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The Question Game

May 18, 2012
The Question Game

What happens when you ask a bunch of 14 year old girls to each write a question on a piece of paper anonymously and put it in the middle of the table for a scientist to answer? I found out on Thursday, when the Didcot Girls’ School students arrived and we had lunch together. Some questions were very sensible. “Where did you go to university?” I went to both universities in Munich – in Munich because I am German. I changed uni after three years because the Technical University had better courses in the fields I was interested in....

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Happy Fascination of Plants Day!

May 18, 2012
Happy Fascination of Plants Day!

Today is the first ever Fascination of Plants Day and I am very excited, as my Twitter friends will be able to testify (tweet ALL the plants!). All over the world there will be plant-related activities today, in Botanic Gardens, universities and research institutes. Our group will be at Oxford Botanic Garden from 10-7 pm and show people what plant parts and cells look like under the microscope! To celebrate the occasion, Martin Austwick has written a very lovely song from the view of an ancient tree. Go and listen to it and don’t blame me if it gets...

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Invasion of the Next Generation

May 17, 2012
Invasion of the Next Generation

Tomorrow – or rather today by the time I finished writing this –  I will be opening my bench and my blog to a small group of very enthusiastic 14-15 year old students from Didcot Girls’ School. They will help me with my plant cell biology research over the course of the next few months,  accompanied by their teacher,  Nuffield Education/Science and Plants for Schools Fellow Vicki Cottrell and their school technician Lynn. As part of her secondment Vicki is going to be a weekly visitor at Oxford Brookes over the next months, whereas we have planned five visits in total...

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Amazing succulent cupcakes

May 7, 2012
Amazing succulent cupcakes

Aren’t these the most amazing cupcakes ever? Seton Hurson Rossini from Pixel Whisk has posted a complete tutorial on how to make this incredibly realistic succulent plant cupcakes. I am in complete awe of her baking skills. Looks like the perfect project for a rainy Sunday!      

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In space no one can see you gleam – unless you use GFP

May 5, 2012
In space no one can see you gleam – unless you use GFP

Will humans one day live on other planets than on Earth? I don’t know the answer to that. But I know that if humans attempt to settle on extraterrestrial land, we will want to take plants with us to provide us with food and make our air breathable (1). Before we can successfully embark on space-farming adventures, we need to understand how plants react and adapt to the extreme conditions in space and what genes or metabolic pathways are switched on in this process. Reporter genes help us to study responses to external conditions and stresses. Some of these...

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Spring is here!

April 21, 2012

I love photography, and especially makro photography of flowers and other plants. Today was my first makro session of the year and I managed to get totally lost in the small world of flowers for over an hour. It’s fascinating what you start to see once you get your eye into it – all those fine intricate details, hairy surfaces and structural components you never noticed before. Not to mention the colours, which change in an instant when hit by a sunbeam. Bliss!  

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Why Pink should be called Minus Green

April 15, 2012

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A diamond lens-based microscopy method for high-resolution imaging of Rana clamitans in oceanic log habitats

April 13, 2012
A diamond lens-based microscopy method for high-resolution imaging of Rana clamitans in oceanic log habitats

Hello there! Against all rumours, this blog is not dead (yet). I was away on holiday for a couple of weeks, one of which I spent in Iceland. On the flight back I watched the Futurama episode “Reincarnation“. Where would you least expect to see something about microscopy and science? If you guessed “on a small screen in the back of an airplane seat somewhere between Iceland and the UK in a futuristic cartoon series animated in 8-bit pixel style”, you win a prize. This episode is split in three parts, all of which have been drawn in different...

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How much is that pet plant in the window?

April 5, 2012
How much is that pet plant in the window?

I hadn’t realised that there was research on creating interactive pet plants that are able to display emotions! From the description of “My Green Pet” (Hwang et al. 2010): “The difficulty that children have in perceiving plants as living entities has been verified by several studies. As an initial attempt to address this issue, we propose “My Green Pet”, an interactive plant for children. Through this, children enjoy human-like interactions with the plant and also perceive that this particular plant is living. This is achieved by personifying a regular plant by giving it human feelings and emotions, such as...

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Eukaryopolis – The City of Animal Cells

March 21, 2012
Eukaryopolis – The City of Animal Cells

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