Plants in the News, September 11 2015

This week’s episode has the theme of “Videos”. There are not enough good videos about plant science, but there’s a lot of talent out there, how about making an engaging video as your outreach project for the year?

To get you started, here’s a video from the Eden Channel about how to make a great video, and a more technically-focused set of tutorials from Dr. Karen McKee, aka The Scientist Videographer. One critical piece of equipment that makes a world of difference is a good microphone; many good videos are ruined by poor sound.

Here are 24 finalists in the Global Youth Video Competition on Climate Change. Support these young filmmakers by watching their videos. One lucky filmmaker gets to travel to COP21 in Paris later this year!

Here’s a video from Cell Press about a recent review article by Christa Testerink and Magdalena Julkowska in Trends in Plant Science, “Tuning plant signaling and growth to survive salt”. Here’s one called “Plants vs explosives!” made by the BBSRC funding agency  that describes how plants can detoxify the explosive TNT, based on a new paper in Science  by Johnston et al.  Maybe you can make a video abstract to accompany your next paper?

Here’s a set of scientific animations about plant science from Kimberly Falk who makes videos under the name “Moves Like Nature”. Even if you can’t find the time to make a video, maybe you can find the money to hire someone else to make one about your research?

Finally, what would movie night be without popcorn? Well, it’s not popcorn, but you don’t want to miss this excellent open access review article from Genetics journal, “Genetic and Genomic Toolbox of Zea mays” by Natalie Nannas and Kelly Dawe.