FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
9 July 2009

FAIRBANKS, Alaska-- -- Brian Barnes, director of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska and an expert in hibernation physiology, will deliver a special lecture at the 36th Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences in Kyoto, Japan August 1, 2009.

Barnes was chosen by the IUPS commission to present the first in a lecture series named in honor of a founder of the field of physiology, Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, professor emeritus at Duke University and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences until his death in 2007. Barnes’ lecture will be “Overwintering Adaptations of Animals in a Changing Arctic.”

“It is a great honor to have our UAF research programs in comparative physiology honored at this international venue. I hope to intrigue the audience with explanations of how arctic animals have adapted to our extreme conditions of seasonality and winter cold and dark,” Barnes said.

Schmidt-Nielsen’s scientific quest was to understand how animals can survive in the desert by asking what he described as simple questions: Do marine birds drink seawater? How can kangaroo rats live in the desert without any water to drink?

Barnes’ research concerns understanding the physiological and behavioral mechanisms that animals, including insects and bears, use to survive arctic winters. One of his most interesting subjects is the arctic ground squirrel. Their body temperature drops below the freezing point during hibernation yet they survive. They do this by a process called supercooling, in which the liquids in their body reach sub-zero temperatures but remain fluid.

Barnes and colleagues hope that what they learn about the squirrels’ supercooling abilities can be used to develop novel ways of preserving human organs for transplant and protecting humans from injury following stroke or major trauma.

CONTACT: Brian M. Barnes, director, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 907-474-7649, bmbarnes@alaska.edu

Marie Gilbert, information officer, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 907-474-7412, megilbert@alaska.edu

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