Division of Comparative Biomechanics (DCB): 2007 Fall Newsletter

In this newsletter:

• Message from the Program Officer
• Message from the Secretary

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Message from the Program Officer

Frank Fish

That's a big HOWDY to y'all. The program is now set for the 2008 SICB meeting in San Antonio, Texas. The conference hotel is located at one end of the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk is full of a large variety of restaurants that should meet everyone's tastes. From the airport, a taxi costs about $20 to the conference hotel. The talks, poster sessions, and displays will be at the convention center which is a short walk from the hotel. The conference rooms are quite large, providing enough seating for all the talks. Our divisional meeting will be held on Thursday evening and the DCB social will be held the following evening. We will be holding a joint social with the Division of Vertebrate Morphology (DVM). We will be having a "kegger" with an assortment of Tex-Mex favorites.

DCB is making a big presence for only its second year in operation. First, the DCB is sponsoring a symposium, "Going with the flow," which is organized by Rick Blob and Gabe Rivera. This promises to be a major addition to past symposia on bio-fluid dynamics. The symposium will be on Saturday. The oral presentations are distributed throughout the meeting with multiple sessions on swimming, flight, terrestrial locomotion and materials.

If you have ideas for future symposia, please come and meet with me in San Antonio or contact me by email (ffish@wcupa.edu) to discuss the possibilities and see what opportunities there are for funding both within and outside the society. I look forward to seeing you all in San Antonio.

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Message from the Secretary

Miriam Ashley-Ross

It's "all ahead - warp 10" for the Division of Comparative Biomechanics. Our special online election had excellent turnout, with nearly 75% of members voting, and resulted in the official election of the entire interim officer slate - Bob Full was elected Division Chair, Frank Fish was elected Program Officer, and Miriam Ashley-Ross was elected Secretary. Special thanks to the division members who volunteered to stand for election - John Bertram, Adam Summers, and Stephen Roberts. Congratulations is also in order to Gabriel Rivera, the first divisional representative to the Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee.

At the Annual Meeting in San Antonio, there are multiple symposia that will be of great interest to DCB members, and will keep us busy for nearly the entire span of the meeting. Things kick off Thursday morning, January 3, with "Electromyography interpretation and limitations in functional analyses of musculoskeletal systems," organized by N. Konow and S. Gerry. On Friday, January 4, "Aeroecology: probing and modeling the aerosphere - the next frontier," organized by T. Kunz and Nick Hristov, will likely capture much of our attention. Finally, "Going with the flow: ecomorphological variation across aquatic flow regimes," organized by Gabriel Rivera and Rick Blob, will be held on Saturday, January 5. And those are just the symposia!

We will inaugurate competition for the Best Student Paper and Best Student Poster in the Division at the San Antonio meeting. Students entering the contest should be nearing completion of their graduate studies, and thus able to tell a comprehensive story. We also need faculty/postdoc volunteers to judge the Student oral and poster presentations for the division - if you are willing to help, please contact Bob Full, the divisional chair.

Don't forget to attend the DCB Business Meeting on Thursday evening, January 3. See you in San Antonio!

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Link to officer list on DCB page