Division of Comparative Endocrinology (DCE): 2001 Spring Newsletter
In this newsletter:
Message
from the Chair
David
Norris (david.norris@colorado.edu)
As
I gaze out my air-conditioned office window in warm Sydney, Australia, I find
it hard to imagine that just a few weeks ago I was freezing various body parts
in Chicago. If you weren't there, you also missed some great symposia and many
stimulating presentations. The Aubrey Gorbman Award for the best student oral
presentation went to Katrina Salvante of Simon Fraser University for her
presentation "Hormonal control of reproduction: effects of corticosterone on
timing of laying, egg size, clutch size and yolk precursor levels." C. Morgan
Wilson of the University of Mississippi received an honorable mention for his
presentation "The endocrine basis for trade-offs between immediate survival and
reproductive success in arctic- and temperate-breeding yellow warblers." Daesik
Park of Northern Arizona University received the award for the best poster
which was titled "Purification and action of a repelling pheromone from male
red spotted newts." Congratulations to these fine students and to their
advisors. Many thanks to the judges Michael Romero (chair), Diana Hews, Miles
Orchinik, Greta Rosen, Thane Wibbels and Kevin Kelley.
At
our business meeting we voted to establish the Howard A. Bern Distinguished
Lectureship in Comparative Endocrinology to be presented by a distinguished
scientist at each annual meeting of SICB. Howard has consented to start off the
series at Anaheim in January, 2002. Nominations for the 2003 candidate should
be sent to me (or any other DCE officer) before the Anaheim meeting so that the
Executive Committee can select the recipient. Also, plans are underway to erect
a website for the coming international comparative endocrinology meeting being
organized by Stacia Sower and Ian Callard for Boston in 2005. Look for
information on that soon. Meanwhile, be planning those abstracts for Anaheim
and don't forget to vote for your Chair-Elect and Secretary-Elect. Special
thanks to the nominating committee that was chaired by Bob Dores and included
Diana Hews and Penny Hopkins.
Message
from the Program Officer
Sunny Boyd (boyd.1@nd.edu)
The
Chicago 2001 meeting was a busy one for DCE members. First, three of the four
meeting days included our symposia. Please join me in thanking Jim Carr and
Cliff Summers for organizing the symposium on "Stress: Is it More than a
Disease? A Comparative Look at Stress and Adaptation." Many thanks as
well to Jai Menon and Bob Denver for organizing the symposium "Amphibian
Metamorphosis." Both were stimulating additions to the program.
Individual member contributions were also significant and we had 34 oral
presentations and 29 poster presentations by DCE members at Chicago. The
arrangement of both oral and poster presentations was based on keywords chosen
by authors this year. This resulted in the posters of DCE members being spread
a bit more than in the past. I welcome your opinions on organization of the
oral papers and posters, whether you would like to complain or just
"fine-tune" some aspect of the system. Remember that choice and
order of keywords on the abstract transmittal form is of prime importance in
deciding where your contribution will be scheduled. (Keywords are not used
only for indexing, as they are by some organizations.) If all members of a
lab would like to present together, then all abstracts should have the same
keywords listed in the same order.
I
would appreciate member input on two program issues. First, as the annual
meeting becomes larger, the society as a whole is struggling with how to
expand. At the Chicago business meeting, I took a straw poll on whether
members preferred the society increase scheduling on Sunday afternoons or
increase scheduling on Wednesday afternoons. Member votes at the meeting were
about equally split. If you have an opinion on this issue, please write to me
at
boyd.1@nd.edu. Second, some changes in program scheduling may impact how we conduct the Best
Student Paper awards. Presenters are now allowed to give both an oral and a
poster presentation. Should we allow students to compete in both competitions
in a given year? "Late" abstracts are now accepted for poster
presentations. Should those students submitting late abstracts be allowed to
compete or only those submitting by the regular deadline? Lastly, some other
divisions have had problems with students asking to be judged in the best
poster competition but those students are then not at their posters. Should we
require DCE students in the best poster competition to be at their posters
during the assigned times? Again, please email me with your opinions.
The
Anaheim meeting in 2002 is being organized now. Kevin Kelley and Cunming Duan are organizing a
symposium on hormone
binding proteins for the Anaheim meeting. Remember that mini-symposia are
easy to organize and there is still ample time before Anaheim. Mini-symposia
do not have to be research topic-based. They can focus, for example, on
individuals to honor, research techniques, or particular organisms. Please
contact me (
boyd.1@nd.edu)
if you have any ideas. Feel free to send your ideas anonymously, if you are
worried I might try to trap you into organizing!
