Mary Williams There’s a lot of buzz right now about indoor farming. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of fuchsia-illuminated lettuces hydroponically growing in abandoned warehouses, airplane hangars, and disused subway terminals (see for examples here and here and here.) One of the goals of these programs is to cut the energy costs of food shipping, and another … Read more
This is a guest post by Judith Wayte, in which she describes how she prepares her students to use Twitter professionally. Judith is based in The School of Biosciences at The University of Nottingham where she leads efforts to support students through integrated placement programmes and assessment of professional skills. She is interested in how … Read more
Last month we asked “How do you keep up with the literature?” (cross-posted on the ASPB blog and Plantae). Several of you shared your tips, thanks! Here we’ve compiled the replies we received from you. Follow specific journals One tip is to follow the Twitter or Facebook pages of your favorite journals (in case you … Read more
Chemical genetics is a powerful complement to conventional genetics. Rather than knocking out gene functions, protein (or other) functions can be perturbed through the addition of small molecules. One advantage is that several related proteins can be affected at the same time, avoiding the difficulties that come from genetic redundancy. Another is that treatment regimes … Read more
When is a flower not a flower? When it’s an inflorescence (cue laughter). Plants in the family Asteraceae produce inflorescences that look like single flowers, but are actually made up of hundreds of individual flowers. In many species, their are two types of flowers. The ray flowers (also known as ray florets) produce an elongated … Read more