Category - News

    Image: Octopus, Wikimedia Commons.
    Plant Cuttings

    Come back, Paul. All is forgiven

    Image: Paul the Octopus, Wikimedia Commons. Sadly, Paul – the ‘fortune-telling octopus’ – is no more, but since his exploits during football’s World Cup last summer, we seem to have developed a taste for using biota to...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 22, 2011
    Wikipebeer Image: Wikimedia Commons.
    Plant Cuttings

    Cheers, mate!

    Wikipebeer Image: Wikimedia Commons. A few years ago ‘-omics’ were all the rage in biology: metabolomics, genomics, transcriptomics, etc. And for traditional [a euphemism for old-fashioned (?)] botanists like myself it...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 15, 2011
    LinksNews

    International Year of Forests 2011

    2011 marks the International Year of Forests, a U.N. initiative to raise awareness on sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.

    annbot
    February 13, 2011
    Image: Wikimedia Commons, based on data from: Gable RS. 2006. In: Fish M. ed. Drugs and Society: US Public Policy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 149–162.
    Plant Cuttings

    Why cannabis is bad for you…

    Image: Wikimedia Commons, based on data from: Gable RS. 2006. In: Fish M. ed. Drugs and Society: US Public Policy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 149–162. Many people will tell you that smoking cannabis (aka...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 10, 2011
    Image: L’Illustration, December 1923/Wikimedia Commons.
    Plant Cuttings

    …and why aspirin is good for you

    Image: L’Illustration, December 1923/Wikimedia Commons. Aspirin, one of the most famous plant-derived medicines, is often used as an analgesic (to relieve minor aches and pains), as an antipyretic (to reduce fever), and...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 10, 2011
    Image: Katsushika Hokusai, Watermill at Onden (1826–1833).
    Plant Cuttings

    Rice

    Image: Katsushika Hokusai, Watermill at Onden (1826–1833). Rice, or strictly speaking the hulls, has been proposed as a substitute for perlite – itself a substitute for soil in plant cultivation () – by Christophe...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 8, 2011
    Image: Micael Maggs, Wikimedia Commons.
    Plant Cuttings

    Bark I

    Image: Micael Maggs, Wikimedia Commons. As we try to draw a veil over some aspects of 2010 there are still ripples surrounding the headline-grabbing oil pollution event resulting from the explosion on the Deepwater...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 8, 2011
    Image: Wikimedia Commons.
    Plant Cuttings

    Pineapple

    Image: Wikimedia Commons. Cotton, a soft, fluffy staple fibre that grows in a protective capsule around seeds of plants of the genus Gossypium, is converted into the world’s most widely used natural-fibre cloth. But its...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 8, 2011
    Image: Luc Viatour, Wikimedia Commons.
    Plant Cuttings

    Bark II

    Nanotechnology, the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale, and generally dealing with structures of 1–10 nm is one of the more exotic technological developments of the late 20th century. However...

    Nigel Chaffey
    February 8, 2011