Lindau09

Lars Fischer studied chemistry and now works as a science journalist, blogger at Fischblog and coordinator at the German-language science blogging site scilogs.de (which recently spawned the English-language sister site scilogs.eu). Lars and I spent a lot of time together at the Lindau Nobel meeting where Lars interviewed me and I asked Lars to provide a guest-post for my blog about the main 'take-home' message he got from the conference: Richard Feynman was 29 when he finally published his works on quantum electrodynamics. At the age of 22, Charles Darwin first set foot on the Beagle, and…
As you may have noticed, I am quite fascinated with the earliest beginnings of my scientific discipline, which was almost entirely involving research on plants. The most famous story from that early period is the construction of a Flower Clock by Karl Linne, the father of taxonomy. So, of course I got really exited when I saw, on the Mainau island last Friday, a reconstructed Linnaeus' floral clock. Then I looked carefully - and noticed it was not telling the correct time. This was taken at 3pm. So I thought about it for a second....and, well, this is what I think is going on here. First…
On the way back from the Mainau island to Lindau island, we were entertained on the ship by a balloon magician. He started out with balloon molecules. Kind of a nifty way to demonstrate why you can write with graphite and not with a diamond. I am not sure the magician was aware that Dr.Kroto was sitting in the front row when he produced the bucky-ball (for which Kroto got his Nobel) but it worked out great in the end. But it got suspicious when the guy switched to making balloon plants and animals. Could it be? Is that a balloon magician or Stuart Pivar disguised as a balloon magician?…
Ashutosh Jogalekar wrote the best summary of the panel on Climate Change held on the island of Mainau on the last day of the Lindau Nobel Meeting:
A couple of German bloggers and I went to see the Butterfly House on the Island of Mainau. They had good cameras with lenses that allowed them to take extreme close-ups. I had to do with a little pocket camera, but a few pictures turned out decent enough to show:
Here are some more pictures from the domestic and wild animal life on the island:
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Jennifer Murphy from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Ghada Al-Kadamany from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Jan Wedekind, formerly of University of Barcelona, Spain, and now with IRIS:
The island of Mainau has been designed, decades ago, as a gigantic garden, natural preserve, and a model of sustainability. Thus, animals roaming the island are exceptionally fearless of humans. For this picture, taken during lunch on the island, all I needed to do was extend my camera-hand, while sitting, until it was about two feet away from the bird: All sorts of birds, from crows to peacocks roam freely among the throngs of tourists there.
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Fenja Schoepke of RWTH Aachen, Germany.
Friday was a special day at the Lindau Nobel conference. The official program was over but, instead of letting us all go home, the organizers did something better - a day trip on a boat to the island of Mainau where, while still under the influence of the proceedings, the participants had a chance to relax and walk and chat and enjoy the nature. What a great way to finish the event! As the underlying theme of the meeting was the worry about Climate Change and sustainable development, it is quite fitting that the trip was on board of MS Sonnenkönigin, a solar-powered ship. This was also an…
A brief interview with one of the young people attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Anna-Maria Huber from the Lindau high school:
Thursday morning was the Biofluorescence morning, with lectures by the three most recent Nobelists who received their prize for the discovery and first uses of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and its derivatives that glow in other colors. It's hard to think of an animal that is as non-model in the lab as jellyfish and a discovery as important and useful for modern biological research. Unlike PZ who was a diligent liveblogger in the conference hall, I watched all three lectures from the press room, livestreamed on my laptop, while multitasking and generally enjoying the perks of being "…
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Matthew Siebert of the University of California, Davis, USA:
It's a beautiful place:
There are a bunch of bloggers here at Lindau, wearing Press badges, going to Press meetings and generally behaving like Press. Apart from PZ and myself, most of them are German sciencebloggers who are posting their interviews and dispatches on the Lindaunobel blog on Scienceblogs.de (you can filter only English-language posts here) as well as on Page 3.14. Last night we went out for dinner together and had great fun. Most of my pictures turned out, well, pretty bad, except perhaps this one:
PZ was sleepy this morning, but he was a diligent blogger - he sat through each and every talk this morning and wrote about them all in two posts. Knowing myself (and my ADHD) I did some cherry-picking. I skipped the heavy-duty chemistry lectures that I was bound not to understand, and went to only two talks I really wanted to see. The first one was by my yesterday's co-panelist Prof. Sir Harold Walter Kroto (homepage, Wikipedia, Lindau biography). Just this moment, I am sitting in the press room discussing with other bloggers who are at this very moment writing blog-posts about Kroto's talk…
Today was a busy day. I was somewhat surprised at how shy people are of the little Flip camera - so much worry about the future career prospects if one does something seemingly 'unprofessional' like say a couple of words about one's research for the Lindau YouTube channel and my blog. But see the two interviews below, and I got a few more promise to do it tomorrow. I bet Nobel Laureates will be easier to persuade than the young researchers! In the afternoon, although it was very hot, I put on my shirt and tie (instead of my 'Ida' t-shirt) for the Open Access panel which I shared with Sir…
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Corinna Reisinger from Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung