Botany 2015 - Over and done

Exhausting. Nothing else describes scientific meetings like these. So many things to do in such a short period of time. Skipped the last lecture and some awards to eat dinner with some friends. One of them got two awards. Oops! AoB lecture by Robert Raguso of Cornell was very interesting; he studies how floral scents interact with insect behaviors. And different parts of flowers can have different scents particularly on the scale of insects. Another interesting talk concerned mycoheterotrophic plants, non-green plants that obtain their food from interactions with fungi that interact with other plants. Another talk dealt with a difficult biogeographic pattern to understand, a South American-Australia disjunction unless you look at continental positions about 50 million years ago. Last meeting ended early this morning, but no way to get home until tomorrow and that requires TPP to get up at 3:30 am to deal with air travel constraints at an international level. Edmonton is sounding a bit like the Hotel California.

Botany 2015 is happening!

Maybe it's a certain environmental cue that triggers an urge to cluster, but around this time of year, somewhere around the continent, botanists gather for an annual event, a meeting, a convention, a social fest, a gab fest, a marathon of science, all rolled into one. This year the event is being held in Edmonton, Alberta, which is pretty far from the upper midwest and explains why it's so hard to get to from here by air and takes too long by ground. At any rate TPP is getting packed for a later flight west. Botany is a far flung field and generally the job situation is such that not very many of us can cluster on a regular basis. Meetings like this are actually pretty important because business gets done face-to-face, you learn new things, you meet new people, you catch up with old friends, and you generally wallow in botany and botanists. TPP will try to send along some of the botanical news from the meeting, but dang they're so jammed packed with activities getting some time to blog isn't easy. At any given point in time the many organizations, the many disciplines and specialities, assure us of having numerous events to attend at any given point in time. Just trying to schedule what you should be doing is difficult enough.

Botany confernence symposium generating more PR for Louisiana

Oh, gosh!  OK, it's just the Huffington Post, but it's more real good PR for Louisiana and its Governor Bobby Jindal.  Here's the link to what the HuffPo had to say about the symposium "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is True".  Quite a few highly complementary comments follow the article.  But what else is there to say?  Oh, yes, one commenter brought up the old "it's only a theory, not a fact" objection to evolution.  Well, many, many parts of the theory of evolution are facts, i.e., natural selection, and so on, and evolution works.  We use evolution in agriculture and medicine; stop and think about why you need a new flu shot each year.  There is no creationist/ID medicine or agriculture because it's a useless idea.  So we have a scientific explanation that works supported by lots of evidence, and a religiously based explanation with no supporting evidence that doesn't work, and then we get politicians that want us to spend time on the latter at the expense of the former.  How great is that for science education?  TPP is having some fun here at the meetings with all his colleagues.

Uh,oh! Botanists laugh at LA legislators who don't like evolution

Well, it just couldn't be helped.  For no particular reasons that TPP can see, a symposium entitled, "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is true" at our annual ongoing botanical meetings in New Orleans attracted some attention:  Now why would evolution be controversial?  Bobby got an invitation, to attend although his spokesperson said they didn't know about that.  But hey, a governor at a botanical meeting - aint' gunna happen.  Here's what the Times Picayune had to say.  Well, the college student presenter Zach Kopplin, just put up videos of LA legislators in action: defending witch doctors, carping about people with all those little letters after their names (like PhD) telling you what to do, and the like, and yep, a national audience of scientists laughed.  Now of course, this is quite unfair.  Similar videos of our own state (and federal) legislators in action would also elicit laughter, and are there any that wouldn't?  Now what all this was about is a LA law that basically permits teachers to introduce creationism and intelligent design into science classes.  The code phrases are "academic freedom" and "critical thinking".  In and of themselves these are good things, but when used as a smoke screen for pseudoscience, us professional science educators just can't be quiet.  So, yes, Bobby, people from across the nation laughed at you.  How's that work for your aspirations on a national level?  Still want the GnOPe to stop being the party of stupid?  Well, you signed the bill. 

Botanical meetings - New Orleans

Well,  TPP is back in New Orleans for the annual botanical meetings, back because we done this here before, so while fond and the memories are rather foggy because that was 40 years ago.  So two of my older colleagues, one seven years my senior, and one thirteen years my senior, and both still active faculty, and myself took our lovely wives out to dinner at NOLA.  Wonderful place, wonderful food.  The blueberry lavender flower sorbet was just magical.  The duck and Andouille sausage gumbo was excellent.  This is New Orleans and the food is wonderful.  The street scene is amazing; lots of costumes of various sorts, if you get my drift.  So for the next few days the blogging may be erratic, but it'll be coming from the botanical meetings, live and direct.  Tomorrow is for field trips, and meetings, and a big social mixer.  Another group is also having a conference here in NO, but they won't get mistaken for botanists, or us for them; they dress pretty fancy, black tie and evening gown type of thing tonight.  Botanists just don't do formal, except for one guy, a past-president, who once came in a tux, and everyone just figured he was weird, or making a joke, or something.  Hawaiian shirts are a more usual fashion statement in the botanical world and khakis.  Of course, after so many years, these people are my friends and it's great fun to see them once each year except what with all the science going on it can be hard to socialize with many of them.  There isn't enough time.  Science is a community, and we interact at many different levels, so socializing is a very important thing to do.  The symposium "Yes, Bobby (Jindal), Evolution is True" symposium is on Monday, and TPP will let you know how it goes. 
TPP sees elsewhere that another blogger is getting paid to report on the protist meetings out west in Vancouver.  TPP has been there twice for meetings and it's a lovely city, and again the meetings were nearly 30 years apart.  It does kind of rub my rhubarb that a science blogger is accepting money to do something that they should do anyways, and even worse that TPP hasn't been offered any such support, which is why food came first.  So now, having driven too far, and eaten too much, it's time to get some sleep because the field trip starts early.

