Side-view of the human eye, viewed approximately 90 degrees temporal, illustrating how the iris and pupil appear rotated towards the viewer due to the optical properties of the cornea, by Paul Savage Plant blindness...
Category - Plant Cuttings
Nigel Chaffey
Cyanobacteria: Good week, or bad week..? Part IV
This is the last of our quartet of blog posts looking at the newsworthy world of the blue-greens, and looks at those organisms from a different viewpoint… Image: DDDDDDDDD / Wikipedia Cyanobacteria lighting the way for...
Cyanobacteria: Good week, or bad week..? Part III
This is the third of our quartet of posts looking at the newsworthy world of the blue-greens. Image: David Fuchs / Wikipedia Asteroids, bad for dinosaurs, but good for cyanobacteria? This really good news for...
Cyanobacteria: Good week, or bad week..? Part II
Continuing our look at the newsworthy world of the blue-greens. Image: NASA Earth Observatory/ Wikipedia DOM, a double-edged sword … From a bad news point of view – bad for those ‘BBGs’ (bad blue-greens [URL for Part...
Cyanobacteria: Good week, or bad week..? Part I
This is the first of what is hoped to be a series in which Mr P. Cuttings looks at a group of organisms and tries to decide whether they’ve had a good week, or a bad week. And by way of increasing the intrigue this...
Tirpitz and the science of conflict ecology…
It has been said that, in war, truth is the first casualty. As understandable as it may be to tell lies, create and perpetuate falsehoods and deceptions, and spread disinformation – so as not to give any advantage to...
Final course: ‘Coffee’… *
Or, rather, something to ponder as you finish your meal, maybe with a coffee. Whatever your food(s) of choice, you need the right equipment – e.g. teeth – to cope with it (unless it’s a liquid or intravenously...
3rd course: Cereal and fern (and meat and fat…) **
Teeth are one source of evidence for food preferences [see previous course/post], but how can you be sure that what is found in the mouth is actually swallowed into the digestive tract proper? Arguably better is the...
2nd course: Cereals, nettles and conifers (and fish…) ****
Famously, humans will have a go at eating anything, which is why they’re considered to be omnivores, and they are therefore omnivorous *. However, information concerning how such dietary preferences came to be, and when...
1st course: Seagrass ****
What’s the one dietary fact everybody knows about sharks? Correct, they eat human beings – as graphically shown in the creature feature film sensation of 1975, the movie Jaws (and its various good, bad, and indifferent...
Food, glorious food! ***, ****
Plants provide animals [and it is acknowledged that the following listing is somewhat human-biased] with many things: e.g. medicines; building materials; oxygen; useful chemicals (e.g. dyes such as madder, essential...
Saluting those who suffer for science
What is the most important part of a scientific paper? Arguably, it’s the Results section– although there are those who might propose that it’s the authors (scientists after all are humans and appreciate having their...
Science communication: Getting it right…
Science is one of the most important of human activities, and consequently it’s often funded by the public via their taxes. In order to inform the public of the ways their ‘tax dollars’ have been spent – as part ‘thank...
Check beneath your boots…
When people mention plant blindness* they tend to focus on the ‘lack of appreciation of the role of plants in the world’ notion. That is important, but there has always been another side to plant blindness, people’s...
