Taxonomic education and botany are increasingly neglected in schools and universities, leading to a ‘missed generation’ of adults that cannot identify organisms, especially plants. The ‘taxonomic illiteracy’ of Western...
This paper, just published in the Journal of Biological Education, strikes me as having a lot of potential. The method would also be appropriate for online learning and in developing countries where facilities might be...
So, you want to earn a lot of money after you graduate to pay off all those debts, right? In that case, according to Which University, you should have done Medicine or Dentistry. But you didn’t get in to those...
Finally, news of a new TV series written and presented by the world’s most famous natural history broadcaster and UK National Treasure, Sir David Attenborough. Sadly, it’s on a pay-per-view Sky Atlantic digital channel...
My last few posts have looked at the exciting science that was presented recently at the UKPSF conference. How can we ensure there will be a new generation of eager, bright plant biologists to help turn those great...
Jeff Karron (AoB’s “pollen Editor”) recently tipped me off about Galleria Carnivora, a museum of colour photographs of carnivorous plants. There are lots of images online, but Galleria Carnivora is...
Starting a blog, that is. It’s good to see PLoS Biology following Annals of Botany’s lead and starting their own blog, PLoS Biologue 😉 A recent post by Lisa Gross, Reach out and teach someone, gives some...
Plant science is key to addressing the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century. In an article published in The Plant Cell, the two researchers argue that the development of new technology is key to...
Anne Osterrieder has a new series on her blog called Faces of plant cell biologists, where we are asked a series of questions. So far, it has featured Charlotte Carroll (also an AoBBlog.com guest author here), Chris...
This videoblog from is about one of the Cell and Developmental Biology practicals that I run at the University of Leicester for course #BS1003. It involves infection of carrot root slices with three strains of...
Virtual studios and video blogs: I’ve produced and edited my first videoblogs, and here I’m going to give some indications of how they were made. The videoblogs mean I can tell you about interesting things...