This grant proposal is to partially fund conference fees and/or travel expenses for 15 speakers and 24 graduate students at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society. The Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS), established in 1978, brings together a uniquely interdisciplinary scientific community that includes biophysicists, electrical engineers, cell biologists, animal physiologists, clinicians, epidemiologists and other public health practitioners interested in the interaction between electric and magnetic fields of all frequencies and biological systems. The annual meeting's goal is to advance the field by stimulating discussions and interactions among all of these disciplines in an open forum, concentrating on the useful applications of electric and magnetic fields for the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases as well as possible health effects from field exposure. These interactions have often led to fruitful collaborations and new research approaches. BEMS, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with headquarters in Frederick, MD, organizes a yearly conference and publishes a refereed archival journal, Bioelectromagnetics, and a periodic Newsletter. The 2007 BEMS meeting has several major foci: a) Bioelectromagnetic applications to cancer diagnosis and treatment; b) Bioelectromagnetic stimulation of wound healing and regeneration; c) Bioelectromagnetics: Human Health Considerations; d) Bioelectromagnetic applications to the human nervous system. Our tradition of international participation will continue, with significant involvement of speakers from both the US and abroad, especially from Europe and Japan. The site, Kanazawa, Japan was chosen because we have a large Asian membership and we have never met in Asia before. We will have fifteen plenary speakers with about 1/3 of them coming from outside the US. Plenary speakers have 30 minutes to present their latest results and 10 min for discussion and questions. We anticipate 300 contributed posters and 12-min platform papers and approximately 400 attendees. Discussion of all papers, as well as informal contacts between all attendees, is very important for the development of new ideas and the appropriate digestion of new results. All meeting abstracts will be available to the public on our Society's web site and will be searchable by key word. The relevance of this conference to public health is that it will foster information exchange between scientists studying electromagnetic field interactions wtih living systems and regulatory agencies such as the FDA as well as industries producing medical devices utilizing electromagnetics. This Conference emphasizes applications of Bioelectromagnetics to medical diagnosis and treatment and includes the classical areas of imaging and stimulation along with several new areas of alternative medicine such as millimeter wave therapy and electro-acupuncture. This conference is unique in its breadth and interdisciplinary nature bringing together engineers, biologists, physicists and medical doctors to advance the medical applications of bioelectromagnetics. ? ? ? ?
