American Society for Microbiology

This Saturday, I woke up at about 4:30.  This is because I went to Pocatello!  Why would I do that you ask?  Well, I went to the Intermountain Branch Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.  I was presenting some research up there. It was fun, but you could tell a couple of things:

1) The Intermountain Branch doesn't have a lot of research-based universities.  Westminster presented just a couple, Weber State presented a few, Dixie State presented one, Idaho State presented the same thing about 10 times, and then everything else was BYU.

2) The Intermountain Branch has a perhaps unhealthy obsession with halophiles.  These are bacteria that like salt--a lot of salt.  I would hypothesize that this is because of the huge and convenient halophile breeding-ground known as the Great Salt Lake. 

3) At Microbiology Conferences, they raffle off pipeters and protein gels.  'Nuff said.

4) Idaho state researches nothing but Blastomycoses in dogs.  I kind of think it's cheating to compete the same experiment on nine different posters.

5) Fifteen-seater vans full of Microbiologists are interesting places.

It was enjoyable, I didn't win, but the experiment that did win was from our research lab, so I am happy for them. 

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