Message from the Secretary
Bob Denver (rdenver@umich.edu)
Minutes
of the Business Meeting
Chicago,
Illinois, January 4
th,
2001
Chuck
Crumley of Academic Press addressed the membership and announced that Bob Dores
has accepted the position of Editor-in-Chief (USA) for
General and Comparative Endocrinology .
Bob Dores then addressed changes to the manner in which manuscripts will be
processed and reviewed and changes to the journal (changes effective Feb. 1,
2001). A board of editors has been established comprised of 30 associate
editors to handle manuscripts in specific topic areas. The two editors-in-chief
(Dores and Hendersen) will distribute manuscripts to these editors who will
then be responsible for selecting reviewers. Reviews will be transmitted to the
communicating editor-in-chief who will make a final decision on the manuscript.
Manuscripts should now be submitted to the editorial office at Academic Press
in San Diego; please see current Instructions for Authors for details. The
transmission of manuscripts for review via the Internet (e.g., as PDF files)
will be encouraged. In addition to traditional research reports,
state-of-the-art reviews will be solicited (Frank Moore will serve as editor of
invited reviews) and short communications dealing with new findings in
genomics, proteomics, or techniques will be accepted. These papers should be no
more than 10 pages in length and are intended to "provide authors with a venue
for presenting new data on gene sequences, hormone/neuropeptide structures, or
technical innovations relevant to comparative endocrinologists." Also welcome
are 'Current Perspectives' manuscripts. These papers, limited to 8 pages, are
intended to "provide authors with a forum for discussing topics and trends in
comparative endocrinology." These articles "should raise interesting or
unanswered questions, present arguments about the significance of recent
findings, describe the application and limitations of new methods and
technologies, or consider potential interfaces between endocrinology and other
disciplines in the sciences." An updated Instructions for Authors will be
published in an upcoming issue of the journal or can be accessed via the
Internet at
www.apnet.com/www/journal/gc/gcifa.htm.
Bill
Zamer, the new program officer for Integrative Animal Biology at NSF spoke on
changes at NSF that will affect DCE members. Proposal and progress report
submissions are now exclusively electronic, via FASTLANE. When submitting
proposals as PDF files he cautioned that the files be downloaded for
proof-reading before final submission (to verify that there are no glitches in
the file). Also, access to proposals by
ad hoc reviewers and the submission of reviews is now being conducted via the
Internet. He solicited volunteers for program officer positions at NSF as well
as reviewers and program panel members. Interested individuals should contact
the respective program office at NSF. He requested that when NSF grant
recipients publish in high profile journals (e.g
., Science, Nature, PNAS) that they inform their program officers. This is an important way to increase visibility for the research that NSF supports.
Sunny
Boyd announced that DCE had 34 oral and 29 poster presentations at the Chicago
meeting. Sunny emphasized that members wishing to have their papers grouped
with other DCE papers should use "Comparative Endocrinology" as their primary
keyword when submitting abstracts. Sunny pointed out that there is still time
to submit proposals for mini-symposia for the Anaheim meeting. Note that the
Anaheim meeting will be held January 2-6, 2002. It was noted that members
should make travel plans early since the meeting may overlap with the local
sporting events.
A
proposal to establish the Howard A. Bern Lectureship in Comparative
Endocrinology was accepted. The lectureship will be established at the Anaheim
meeting and Howard Bern has graciously agreed to be give the inaugural lecture.
Changes
to the Society's flagship journal American Zoologist
were discussed. These include a proposal to change the name of the journal to
"Integrative and Comparative Biology". A ballot for changing the name was
collected at the Chicago meeting and results will be announced soon. In addition, the format of the journal will be changed to 81/2 x
11. The long delay, as long as two years, between submission of symposium
articles and publication was discussed. It was agreed that this problem needs
to be resolved and one short term solution will be to temporarily increase the
number of issues to overcome the backlog.
The
SICB Executive Committee requested feedback on a proposal to place more
emphasis on posters and less on oral presentations at the annual meeting. It
was generally agreed by the DCE membership that this would be a bad idea since
the annual meeting is viewed as a valuable forum for students to gain
experience presenting their findings in an oral presentation format.
