Roger Thomas
Editor, Physiology News

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.104.20

This joint meeting was held in the Dublin Convention Centre from 29–31 July. The Centre is an impressive new building on the North bank of the Liffy River next to the elegant Samuel Beckett bridge, with plenty of space for the over 1,200 people attending. There were plenty of staff in the building, and each hall was equipped with the latest audio-visual equipment and up to four operators. Only very rarely did I hear the cry ‘How do I start my powerpoints?’.

The meeting started with a pair of plenary lectures from Jeffrey Friedman about Leptin and Jon Lederer about calcium in the heart, and ended with one from Bert Sakmann about Neuronal Networks. In between there were ten more plenary, keynote or prize lectures, including one from John O’Keefe, and twice a day six parallel sessions of symposia, and many workshops and two huge poster sessions. The total of posters was over 700, including about 30 described as late-breaking. It was difficult to do justice to the vast amount of information being presented.

The President launched his report on physiology

On Saturday a report on the ‘Health of Physiology’ was presented by the outgoing President Richard Vaughan-Jones. He urged his audience to take home and read the 40 page document and become more involved in promoting the subject. It is still not widely appreciated how central the subject is to modern medicine. That evening the Society Dinner was held for over 400 members and guests in the Double-Tree Hilton ballroom in central Dublin. Coaches to and fro were provided. The menu was impressive: a starter of goats (sic) cheese parcel, with ham, watermelon and a beetroot puree, followed by a Munster Fillet of Beef with what seemed to be a cube of polenta, and finished with three mini desserts on a long plate. Altogether washed down with plenty of wine and finished with coffee and speeches. Considering the numbers, the food was very good and well served, and the whole occasion a great success, even though it concluded with an entertainment.

The Annual General Meeting of The Physiological Society

The third day included the AGM., held over lunch-time. I can briefly report that the new council members elected were Federico Formenti, Sarah Hall (ex-member of the PN editorial board), Graham McGeown and Bridget Lumb. The last will be the Society’s new Deputy President, and will succeed David Eisner as President in 2018. She will be the Society’s first woman President! Richard Vaughan-Jones, the outgoing President, then spoke about the years events, and Anne King the treasurer told us that all was financially sound. The members then had to vote to amend the Articles of Association, as previewed in PN 103. The vote was essentially unanimous, though some doubt was expressed about the proposed new category of membership – a Fellowship.

After the excitement of an important vote, we had reports by or for the editors of the Society’s four publications. Kim Barrett for the Journal of Physiology, Paul McLoughlin for Experimental Physiology, Prem Kumar on behalf of Physiological Reports, and myself very briefly for Physiology News. Time had run out, so we had no proper discussion of the time and place of the next AGM. Sometime in July or August 2017, either in Rio de Janiero or London, probably.

Early Career Meeting

The main meeting had been preceded by a one day meeting for Early Career Physiologists. It was organised by Natalia Lajczak and Sinéad Quinn of the RCSI and Paul Cherry of the University of Ulster. My source tells me that it was a huge success with over 100 attendees. A high calibre of abstracts were received from across several of the Physiological Society themes. The highlights of the day were the keynote lecture from Dr Robert Tarran highlighting the effect of smoking on CFTR and a unique and personal perspective of chloride transport in smooth muscle in Prof. Otto Hutter’s plenary lecture.

Altogether Dublin provided reasonable weather and fine hospitality. I particularly enjoyed the gleaming new red tram line which ran right behind the Convention Centre. Buses to and from the airport were frequent and cheap.