
My wife’s poster was “Effect Of Various Drugs Administration On Signal
Transduction Enzymes In Lymphoid Cells Under Conditions Of Different
Pathological States Development.” This problem is very interesting, and we
hope that solving it will help us to know the mechanism of pathological
function changes of molecules, which are closely linked to physiology of
lymphoid tissue; this knowledge may be used in searching for prophylactic
and healing methods. During her poster presentation, she met A. A. Gashev.
We had a very interesting conversation and we keep in touch with Dr. Gashev
to this day. We both met with Dmitriy Ostanin. We spent a great deal of time
together and became good friends.
Lecture attendance brought us new knowledge in various areas and enlarged
our scientific understanding of problems discussed.
The oral communications gave us new ideas, which we planned to use in our
future work. We learned some new experimental approaches and hope they can
be used in our studies. Especially, we want to share our impressions from
several symposia, which were very interesting, knowledgeable and
understandable. The following is a list: “Sex and Gender Differences in Pain
and Analgesia,” Chaired: Karen J. Berkley); “International Collaboration:
Science Knows No Boundaries,” Chaired: Melinda R. Dwinell and Francisco H.
Andrade); “How Do Emotions and Motivations Interact with Autonomic
Functions?” Chaired: Ruud M. Buijs;, and especially interesting for us was
visiting NIH Grant Seminar Workshops: Grants (Part Two, Grant Writing for
Success).
Sexual differences, locomotor, sensory and autonomic functions, as well as
emotional features should also be getting consideration. Our simple
measurements of reaction time, skin potential level, sensory thresholds
should be enriched by such modern technologies as transcranial
magnitostimultion with evoked potentials; FMRI, in addition to the most
advanced, in our opinion, field of American science—scientific management.
So we still have much to learn from our colleagues from APS.
Visiting exhibitions, we noticed some new methodological approaches and
recent technical equipment in the field of biochemical analysis,
electrophysiology and microscopy. We are encouraged to produce biochemical
and behavioral investigations of stress reaction of laboratory animals, and
their effect on the digestive system in our labs. It is clear, that we
should develop a series of scientific projects in the specific mentioned
direction that could be useful for our institution, as they have been for
some American organizations. Only in such cases will our ideas be
successfully realized.
With this experience, we have received an opportunity to see the sights of
San Diego, a wonderful town of a wonderful country. Our housing was good and
comfortable, with a friendly, international atmosphere. Sunny and delightful
weather allowed us to see this nice cultural and harbor city with large
streets, new impressive buildings, historical center and quay and, I
believe, the world’s best, the San Diego Zoo; we were breathing oceanic air
of the Pacific Beach, that was really full of romance in the sunset. So
attractive were the San Diego trolleys, not only clean and comfortable, but
also providing exciting travel and a beautiful view of the harbor. Without
exaggeration, your public transportation system commands respect.
I was impressed by the variety of Mexican cultural features, from
picturesque red-tiled houses to authentic Mexican food that we tried for the
first time in our lives. In the first day of our stay, it was really
difficult to understand the terminology of all those “burritos,” “tacos,”
and “tortillas.”
We want to express our thanks to APS and IUPS for our participation in this
interesting and cognitive meeting, especially to APS President, Neil
Granger, APS Executive Director, Martin Frank, and Meetings Assistant, Sarah
George who helped us.
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| Martin Frank, Olena
Bogdanov, Neil Granger, Volodymyr Bogdanov, Sarah George. |
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