Division of Comparative Endocrinology (DCE): 2002 Fall Newsletter
In this newsletter:
Message from the Chair
Michael C. Moore (michael.moore@asu.edu)We are looking forward to a very exciting meeting in Toronto. Details of the meeting are covered elsewhere in this newsletter. We are especially excited that Dr. Hubert Vaudry from the University of Rouen, Mont-Saint-Aignan Cedex, France has accepted our invitation to present the 2nd annual Howard A. Bern Distinguished Lecture in Comparative Endocrinology. The title of Professor Vaudry's talk will be "Synthesis of biologically active steroids in the brain of amphibians. Regulation by neurotransmitters and neuropeptides". This is obviously an area of extremely high current interest and Professor Vaudry is an international leader in the field well known for giving exceptional presentations. Not to be missed.
While on the subject of the Bern Lectureship, it is now time to begin the process of selecting the person to present the 3rd Bern Lecture at the next (2004) meeting in New Orleans. Please send your nominations to me or one of the other officers. Selection will be made shortly after the Toronto Meetings.
We are pleased to announce a new service for DCE Members. Jim Carr and I have worked with the SICB office to establish a DCE Electronic Message Board. Any DCE member can use this service to send email announcements to the DCE Membership. Appropriate announcements would concern upcoming meetings and symposia, funding opportunities and job announcements for faculty positions, postdocs, technicians and graduate fellowships. If you wish to use this service, please send your message in an email to either myself or Jim Carr.
Finally, I raised a number of issues in the spring newsletter about the organization and promotion of Comparative Endocrinology as a discipline and about opportunities available because of the very rosy financial condition of SICB. These comments elicited essentially no response from the membership suggesting to me that people are relatively content with the status quo. If you have any views on these issues, I would love to hear them either through email or in conversations at the Toronto meeting. See you there!
Message from the Program Officer
Miles Orchinik (m.orchinik@asu.edu)I just returned from the program officer's meeting in Toronto at the Sheraton Center Hotel, site of the 2003 SICB meeting. We were all impressed with the facilities and with Toronto - at least during the 30 minutes we escaped from meetings. Those of us acclimated to warm environments were encouraged to see that fifty restaurants are accessible from the Sheraton Center, without stepping outside, through pleasant underground concourses.
The program officer's meeting was a first for SICB but quite successful with a lot of interaction between the divisions. I gather it is quite unusual to be this far along in planning the symposia, contributed papers, and abstracts by early October. Another first is that the talks and abstracts were sorted by general theme, rather than division affiliation. Most of the abstracts from DCE members will be under Regulatory Biology, which will have the following sessions: Emerging Technologies (contributed papers to accompany the related symposium organized by Sunny Boyd and Juli Wade), Immunity, Neural Substrates and Behavior, Reproduction, Hormone Structure and Evolution, Growth and Metabolism, Developmental Endocrinology, and Stress and Environmental Endocrinology. In addition to the contributed papers, DCE will be sponsoring John Hatle's symposium on Phenotypic Plasticity, the Emerging Technologies symposium mentioned above, and there will be a symposium on Fish Endocrinology and Metabolism organized by Dr. Vijayan. More detailed information about these symposia is available on the SICB web site. We attempted to schedule these symposia with minimal overlap with each other or with related contributed paper sessions. The Toronto meeting will be a busy one for DCE members with major sessions every day.
The DCE Business Meeting will be on Tuesday evening, followed by The Bern Lecture, given by Dr. Hubert Vaudrey, and the DCE social.
At the New Orleans meeting in January 2004, DCE will sponsor a one and a half day symposium on "EcoPhysiology and Conservation: The Contribution of Endocrinology and Immunology." This important symposium will be organized by Rob Stevenson and Shea Tuberty. It will be a rather unique symposium that integrates the perspectives of environmental/stress physiology with reproductive failure, population extinctions and habitat degradation. Speakers will attempt to bring endocrine physiology of vertebrates and invertebrates into the discussion of species distribution, environmental contamination, and conservation issues.
Message from the Secretary
Jim Carr (jamescarr@ttu.edu)The 21st Conference of Comparative Endocrinologists was held in Bonn, Germany, August 26-30. The meeting was co-sponsored by the University of Bonn and the European Society for Comparative Endocrinology. The meeting was a great success by all estimates, with a balanced program of state of the art lectures, several topical symposia, and numerous oral and poster presentations, all combined with an excellent cultural program. The meeting was well-represented by SICB DCE members (see photos below). The 22nd Conference of European Comparative Endocrinologists will be held at August 24-28, 2004 at Uppsala University (www.neuro.uu.se/medfarm/cece2004/index.htm) and will be organized by Dan Larhammer and colleagues (congress@ukkab.se), so mark your calendars.
An International Symposium on Amphibian and Reptilian Endocrinology and Neurobiology will be held November 4-6, 2003, at Cheju National University Park on Jeju Island, Korea. This symposium will address all aspects of amphibian and reptilian endocrinology and neurobiology, particularly the fields of reproduction, development, and conservation biology. It will consist of oral presentations and poster sessions open to all participants. Contact the conference chair, Dr Hyuk B. Kwon (kwonhb@chonnam.ac.kr), for further information.
The next Western Regional Conference on Comparative Endocrinology will be held in Boulder, Co., March 22 and 23, 2003. Contact Dave Norris (david.norris@colorado.edu) or Pei Tsai (pei-san.tsai@colorado.edu) for details.
The 15th International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology will be organized by Burk and Associates and will be held May 23-28, 2005 in Boston. Check the website (http://www.bu.edu/ICCE15/boston.html) for details.
Attendees Jean Joss, Henry John-Alder, and Veerle Darras enjoy local German wine at the 21st CECE Banquet.
Howard Bern tells a joke in between courses at the 21st CECE Banquet. The Rhine river can be seen in the background.
Earl Larson (left background) gets some peptide pointers from Bob Dores (left foreground) and Michael Conlon (far right), as Neil Hazon (right foreground) looks on.
Link to officer list on DCE page
