Conference!
13 January 2006 00:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enismirdalI am so tired. Dead on my feet kind of tired (except I refuse to go to bed without dinner, so am keeping myself awake to cook and eat!)
Long day. Fantastic, but long. Conference must have been about 60 people or something, and I appeared to be the only undergraduate. The rest were essentially colour vision experts - Postdocs, Research Fellows, Professors. Thus, I had to take in an enormous amount of information very quickly! 5 hours of lectures on a field I knew literally *nothing* about 3 months ago.
I love learning in ultra-accelerated mode like that, but my brain now feels like it is bursting out of my skull from being overloaded. Somehow, I actually kept up and understood most of what was said, at least on the most superficial, immediate levels.
Also met loads and loads of people. It was really scary being introduced as "my research associate" though - "evil student minion", I can cope with, but things that make me sound like I actually know what I am doing... Met a few fairly big names in colour vision sciences - and they were all lovely! This adorable German lady who lectured us in Cambridge yesterday travelled down on the train with as she was presenting at the conference. She showed us the research from her old PhD thesis that she is now publishing, and we talked about bees and Cambridge and university systems.
Also met a Swedish lady who had loads of clever ideas about bees, and a man who said we could send him pictures of our flower petals and he might be able to tell us if they have bumpy petals for a reason relating to their optical properties. And lots of other people, who knew people who knew other people. Lots of names and faces. Also lots of food, like mini swiss rolls and sushi and sandwiches and lots of expensive choccy biccies which I am not above eating many of.
Was very impressed, but unfortunately ordered Coke in the pub afterwards before I noticed that pub stocked Broadside! Managed to take supervisor for a few interesting detours in London owing to my appalling navigating skills...oops. Ah, well, we arrived everywhere on time.
The most memorable thing I learned, I guess, is that...you know how sooner or later, most people have the conversation, "How do you know that the colour I see and call red looks the same as the colour you see and call red?"
Well, it seems like in some sort of roundabout ways, it isn't. It seems that on our retinas, we don't have exactly 1/3 green-sensitive, 1/3 red-sensitive and 1/3 blue-sensitive cone cells as one might assume - the ratios can vary hugely between people. Usually there are fewer blue cones by a large margin, but the red:green ratio can vary from about 1:1 right up to about 16 red cones for every green one. I don't *think* this would affect someone's absolute perception of any given colour, but would influence your sensitivity to certain colours, presumably, and also under some circumstances make you see individual points of light as different colours because of the way brains try to second-guess what they are really seeing.
Also learned that moths can see colours in the dark better than us, and geckos can be trained a bit like bees - reward them with tasty, punish them with less tasty. In their case, crickets versus salted crickets!
Also saw the bee lab at the place where the conference was held. And drooled. It was SO SHINY! They really must have money - the equipment was custom-made and pristine, the lab was specially designed to keep bees, and it was a far cry from our plastic lemonade bottles. Still, our bees are happy and clever too! But I did drool over that lab...
In conclusion, conferences are really a lot like LOTR conventions, only the people are mostly older chaps with weird hairstyles, and there aren't as many funny bits!
Tried to explain fandom communities and politics to my PlantSci (less bee-loving) supervisor - I think it scared her, but she accepted that after that, science politics (which work in a very very similar way, right down to BNFs and minions and silly wars over nothing, and getting ahead cos of who you know not what you write) didn't worry me as much as they might!
On the plus side, I can have a long, hot shower tonight (last night I had a short, freezing shower cos the hot water really was dead for the evening - went to bed with a hot water bottle filled from water heated in kettle!), and don't need to be in the lab till 10am tomorrow, so yay mini lie-in!
Long day. Fantastic, but long. Conference must have been about 60 people or something, and I appeared to be the only undergraduate. The rest were essentially colour vision experts - Postdocs, Research Fellows, Professors. Thus, I had to take in an enormous amount of information very quickly! 5 hours of lectures on a field I knew literally *nothing* about 3 months ago.
