Nebraska

This is a great month for Physiology! Several of the local chapters of the American Physiological Society (APS) are having their annual meetings.   The Nebraska Physiological Society met this past weekend at the University of South Dakota, Sanford School of Medicine. Here are the highlights from their meeting: Dr. Bill Yates, Professor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine gave the APS sponsored keynote address on “Multisensory Control of Blood Pressure.” His research is focused on understanding the link between our vestibular system and blood pressure. The vestibular system in…

  Dropping water levels in Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam. (Source: Peter Gleick 2013) It is no surprise, of course, that the western United States is dry. The entire history of the West can be told (and has been, in great books like Cadillac Desert [Reisner] and Rivers of Empire [Worster] and The Great Thirst [Hundley]) in large part through the story of the hydrology of the West, the role of the federal and state governments in developing water infrastructure, the evidence of droughts and floods on the land, and the politics of water allocations and use. But the story of water in the West…