I'm Leavin' on a Jet Plane

I dread packing and flying, but on the planner for August is the 2010 APS Intersociety Meeting: Global Change and Global Science: Comparative Physiology in a Changing World http://the-aps.org/meetings/aps/comparative/index.htm. A must-do meeting for me.

The theme of the meeting is how comparative and evolutionary animal physiologists can contribute to understanding the consequences of global change and how understanding global change requires broad, global science. Seems as if this is the first conference of any type to focus mainly on the effects of global climate change on animal physiology.

It's especially timely, given what is going on in the Gulf. I hope they will come to understand that comparative and evolutionary physiologists are uniquely trained to investigate the mechanisms and capacities of organisms in adapting to changing environments.

I am interested in the heavier scientific presentations like "Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia: A Double Threat to Immune Defense" (Burnett), "Using Biogeographic Distributions and Natural History to Predict Marine/estuarine Species at Risk to Climate Change, (Lee) and "Effects of Elevated Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels on Shell Formation and Metabolism in Oysters Crassostrea virginica (Gmelin)" (Sokolova)

I am also interested in the presentations that sound like they will be
fun: "The Effect of Palaeozoic Oxygen Levels on the Development of the Tracheal System in the Extant Blatella Germanica, the German Cockroach (Munoz); "Can Walking Hibernation Help Polar Bears Cope with Climate Change? (Whiteman) and "Can Camouflage Keep up with Climate Change?
(Breuner).

For anyone interested, the program begins August 4. See you there.