As part of my series of guest blogs at the 59th Annual Meeting of the US Biophysical Society I wrote some thoughts on the National Lecture by Klaus Schulten that was last night. To find out what the quote refers to, you’ll have to follow …

Update: you can now .

I’m at the of the Meeting in Baltimore which is large (6,500 scientists) with multiple parallel sessions. You might have thought that Twitter would be the ideal platform for providing a feed for all the questions, reactions and suggestions but very few people are using it, although there is definitely more tweeting compared to last year. You can read my musings on it . This is part of my series of posts as one of their guest bloggers.

The most useful and enjoyable part of coming to the Annual Meeting for me is not the talks, nor is it the poster session nor even the free T-shirts. It is meeting up and talking with fellow scientists. But one must first solve an important question that Douglas Adams describes better than I ever could in his book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question ‘How can we eat?’ the second by the question ‘Why do we eat?’ and the third by the question ‘Where shall we have lunch?’

My favourite place, recommended to me back in 2011 by two friends who were at the University of Maryland at the time, is a sandwich shop. I went today to the one a few blocks on W Pratt St west of the convention centre but I’ve heard there is one in the Inner Harbor too. It’s quick, tasty and you can while away a pleasant half an hour chatting before hitting the posters.

I was pleased to be chosen as one of the . for the in Baltimore that runs from today to Wednesday 11 February. You can read my posts, as I write them, .