Partial support is requested for presentations at the 1992 annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the Biological Sciences Section, Nov. 18-22, Washington DC. The grant will support travel and local expenses of speakers in symposia and special lectures during this 4 day meeting. The overall theme of the GSA meeting will be Health Challenges of an Aging Society, while that of the Biological Sciences Section will be Multi-level Mechanisms of Biological Aging. There will be 9 Symposia with 4 speakers each, which were designed to maintain a balance between established and emergent research areas. The meeting will be organized to maintain continuity with major ongoing research areas, but also will introduce new themes that have potential bearing on the emergent lines of investigation. Plenary Lectures will be given on cross-cutting themes that will benefit from critical review and new synthesis by a single scholar. The 5 Plenary lectures will be interspersed between the Symposia, Individual Slide Presentations, and the Poster Sessions. One day will be devoted to Workshops which will give a forum for short presentations and informal debates. The topics of these 2.5 hour Workshops will include: (1) In vitro cell aging; (2) Neuroendocrine and autonomic aging; (3) Comparative approaches; (4) Gene expression and Genomic stability. Following short introductory perspectives by Workshop Chairs, there will be presentations by speakers selected from the Abstracts submitted to GSA that represent different viewpoints on ongoing research issues. The State-of-the Art in Biogerontology for Non-biologists will be presented through Lectures and Symposia that present material from molecular genetics to organ function in humans and a range of animal models. Among the topics will be discussions of genetic engineering approaches to analyzing genes for Alzheimer disease and the issues about the levels of certainty in genetic identification of risk factors in Alzheimer and other diseases. Some speakers will also participate in the other events.
