Eggplants in the 14th Century An interesting website, Zester, explores the culture of food and drink – including a range of different species with potential for exploitation, as well as recipes about...
Category - Plants & People
Editor Pat Heslop-Harrison
How old is my meadow?
I was a bit fed up after hearing the UK government announce further cutbacks to the science budget today, so I thought I’d delve into the recent Free Access issue of Annals of Botany from Sept 2009 to see...
Alun Salt
Death by Powerpoint, Internet Science Nerds, and #Solo10
As the undergraduates I teach will testify, I’ve railed many times against ‘Death by Powerpoint’. Somewhat amazingly, a few talks at the Science Online 2010 Conference Solo10 did combine this...
Dissemination and Science On-line #solo10
I am with about 150 people interested in “science communication on-line” at the British Library in London this week. Journals are all about the communication of science results, and the not-for-profit...
Dating the Pharaohs
Image: Jeff Dahl, Wikimedia Commons. No, not a sensationalist virtual reality TV show for some so-called celebrities seeking to marry into the family of the ancient rulers of Egypt. Rather, work that attempts to ascribe...
Nigel Chaffey
Don’t Be So Cerebral?
I’m following my introduction to Don’t Be Such a Scientist with a look at the first chapter of the book. It opens with Randy Olson’s four organs model of communication based on the Head, Heart, Gut and...
Thoughts on Don’t be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson
As well as developing the social media presence for the Annals of Botany, I’ve also started work on writing press releases for some papers in the journal. From following various blogs I’m aware that...
Bacteria and plants entangled in Research Blogging
There’s been a couple of posts on Research Blogging that have caught my eye in the past couple of days. Both of them are interesting because they show how important studying interaction is to understand the...
The waste of what we do?
Many of us involved in plant sciences are looking at ways to improve crop productivity by 5%, 7% or maybe even 10%. Although not focusing on the details of plant breeding, Annals of Botany has numerous papers on...
Great Escapes – continued
There is another way to think of plant escapes: when I lived at Kew, there was a story about ‘bid for freedom of plants from Kew’ – Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), growing up to 7m tall, had...
Moving beyond the ‘One-dinosaur-fits-all’ model of science communication
Alice Bell has written a couple of provocative posts on science communication at the Guardian and on her own blog recently. The spark is what the current science minister sees as the salvation of the sciences. Space and...
It’s an ill wind …?
Wood (aka ‘the really hard stuff inside trees’) is as ancient a building material and engineering solution as they come, but new uses are still being found for timber in the most unlikely of applications. Take for...
Plants combat plants
Question: when is a cannon not a cannon? Answer: when it’s a ‘high-pressure long-range deodorant spray’(!). For such is the description of the cannons currently being deployed in China to combat the malodorous...