Botanical Meeting - Early Planning

The annual botanical meetings are at the end of this month in New Orleans, the combined memberships of the Botanical Society of America, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the American Bryological and Lichenological Society, the American Fern Society, and the International Association of Plant Taxonomists.  Pretty exciting, huh?  Well, this is for purposes of communicating all manner of things with out colleagues, and mostly it's the only time each year we get to see colleagues from different institutions and countries, former students, and collaborators, both past and maybe future.  People present talks and posters highlighting their research and teaching.  You learn a lot and get a lot of new ideas.  But it's a marathon, a jam-packed few days of solid botanical science.  Participation planning had to take place months ago to get on the program, and even earlier than that if you were organizing some aspect of the meeting.  Travel planning also had to be done already to get reservations taken care of.  Now you begin to decide on a day-to-day schedule so you're where you want to be when you want to be there.  You see, so much is going on, all manner of sessions are going on simultaneously, and for us generalists who have interests spanning more than one field, it's a particular problem because you want to hear this and that over there and back here.  TPP's basic approach is to just check off anything and everything he's interested in seeing and hearing, all the meetings he's supposed to attend, and all the rest.  This spans fields of systematics, paleobotany, structure and development, ecology, pollination, tropical biology, and evolution, but only particular bits of each.  More specialized people just plunk themselves down and stay put.  After you find everything of interest (it took 2 hours to read the whole program) you print out a custom schedule, except then you find out 8 of your "likes" all happen at once, so then you finally have to decide.  The first scan shows quite a few "problems" to resolve.  Some fun things look to be in the offing.  One symposium, a group of invited speakers, are presenting talks on "Yes, Bobby [Jindal], Evolution is Real".  Doubt he'll show up. And where was the seminar on Cajun food?  

The unified theory of gumbo

The Botanical Society of America is meeting in New Orleans Louisiana about a month from now.  The fact that it will be hot and humid hardly matters because botanists are basically cheap-skates and they like the off-season rates.  Besides, convention centers are always AC-ed to near meat-locker temperatures anyways, and you rarely get to see daylight at meetings so condensed are the programs.  Since lots of us are field workers anyways, you do get used to dealing with difficult conditions, but some of the lab people can be kind of wimpy.  TPP hasn't been in NO in a long time, actually since the last time the botanical meetings were there, decades ago, and it's always nice when the area offers food and music as a sort of bonus.  Now here's a freebie for you (don't think this is behind a fire-wall), The unified theory of gumbo (a pdf) (complete with Mrs. Elie's gumbo recipe!).  Don't miss out on this one.  None of this "new-voh" cajun food, oh, no.  This one is authentic!  TPP does anticipate eating well; to those ends reservations have been make at NOLA. The results will be blog fodder for certain.   

Another fine botanical meeting shot to heck

Well, it's over. Another botanical meeting finished.  The Phactor has attended 30 some odd of them now having started 40 years ago, but missing a few.  Had a last drink with several friends after the banquet and awards ceremony, and now the Phactor needs some sleep before driving home.  Listened to quite a few student talks today, and without question Roxaneh (neat spelling) talking about her palm reproduction was the best, and as if the judges were listening, she won the best student presentation award.  Her major professor, a very good friend, will be most pleased.  Met a few new people that were on my list, but still failed to get time to chat with fast Eddie.  As a fern guy we just don't listen to too many of the same talks, and it can be hard to run into some people as a result.  Although this may be hard to believe, but had dinner with my undergraduate adviser who will be starting his 43d academic year, and the last 10 years have been his most productive in research, so some people do get older and better.  The Phactor helped auction off a bunch of items to raise money for lecture honoring a curmudgeon in our field.  And the day started with an alumni breakfast for botanists who worked or studied at Miami University at one time or another.  Looking around everyone looks  beat.  Meetings are marathons, but great fun in all respects.

Annual Botanical Meeting - St. Louis

Going to St. Louis about 200 miles to the south and in the Mississippii River valley in July is not the smartest time to visit. It's smarter than visiting in August, but not by much. Part of the reason for the meeting's location is of course the Missouri Botanical Garden. So a thousand or so botanists, members of the Botanical Society of America, professional botanists of all sorts and their students, will descend on the city, and actually the weather matters little because the meetings are 4 days of jam packed meetings, posters, and talks where you seldom venture out of the meeting venue usually some sort of convention center or big hotel. Why there's hardly any time left for socializing. You get to meet new young colleagues, and that's good, because members in my age group are beginning to thin out and the Phactor sees fewer of his graduate school cohorts every year, although usually a couple of my former students attend, and it's great to see what they're up to. A decade ago one of my mentors set an incredible record. He had attended the botanical meetings in 8 different decades having first gone to the meetings in the late 1930s and there he was in attendance at the 2001 meetings. That was the last time we saw each other, and his last publication, co-authored by my undergrad advisor/mentor, was posthumous. That is quite an example to live up to. The other thing that is fascinating is to examine the remarkably diverse array of research topics being presented by my colleagues. It's hard to believe. You can actually view the abstracts here. The big problem is that this is a classic 8 ring circus, and for some of us who are interested in lots of things, in the Phactor's case ranging across ecology, paleobotany, floral biology, education, evolution and phylogeny, you generally find that 4 or 5 presentations are being made at the same time & you simply give up and go have a cup of coffee. People who are more specialized simply plant themselves in a session and stay until everyone runs out of gas. Unfortunately at least one presentation has yet to be finished, so stop blogging and get going.