It
was announced that Miles Orchinik won the election for Program Officer-elect
for DCE. Miles will take over the position from Sunny Boyd at the Anaheim
meeting.
A
new divisional website has been established (
www.sicb.org/divisions/dce.php3)
which is intended to provide current information of relevance to the DCE
membership. Future development of this site will include links to sister
society homepages and meeting homepages. Suggestions for material to be
included on this site are welcome (
rdenver@umich.edu).
Upcoming Meetings
14th
International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology
Sorrento (Napoli), Italy
May 26-30, 2001
International
Symposium on Amphibian and Reptilian Endocrinology and Neurobiology
Camerino,
Italy
May
31 - June 2, 2001
5th
Annual Meeting, Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology
Scottsdale,
Arizona
June
27- July 1, 2001
Fourth
Intercongress Symposium of the Asia and Oceania Society for Comparative
Endocrinology
China,
2002
21st
European Society for Comparative Endocrinology
Bonn, Germany
August 26-31, 2002
The
2005 ICCE will be held in Boston and will be co-chaired by Ian Callard and
Stacia Sower. Stacia is currently requesting proposals for satellite symposia.
Please
send comments on the newsletter and messages for the Fall 2001 DCE newsletter to
rdenver@umich.edu.
DCE
Candidates for Election
Candidates
for Chair-Elect
Catherine
Propper
Current
Position:
Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona
University, Flagstaff, Arizona
Education:
A.B. Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, 1982; Ph.D. Oregon State
University, Corvallis, 1989.
Professional
Experience:
NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Colorado, Mentor: Richard E. Jones,
1989-1990; Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern
Arizona University, Flagstaff, 1991-1996; Associate Professor, Department of
Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, 1996-present.
SICB
Activities:
Member, Graduate Student, Postdoctoral Fellow Representative DCE 1986.
Other
Memberships:
Sigma Xi, AAAS
Research
Interests:
Action of endocrine disrupting compounds on reproduction and stress responses;
neuroendocrine control of seasonal reproduction and behavior. We use
amphibians as model systems to examine the effects of low-level exposure to
pesticides on reproduction and behavior. We are also investigating the
molecular mechanisms that are involved in the initiation of seasonal
reproduction.
Goal
Statement:
Comparative studies in many fields have often led to outstanding discoveries in
basic science. I would like to develop a platform for promoting both
historical and current comparative endocrine studies that are important to
pushing forward the field. I believe that SICB and the Division of Comparative
Endocrinology are positioned to act as the sponsors of such an effort.
David Borst
Current
Position:
Professor of Biology, and Head of the Cell Biology, Physiology, and
Developmental Biology Section, Department of Biological Sciences, Illinois
State University, Normal, IL
Education:
B.A.,
Biology, Reed College, 1969; M.A., Zoology, UCLA, 1970; Ph.D., Biology, UCLA,
1973.
Professional
Experience:
Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. Zoology, UC Berkeley, 1973-76;
Assistant Professor, Physiology Section, Univ. CT, Storrs, 1976 - 1985;
Visiting Scholar, UCLA, 1984; Associate Professor of Biology, Illinois State
Univ. (ISU), 1985-1990; Professor of Biology, ISU, 1990 - present;
Visiting Scholar, Univ. Washington, 1990 - 1991; College of Arts and
Sciences Research Award, ISU 1995, Visiting Professor and NIH-Fogarty
International Fellow, Univ. Liverpool, 1997 - 1998; Editorial Board,
American Zoologist, 1997 - present; Outstanding University Research
Award, ISU, 1999; Associate Editor, Journal of Experimental Zoology, 1999
- present.
SICB
Activities:
SICB member since 1972. During the past decade my activities in the SICB have
included: Chair, Graduate Student Postdoctoral Affairs Committee (1990-1994);
Co-Organized, Midwest Regional Endocrinology Conference (May, 1992); Member,
DCE Best Student Paper Award Committee (1992, 1995, 1996); Editorial Board,
American Zoologist (1997 - present); Chair, Graduate Student Awards Committee
(1996 - present); I organized panel discussions on:
The
Publication Process: Four Inside Views
(1990);
Life
Outside the Ivory Tower: Nonacademic Jobs for Biologists
(1991);
Strategies
for Finding an Academic Job
(1992);
How
to Shake the Money Tree: a Guide to Research Funding for Graduate Students and
Post-Doctoral Fellows
(1993); I co-organized a symposium "
Recent
Advances in Crustacean Endocrinology - a symposium in honor of Milton
Fingermann
"
(2000).
