{"doi":"10.1113/jp279385","title":"Mechanics and energetics in cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure","abstract":"Before discussing the 2018 meeting content, we wish to commemorate Dr J. Jeremy Rice, who died tragically during the conference. Jeremy was an outstanding scientist (member of the Faculty of 1000) whose work on quantitative exploration of cardiac and neuronal electrophysiology, heart mechanics, and electro-mechanical coupling, published in more than 75 papers, has lasting impact on our field. His true impact is much deeper than the published papers for the hundreds of scientists who knew him. Despite his many accolades, Jeremy was down to earth, modest, and generous in his enthusiastic collaborative and open approach to science. He trained at Johns Hopkins University, was a Principal Researcher at IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences for nearly two decades, and held adjunct faculty posts at Johns Hopkins and Loyola Universities. He loved trains, zydeco music, and dancing with his wife, Laura. Unbeknownst to many of us, Jeremy had long suffered from severe depression. As highlighted in the accompanying Editorial by Dr Astrid Müller (2020), mental health issues in academics are more common than one might realize, affecting roughly a third of trainees, postdocs and senior scientists at some time. These sobering statistics remind us that, as we sit in the next conference and look to the person on our right and left, one of us three is likely to suffer from this illness at some point (we fondly imagine Jeremy taking us to task on the correct probabilistic equation inherent in that statement). Four things especially struck us in Dr Müller's Editorial: (1) the high prevalence (20–40%) of mental health disorders among scientists and the general population, (2) that only a fraction of those afflicted receive professional help, (3) that many suffer in silence, concealing their condition even from their friends (as was the case for Jeremy), and (4) there remains a public stigmatism regarding mental health diseases vs. somatic diseases (despite some progress in recent decades). The latter three points are surely interdependent and reinforce a situation that makes it often difficult, even for friends and family, to help those they love and care about. As Dr Müller highlights, we may be more likely to discuss our prostate or breast cancer, than our psychological ailments. We as biomedical research professionals should champion breaking the culture of silence surrounding mental health in our community. We encourage all to gain awareness and openness of mental health disorders where we work and live, through training how to best help those who are suffering, sometimes in silence, from these diseases. That awareness and sensitivity would honour Jeremy and, hopefully, help others or ourselves in the future. In addition to the brief Editorial by Astrid Müller, this Special Issue includes one White Paper on the scientific foci of the 2018 meeting, one Topical Review, five original Research Papers, and a related Perspectives article. The UC Davis Cardiovascular Symposium series, Systems Approach to Understanding Cardiac Excitation-Contraction Coupling and Arrhythmias, is an on-going forum for cardiac researchers and physician-scientists to exchange ideas and build interdisciplinary collaborations. This international conference series commenced in 2010. The first symposium gathered about a hundred experimental investigators and mathematical modellers to carry out an overview and discussion of the contemperary issues in the cardiac excitation-contraction field. That set the stage for the subsequent biennial conferences focusing more deeply on certain critical areas. The topic of the 2012 conference was Ca2+ channels and SR Ca2+ release. In 2014 the topic was Na+ channel and Na+ transport (Bers & Chen-Izu, 2015) and the conference produced three White Papers (Chen-Izu et al. 2015; Clancy et al. 2015; Shattock et al. 2015). The 2016 topic was K+ channels and regulation (Bers & Chen-Izu, 2017) and produced two White Papers (Grandi et al. 2017; Chiamvimonvat ","journal":"The Journal of Physiology","year":2020,"id":109188,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.961,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":521863,"name":"Peter Köhl","orcid":"0000-0003-0416-6270","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":521864,"name":"Ye Chen‐Izu","orcid":"0000-0003-4818-9570","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":229037,"name":"Donald M. Bers","orcid":"0000-0002-2237-9483","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":20,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:12:50.712357Z","pmid":"31998965","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}