"Anatoly Grigoryev, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Institute of Medical and Biological Problems Director, will be the first to address the gathering, which opens at nine tomorrow morning. He is to introduce to the public the latest achievements of his institute, which is responsible for medical and biological background problems of a first manned flight to the Red Planet.
"The symposium will also offer a first-ever public glimpse of experimental achievements by the International Space Station, and of voluntary experimenters who went through an imitation of weightlessness in space to gauge its effect on the human body."
The symposium is gathering space physiologists of many countries-among them, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Prominent on their agenda will be immunity changes in weightlessness, and its effect on hearing and the vestibular sense. The conferees will also exchange information and opinions about the impact of increased and reduced gravitation on animal development, and many issues of cellular biology and plant biochemistry.
Gravitation biology, an emergent discipline, studies the effect of weightlessness on man, animals and plants. Its progress received a spectacular impetus with long manned flights by Russia's Mir orbital station and, subsequently, the International Space Station. Gravity changes turned out to be good for treatment of vestibular, osteal and cardiovascular diseases and disorders.
