1) We woke up, and packed, and checked out. The shuttle wouldn't be ready for half an hour so we went to breakfast in the hotel. I requested a bagel but they were out of bagels so I had my choice of bread substitute free of charge (I chose an English muffin). I put all the jam I could on that sucker.
2) We got there. We actually saw some of the minisymposia! We went to the very end of one on cell walls and heard someone talking about CesA10-12 and all the different activities of these enzymes. Meh. Then we saw all of one on metal ion issues. The first girl presented on iron-phosphorus homeostasis interactions. The text of her talk was very clear and the logical reasoning was well presented, which is rare, but she was a very nervous speaker. Someone asked her a question at the end and she could barely say that she didn't know the answer. Then someone else, amazingly, asked her another question, and she lost the use of her tongue entirely. Fortunately no one pressed on, although more interesting questions could have been asked.
The next speaker talked about the search for an iron transporter in the mitochondria - which remains to be identified. She found a protein located in the mitochondria but the evidence for iron transport activity was weak. She spoke incredibly loudly and forcefully, particularly in the introduction when she discussed how important iron was for human health.
The next speaker was a chemist who talked about different ways to trace metal uptake and overaccumulation in Arabidopsis. She used radiotracers to examine different mutants to see if their iron or uranium or mercury content and localization differed.
The last speaker was amazing. She works at POSTEK in South Korea and was extremely poised and confident and thoughtful. She talked about arsenic overaccumulation and had found a mutant that allowed more arsenic to be sequestered in the vacuole, so the mutant could grow in soils with higher levels of arsenic. She showed one of Lianne's figures on hyperaccumulation!
Eric was surprised that most of these speakers were graduate students or post-docs presenting their thesis research, instead of being professors as is the case for the symposia. The topics are even just as important and broad as those for the symposia but for whatever reason it is like a fancy poster presentation (and most people did also have posters) instead of a serious "talk".
3) Whew! On to lunch! We went to a sweet cafe in the other direction from the hotel for once. It was called Jerusalem's and had delicious Middle Eastern food. Our waitress had curly hair done in a mohawk and giant dangly earrings. She, like all our other servers, was super friendly and helpful. We sat out on the patio which had a grape-vine ceiling, and talked about the future of the world while we munched on falafels.
4) Zip! Back to the conference! Eric really wanted to skip it, as did I, but my conscience said since it was the last set of talks and it was on biofuels we really should check it out. I think now that we might have skipped it and happily read our books at the airport, or in the park. But some sweet drawings did come out of it.
Speaker one was the Undersecretary for Science. He told us about energy in the US generally, and said how we will never have energy security as long as we rely on liquid fuels. The UK is apparently energy independent and yet their fuel prices fluctuate based on the world price which is still set by OPEC and the like. So electric is probably the way to go. But, the grid needs overhauled in that case. And depending on the source of electricity, the grid would need to be redone in different ways. Also, planes still won't be able to run on electricity, so some renewable fuel options are still worth pursuing. Heavy trucks, too. But, light duty trucks and other cars have just had the fuel standards revised. The light trucks especially have been getting heavier over the years without decreasing the fuel efficiency, which means it will be very easy to increase the fuel efficiency by simply making the trucks lighter. The point being, the energy situation overall sucks, but there are some easy options for making it a little better. Another good thing is energy efficiency in buildings - very easy to improve that without adding to the building's expense just by doing things like adding working blinds and windows that open.
Speaker two was Maureen McCann, wife of Nick Carpita the current ASPB president. She works at a biofuel research place in Illinois doing crazy things like engineering plants to have metal binding sites in them so that the same inorganic metal catalysts that are used for refining petroleum could be used to refine plants. She is very good at explaining things and I hope to get her to speak at CSU.
Speaker three was Dick Sayre, recently at the Photosynthetic Antennae Research Center. They are manipulating microalgae there to have different photosynthetic efficiencies, something people thought nature had already engineered to a T. But, it turns out nature is not entirely focused on energy capture but also on preventing competing organisms from successful energy capture. So the algae absorb all this radiation that they are unable to use, thereby preventing the other lower down algae in the culture from getting as much light. This also means they have to use their metabolism to dissipate all the unusable light energy as heat to prevent damage to their photosystems, and ultimately makes them less efficient at energy capture and storage. Crazy!
Speaker four was Robert Blankenship but Eric and I were so wrapped up in drawing things on the laptop and generally goofing off that we left after fifteen minutes. Also everything was running super late again so we thought we might as well go.
5) To the airport! We walked to the light rail station and rode in to the airport and everything went smoothly. We found the gate, nothing special was happening there, so we got some food and fresh margs at the Tequilaria. I called Elizabeth while we were there and had her check my email and learned that my grant application was not selected for further consideration. This was for the C2B2 Seed Grant program. Oh well. Also Eric called around all his friends trying to find someone who could pick us up at the airport, but they all came back with lame excuses, even though they would get reimbursement from his travel grant. Finally Josh discovered Kristina would be at the airport already anyway - perfect!
6) We landed, taxied up to the gate, everyone's getting off quick as they can. This airplane and the one we took there had weird overhead bins that were extra deep but also extra shallow so there was much squishing of bags to get them in and then pulling like demons to get them out. So it was going slowly. Then the plane's power went out and for a second we were completely in the dark, no air blowing, totally quiet. Eric and I were seated in the next to last row and there was still quite a crowd in front of us. Fortunately the emergency lights turned on and widespread panic was averted.
7) Home at last! Go team! I don't think either of us will go to a conference like that again, at least not for the full length of the conference, unless we're both well-funded and it's a secret vacation. Minneapolis was really cool though and I would like to go back and see the lakes and the sculpture garden with the giant spoon with a cherry in it, and of course Mall of America, the largest indoor mall around.
It took a while to realize that I was falling asleep in all the talks not because I'm dumb or bad at paying attention but because these people are really bad talk-givers! Totally unaware of the audience and their requirements, etc... It was like when I first started reading papers and realized the ones that are really hard to understand are actually just very badly written. Once you have a little background in a subject the scientific jargon becomes less of an obstacle so that well-written papers explaining something complicated don't seem so terrifyingly obscure, and it becomes clear that if the paper is terrifying, it is the fault of the writer and not the reader.
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