I love learning in ultra-accelerated mode like that, but my brain now feels like it is bursting out of my skull from being overloaded. Somehow, I actually kept up and understood most of what was said, at least on the most superficial, immediate levels.
Also met loads and loads of people. It was really scary being introduced as "my research associate" though - "evil student minion", I can cope with, but things that make me sound like I actually know what I am doing... Met a few fairly big names in colour vision sciences - and they were all lovely! This adorable German lady who lectured us in Cambridge yesterday travelled down on the train with as she was presenting at the conference. She showed us the research from her old PhD thesis that she is now publishing, and we talked about bees and Cambridge and university systems.
Also met a Swedish lady who had loads of clever ideas about bees, and a man who said we could send him pictures of our flower petals and he might be able to tell us if they have bumpy petals for a reason relating to their optical properties. And lots of other people, who knew people who knew other people. Lots of names and faces. Also lots of food, like mini swiss rolls and sushi and sandwiches and lots of expensive choccy biccies which I am not above eating many of.
Was very impressed, but unfortunately ordered Coke in the pub afterwards before I noticed that pub stocked Broadside! Managed to take supervisor for a few interesting detours in London owing to my appalling navigating skills...oops. Ah, well, we arrived everywhere on time.
The most memorable thing I learned, I guess, is that...you know how sooner or later, most people have the conversation, "How do you know that the colour I see and call red looks the same as the colour you see and call red?"
Well, it seems like in some sort of roundabout ways, it isn't. It seems that on our retinas, we don't have exactly 1/3 green-sensitive, 1/3 red-sensitive and 1/3 blue-sensitive cone cells as one might assume - the ratios can vary hugely between people. Usually there are fewer blue cones by a large margin, but the red:green ratio can vary from about 1:1 right up to about 16 red cones for every green one. I don't *think* this would affect someone's absolute perception of any given colour, but would influence your sensitivity to certain colours, presumably, and also under some circumstances make you see individual points of light as different colours because of the way brains try to second-guess what they are really seeing.
Also learned that moths can see colours in the dark better than us, and geckos can be trained a bit like bees - reward them with tasty, punish them with less tasty. In their case, crickets versus salted crickets!
Also saw the bee lab at the place where the conference was held. And drooled. It was SO SHINY! They really must have money - the equipment was custom-made and pristine, the lab was specially designed to keep bees, and it was a far cry from our plastic lemonade bottles. Still, our bees are happy and clever too! But I did drool over that lab...
In conclusion, conferences are really a lot like LOTR conventions, only the people are mostly older chaps with weird hairstyles, and there aren't as many funny bits!
Tried to explain fandom communities and politics to my PlantSci (less bee-loving) supervisor - I think it scared her, but she accepted that after that, science politics (which work in a very very similar way, right down to BNFs and minions and silly wars over nothing, and getting ahead cos of who you know not what you write) didn't worry me as much as they might!
On the plus side, I can have a long, hot shower tonight (last night I had a short, freezing shower cos the hot water really was dead for the evening - went to bed with a hot water bottle filled from water heated in kettle!), and don't need to be in the lab till 10am tomorrow, so yay mini lie-in!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 07:21 (UTC)so their aren't older chaps with weird hairstyles at LOTR conventions? Maybe my brain was playing tricks on me.
Abner
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 08:50 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 07:53 (UTC)Conferences are cool :)
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 08:52 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 09:47 (UTC)Abner
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 09:51 (UTC)That amuses me more cos AFF also stands for Adult Fan Fiction (.net - home of some absolutely dreadful fiction).
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 11:32 (UTC)Abner
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 20:57 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 21:48 (UTC)Abner
no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 21:54 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 11:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 11:42 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2006 20:59 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2006 13:21 (UTC)(Maybe you should write an article about that?)
no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2006 13:22 (UTC)