Ty Mangum™: April 2013

Experimental Biology is easily the largest physiology conference in the U.S., and second largest in the world. Historically, select members of our lab have made the trip out every year, and this year would be no exception. Five of us (myself, the professor, post doc and 2 Ph.D. students) had the honor of attending the conference in the peaceful and tranquil city of Boston, MA this past week.

The crew left Eugene on Friday, April 19^th for an early departure for the conference. If you were oblivious of any news or current events going on at the time, you would have thought it was the smoothest, easiest flight out East you could imagine. We made our on time flight to Seattle with a quick layover, then boarded a brand new airplane directly to Boston, hopped on the T (the public subway) to our place and walked down to our condo where we crashed after a few beers. The turmoil behind the scenes was anything less than ideal, however most things including public transit were opened back up about 45 minutes before we arrived in the city. Dodged a bullet there.

Saturday came and went in a blur. The day was spent lackadaisically adjusting to the time difference, sight seeing and starting off the conference. We hit up some national monuments in the town:

Sunday through Tuesday were spent in relatively identical fashion: we were at the conference around 8:00am, listened to talks until noon, attended posters between 12:30 and 3, attended more talks until 5:30pm, followed by dinner with some friends and beers/drinks after. Man, there was some REALLY cool stuff at this conference, and unfortunately I understood probably 20% of the things that were presented. I thought I knew pulmonary physiology, turns out I don’t. The main thing I learned from this conference is how much I don’t actually know, which I think is really cool. Of course, there were my favorites and least favorites; below are the best in each category.

Coolest talk: Using stem cell osmolarity to regenerate limbs, Tufts University.

They’re doing this. Seriously. Researchers are growing back amputated limbs in mice. If this science existed in the world decades ago, maybe Oscar Pistorious wouldn’t be in the trouble that he’s in now. Of course, this isn’t remotely near the stage of development in which they can apply it to humans, but the seems promising. What the researchers did was essentially create this metabolic goop that simulated an osmolarity so that stem cells would traverse to damaged tissue. In lamens terms, this means they attracted stem cells to damaged areas so that they could get their regeneration on (much like a newt would do). The talk was enthralling, a cool concept, and I wish nothing best to this lab and their project.

Top 3 coolest posters:

3. Harvard: Using lasers to destroy developed vasculature in tumors.
Stupid Harvard. They used lasers to cut blood supply in tumors so that it would stop growing. If that’s not doesn’t sound like scientific fiction, I don’t know what does.

2. UBC: Measuring metabolics, heart rate and blood gasses in Bull Headed Geese while flying in a hypoxic wind tunnel.

Oh man oh man oh man, this story and research is nothing short of amazing. Jessica Meir raised geese to be imprinted on her, trained them to wear metabolic masks throughout their life, put them in a wind tunnel, simulated altitude (these geese are able to fly over Everest) and recorded all this data WHILE THE BIRDS WERE FLYING! This is the first time it’s ever been done in any flying bird, and it’s absolutely amazing. I wish I could link a video, it was so crazy to see these birds flying 40 kph while researchers are standing right in front of them. The geese have some of (if not the most) efficient lungs on the planet, and comparatively we can learn a lot about what makes them so efficient. Because of this research, Jessica landed a job as a professor at Harvard.

1. UCLA: Use of electricity to stimulate VOLUNTARY contractions in rats who have had spinal cord injuries (SCI).

This was (in my opinion) not only the coolest poster at EB this year, but also has some of the biggest implications and contributions to a clinical population in the world. Researchers were able to place an electrode in the spinal cord of a rat and get voluntary movement back to the lower limbs. Not just spasms or twitches, but control. They can also leave these electrodes in for months, if not years in humans, which is in the currently in the clinical stages of development. Words cannot express how complicated and innovative this is, and if they get this to work I don’t know why this couldn’t win a Nobel Prize in physiology.

With the good science came the bad: here are the 3 stupidest posters in the conference that I saw at EB 2013 (which, mind you, were in the same room as the posters above).

3. Some University in Japan. Hypoxia did not reduce cognitive function/reaction time in humans.

Oh sweet, my field of science. Let’s see what they did here… reduced oxygen to 18% (room air is 21%) and also 15% (simulated percentage of an airplane cabin is 16%). Well, that’s not very low oxygen… they must have done this for hours… right? No, just for 10-20 minutes. Seriously. What? Who the hell is hypoxic for 10-20 minutes? No one? Ok. Of course reaction time wasn’t affected, they probably didn’t even increase ventilation. That was stupid. We did this study in Bolivia for weeks at an altitude of 17,000 feet over the course of weeks… Not at the simulated altitude of lower than Denver, CO.

2. Texas A&M University. Caffeine increases performance in a wingate test (essentially a 90 second sprint).

How did that make it to this conference? We know caffeine increases performance. We know the mechanisms that it does. What on earth are you contributing here?

1. University of Connecticut: high protein high sodium diet post exercise effect on net hydration in endurance athletes.
So it turns out what they did was literally give a slice or two of beef jerky to runners after their workout to see if it effected hydration. Beef Jerky. I’m sure this study cost a total of $40 to perform, and it contributes absolutely nothing to the physiology section. This should have taken it to the Nutrition section, or to a different conference entirely (ACSM). Undergrads in the exercise physiology class at the UofO could have done this study in 3 weeks. It was so basic, so simple and so meaningless that I felt it was the worst thing that I read this trip.

Favorite random poster:

Winks!

Outside of the conference, we did some more sight seeing, some more eating and a lot more drinking. Below are the remaining random pics from the trip.