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...
Category - Plants & People
Alun Salt
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...
Editor Pat Heslop-Harrison
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...
Nigel Chaffey
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...
