Monday 6 July 2009

ICoN1

As of late yesterday, I'm at the ICoN1 conference on nitrification at the University of Louisville (apparently pronounced "Looville"), Louisville, Kentucky. I'm here to give a presentation on a paper that I co-wrote a couple of years ago with APM and some observationalist colleagues. As a total neophyte to the world of nitrification, this extremely specific conference has already been quite an eye-opener. My seminar is this evening, but this morning's presentations have already forced me back to PowerPoint to adjust some of my more egregious mischaracterisations of nitrification. It's been quite hard at times following some of the more molecular taxonomic talks, but I'm slowly getting my eye in - at least, I'm learning which parts of a talk I can safely ignore without losing its central thread.

3 comments:

Anne said...

It would not be unreasonable for my friend Charles Mitchell to be at that conference. He's a swell guy, works on nutrient cycling in plants, I believe. We were in Costa Rica together. If you see him, tell him I say hello.

Going anywhere else in the states while you are here? Always welcome in SF you know!!!!

Plumbago said...

I don't think he's here, but I'll keep an eye out. It's pretty hardcore microbial. Ostensibly on nitrification, but denitification and anammox are featuring pretty strongly.

While I understand most of the words, the significance of the genetic analyses is frequently lost on me, and the protein structures are practically meaningless.

Still, there have been a number of interesting talks, and at least one has presented work that might help with the work I've done (this might just be wishful thinking, however).

Anyway, I'm afraid this is very much a flying visit to the US. I'm heading back to the UK on Friday. I've actually only had/got a very short period of time to see Louisville itself (see here).

I'm sure I'll get over to SF at some point in the future though!

Anne said...

doubles checked what he's up to... Looks like mostly plant pathogen ecology stuff now. Seems several of my pals from Costa Rica went that way. Me, I'm planning to get back knee deep in pollinator conservation stuff. If I don't say more on that by the end of August, poke me!