By Dana D’Amico Part 1/2 Last year, the Center for Food Integrity (CFI), a non-profit working to facilitate public confidence in the US food system, conducted a consumer survey. The survey focused on a few key groups –mothers, foodies, and millennials –and aimed to examine ‘messenger trust’ related to issues like GM safety. Before any … Read more
Welcome to Episode 2 of our weekly feature, Plants in the News. These stories are selected to provide educators with interesting and accessible news from the world of plant science. Although some of the stories we feature are based on articles with restricted access, we also provide links to news summaries that are available without … Read more
By Dana D’Amico In my last post, I introduced a few ways that the plant science community might look to storytelling and literature for outreach. Here, I’ll present some practical tips for working with science writers, as corroborated by working journalists at the Plant Biology 2015 “Standing Up For Science” workshop in Minneapolis (and for … Read more
This post is part of the Recognizing our Authors series. Xing Wang Deng The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology Xing Wang Deng is a university endowed professor of plant biology at Peking University. He graduated from Peking University in 1985 with an MS degree and then from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989 with a … Read more
We’re starting a new weekly feature, “Plants in the News”. This feature is inspired by the This Week in Chemistry series published by Compound Interest (Andy Brunning). The goal is to support teaching and outreach by highlighting a few current news stories that feature plants and plant science. If you have a timely suggestion for … Read more
The debut of Wiki Edu’s new course design tools at Plant Biology 2015. Wiki Ed has been eager to show off the course design and monitoring tools that we launched last month. We had our first chance to do so in late July, when Outreach Manager Samantha Erickson and I attended the American … Read more
By Dana D’Amico I’ll begin my first post by introducing what it is that I do. Like most of you, I’m a trained plant biologist and an ASPB follower. But I’m also a writer. Throughout my career I have studied technical and journalistic writing, both as ways of increasing public interest in and awareness of … Read more
This is my final wrap up of #plantbiology15. My previous posts from before and during the conference (pdf) are here, here, here and here. There was a lot to take in. The final impression of Plant Biology 2015, now that I’ve had a chance to reflect, is that it was a lot. A lot of things to see, do, … Read more
Twitter is quickly becoming the platform of choice for connections and communications at scientific conferences and beyond. The current culture of science, which values openness, accessibility and broad participation, is enhanced by the barrier-free Twitter environment; everyone has an equal right to participate in Twitter conversations. At several conferences this summer I’ve been asked for … Read more
New to Twitter? Start with Part 1: Twitter Basics Why do people Tweet from talks and conferences? One of the main reasons is to broaden access to science beyond those able to attend a conference, benefitting the science, the speakers, and the off-site participants. Science is moving towards a more open, democratic culture, with Twitter … Read more
Many global challenges facing people around the world are linked directly to plant biology. These challenges include ensuring the sustainable availability of food, fiber, energy, and fresh water for a predicted 9 billion inhabitants in the near future, with many resources already being stretched. Solutions to these and related challenges will depend on scientific innovation … Read more
This post covers two days of Plant Biology, 2015 in Minneapolis. Your correspondent took the night last night to attend the closing mixer/party and so decided to combine the last two days into one post. Once again, this is just to give a reader a sense of what went on at the conference, not exhaustive … Read more
Since the advent of GMO crops, agriculture across the globe has undergone immense transformation, becoming the productive system in place today. The benefits of GMO crops are clear – corn farmers in developed countries have increased their productivity and yields. Take the U.S. for example, according to the USDA*, corn yields have grown by 35% … Read more
It rained this morning in Minneapolis. Luckily, that ended pretty quickly and the day was off to a quick start with the major symposia on epigenetics, with all of the speakers discussing the methylome (all of the DNA that ends up methylated in the genome, in what cells & in what conditions it occurs in … Read more
Today was a quieter day for me at Plant Biology. I missed a lot of sessions and just was more internally focused today, though I did do a bit of networking, which was good, got my CV reviewed, gave my business card to a lot of people. As with many things, I do have a … Read more
I went for a run this morning at 6:15am. It is now 20 past midnight. In between was day one of Plant Biology. And yes, I was there the whole day, or interacting with people at the conference that whole time. I’ve been getting known more and more for being the “twitter person” at Plant BIology … Read more
The following was originally posted on the Quiet Branches Blog. Plant Biology is the name of the annual meeting organized by The American Society of Plant Biologists- ASPB (& sometimes co-organized with partner plant science societies from around the world). This is one gathering of the plant science community, one of the bigger ones that … Read more
We are pleased to announce that Peizu Guan has received one of our ten Women’s Young Investigator Travel Awards. For the past six years, Peizu has been conducting her postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego. Peizu’s research focuses on elucidating the regulatory mechanisms governing plant-nutrient interactions, more specifically, nitrate signaling and nitrate … Read more
We are pleased to announce that Amy Klocko has received one of our ten Women’s Young Investigator Travel Awards. Amy is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. She would like to present her research to a wider audience than her home department and university. Amy also will … Read more
We are pleased to announce that Cora MacAllister has received one of our ten Women’s Young Investigator Travel Awards. Cora is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan’s Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology Department. In this position, she will be responsible for establishing an independent research group, securing external funding and teaching graduate and … Read more