Other
Memberships:
American Association for the Advancement of Science, MBL Corporation, Endocrine
Society, Crustacean Society, International Federation of Comparative
Endocrinology, Sigma Xi, Phi Sigma.
Research
Interests:
Endocrine regulation of development, growth, and reproduction. Current studies
focus largely on the roles of juvenile hormones and ecdysteroids in arthropods
and ovarian steroids in birds. In the past, I studied the role of prolactin
and insulin related compounds on the growth and differentiation of mouse
mammary tissue.
Goals
Statement:
The SICB has been reinvigorated during the past decade, in part because new molecular and cellular tools have given us a more sophisticated understanding of how organisms integrate their functions. Since endocrine systems have a critical role in such integration, it is not surprising that the DCE has also grown stronger during this period. One goal of our division should be to encourage the further development and use of these molecular and cellular tools. Another goal should be to increase the dialogue between our members and with members of other SICB divisions. These goals can be achieved in several ways. First, we need to increase attendance by new (especially younger) and current members at the national meeting. This can be partly accomplished by the continuing to increase the quality of our symposia, some of which should be focused on the technical developments in our field. Second, we need to continue to improve our journal, since it is a major means of attracting interest to our field. Finally, we need to continue and perhaps increase our financial support of regional meetings.
Candidates
for Secretary-Elect
Cliff
H. Summers
Current
Position:
Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, University of South Dakota
Education:
Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder, 1987
Professional
Experience:
Postdoctoral training at UCLA, Univ. Tennessee, and Univ. Colorado 1986-1990.
Assistant Professor, California State University, San Marcos 1990-1991.
Assistant, Associate and Professor, University of South Dakota 1991-2001.
SICB
Activities:
Life Member, Organized Symposium: Stress - Is it more than a Disease? A
Comparative Look at Stress and Adaptation, with James A. Carr for the 2001
annual meetings in Chicago.
Other
Memberships:
Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, Society for Neuroscience, JB
Johnston Club, AAAS.
Research
Interests:
Neuroendocrinology of stress. Mechanisms for how and why individuals differ,
how responses are characterized temporally, and the relationships between
stress, learning, biological rhythms, and reproduction.
Goals
Statement:
I think the objectives for any society, division, or officer should include
being: User friendly, effective within a limited scope, and informative. My
goal is to apply those principles to the duties of secretary.
James
A. Carr
Current
Position:
Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences and The Institute for
Environmental and Human Health, Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
Education:
B.S., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 1982; M.A., University of Colorado,
Boulder, 1986; Ph.D. , University of Colorado, Boulder, 1988.
Professional
Experience:
Research Associate, Department of Anatomy, University of New Mexico School of
Medicine, Albuquerque, 1988-1989; NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, University of New
Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, 1989-1991; Assistant Professor,
Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, 1991-1997; Associate
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, 1997-
Present; Adjunct Faculty, The Institute for Environmental and Human Health,
Texas Tech University, 1998-Present.
SICB
Activities:
Member, 18 yrs. Co-organizer, SICB symposium, "Stress-Is it more than a
Disease? A Comparative Look at Stress and Adaptation"; Judge, Aubrey Gorbman
Best Student Paper/Poster, Division of Comparative Endocrinology (1996, 1999,
2000); Co-organizer, Southwest Regional Conference on Comparative
Endocrinology, Lubbock, TX, 1994.
Other
Memberships:
Society for Neuroscience, J.B. Johnston Club, American Heart Association,
International Neuropeptide Society, European Comparative Endocrinology Society.
Research
Interests:
My research focuses on various aspects of comparative neuroendocrinology. I am
particularly interested in the physiology and evolution of brain and pituitary
melanocortin peptides and the influence of environmental contaminants on
endocrine function.
Goals
Statement:
To maintain the identity of our division while at the same time fostering
interaction with other divisions within the society, especially through jointly
sponsored symposia. To support and publicize our regional and national
meetings as platforms for discussing comparative endocrinology from molecular
to behavioral levels, thereby encouraging an integrated approach to the topic.
Link to officer list on DCE page
