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Latest EEL News

Congratulations to Heather Wright. The manuscript from her M.Sc. project, "Cranial+neck and inhalation rewarming failed to improve recovery from mild hypothermia" has been accepted by Aviat. Space Environ. Med.

Congratulations to Melissa Thomas. The manuscript from her M.Sc. project, "Voluntary muscle activation is impaired by central hyperthermia independent of local muscle temperature" has been accepted by J. Appl. Physiol. and was published on-line in the Articles in PresS December 8, 2005!

November 2005. The lab has just returned from an excellent CSEP (Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology) conference in Gatineau, Quebec. We had 3 presentations, 1 poster, plus Stephen organized a symposium on "Exercise and Thermal Stress" and organized a talk by 4-time Shuttle astronaut Scott Parazynski. CSEP 2006 will be in Halifax November 1-4, 2006, a joint effort of Acadia and Dalhousie.

October 2005. Congratulations to Andreas Flouris! His invited review on microclimate cooling systems was accepted by Ann. Biomed. Eng. with zero revisions! Awesome work!

September 2005. Stephen was walloped by a car while cycling home in late August, going through the rear window of a VW Golf that pulled out of a driveway without looking. Damage included fracturing the right scapula in 6+ places (think tortilla chip that got stepped on!), broken rib, bruised lungs, and a near complete evulsion of the right index finger. Lucky to be alive, Stephen's extending his most excellent sabbatical year by going on sick leave until November.

September 2005. Welcome to another academic year! We say "Bon Voyage" to Melissa Thomas (Ph.D. at U. Calgary), Jen Payne (Assistant Track & Field Coach at York U.), and Matthew Knox (Rhodes Scholar at Oxford). Our lab has been strengthened by the addition of Luke Reynolds (new M.Sc.) from Acadia University and by Mark MacDonald (B.Sc.K. Honours). The boys join Andreas Flouris and Andres Carrillo in the lab.

March 22, 2005. Congratulations to our latest ISU-naut! Andreas Flouris has just won a scholarship to attend the International Space University's Summer Session 2005 (June 22 - Aug 24) in Vancouver! Andreas will be following in Stephen's footsteps into the terrific ISU community, as Stephen was a student in 1994 (Barcelona) and teaching assistant in 1995 (Stockholm).

March 2005. Stephen has been honoured yet again by Maclean's Magazine's Guide to Universities and Colleges, being listed as one of Dalhousie's "Popular Profs" for the 5th year in a row! Looks like the VeggieTunes and 80's music will continue blaring in the lab for at least another year! Matt Knox's Rhodes Scholarship was also profiled in the Maclean's profile of Dalhousie.

March 2005. Andreas and Stephen have been invited to prepare a review article for Annals of Biomedical Engineering on microclimate cooling underneath protective clothing. Stephen and colleague Shawn Rhind are also preparing a review article for Prog Brain Res on the neuropsychological and immunological effects of hyperthermia on exercise.

March 2005. Congrats to two undergraduate members of EEL! Both Joey Ojah and Matthew Knox have been accepted to Dalhousie Medical School!

March 17, 2005. Great news on the scholarship front. Both Andreas Flouris (currently 1st year Interdisciplinary Ph.D.) and Melissa Thomas (completing her M.Sc.) have won NSERC Ph.D. funding for the next 3 years, making our lab 4 for 4 in Ph.D. funding from NSERC! Melissa will begin at U. Calgary with Russ Hepple in the fall investigating molecular muscle physiology, and she also won the graduate student presenter award at the recent APES conference.

February 2005. Congratulations to Carla Geurts for successfully defending her doctoral dissertation from U. New Brunswick in January! Her work on thermal and neuromuscular adaptation to cold exposure is also in the publication pipeline, with an article in the January issue of Acta Physiol Scand. (PDF) and the latest issue of Eur J Appl Physiol (PDF). To celebrate, Carla won two golds and a silver at the CIS swimming championships! Wow!

December 2004. A huge congratulations to Matthew Knox (NSERC USRA 2003, 2004 and current Honours student in EEL). Matt has just won a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate studies at Oxford University beginning fall of 2005! Matt is completing a project on pre-cooling in kayakers, and will be studying medical anthropology at Oxford.

July 2004. Stephen and colleague Gordon Sleivert (Director of Sport Science & Medicine, PacificSport) have a review paper on the Critical Internal Temperature Hypothesis published in the July 2004 issue of the prestigious journal Exerc. Sport Sci. Rev. PDF. Stephen and former Honours student Alicia Robinson also just published a paper on the use of pre-cooling prior to sprinting exercise in the journal J. Sport Sci. PDF.

May 2004. Congratulations to Andrew Marsh and Joey Ojah on their graduation with a B.Sc.K. (Honours) at the convocation ceremony May 26, 2004! Joey won the Dr. M.J. Ellis Award for top undergraduate research project, and also gave the valedictorian address at the graduation ceremony. Stephen was honoured with the undergraduate student society's "Student Appreciation" award at the same ceremony.

Featured EEL Project

Geurts C.L.M.*, G.G. Sleivert, and S.S. Cheung. Effect of repeated cold-water immersion on cold-induced vasodilatation and neuromuscular function of the first dorsal interosseus muscle. Acta Physiol. Scand. 183:117-124, 2005 PDF.

Pre-cooling and Wingate Sprinting

AIM: To investigate the effects of cold acclimation on the thermal response and neuromuscular function of the hand. METHODS: Ten healthy subjects [three female, seven male, age (mean +/- SD): 27.9 +/- 7.9 years] immersed their right hand in 8 degrees C water for 30 min, 5 days a week for 3 weeks. On the first and the last day, neuromuscular function of the first dorsal interosseus (FDI) muscle was tested. RESULTS: There was no significant change in maximal voluntary contraction strength or evoked contractile characteristics of the FDI after cold acclimation. Minimum finger temperature decreased significantly from 10.6 +/- 1.2 to 9.3 +/- 0.8 degrees C after 3 weeks (P < 0.01), with most of the decrease occurring after a single exposure. Mean finger temperature dropped significantly from 14.2 +/- 1.9 to 11.7 +/- 1.4 degrees C following cold acclimation (P < 0.05), with 90% of this adaptation occurring after 5 days. Onset time of cold-induced vasodilatation increased from 446 +/- 171 to 736 +/- 384 s (P < 0.05) and the amplitude decreased from 5.3 +/- 3.2 to 2.5 +/- 2.1 degrees C (P < 0.05). This was significantly different from the control group, who immersed their right hand on the first and last days only. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that cold acclimation does not enhance hand temperature or function but may put the hands at a greater risk of cold injury when exposed to the cold.

Carla's doctoral work has focused on the effects of prolonged and repeated cold exposure on the thermal and neuromuscular responses of the hand. One of the key features of this study is the prolonged (30 min) exposure of the entire hand to cold, whereas previous studies tended to feature short (10 - 15 min) exposure of the fingers alone. In this study, we found that the longer exposure did not enhance hand function or thermal integrity, suggesting that prolonged cold exposure did not produce long-term adaptations.