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…
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…
How do you feel after you have read a blog post on this website? Amused? Angry? Bored? Now you can let everyone know and see what others voted! I have installed a WordPress plugin called “MoodThingy” which adds a bar…
Recently I gave a workshop about online engagement and blogging in our Faculty. The result of this was a bunch of new tweeters and new science blogs on the block. To keep the momentum going, we started a “Breakfast Blogging…
“Don’t be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it. In my day I was told women didn’t go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we…
This discovery by Nobel prize winner Dr. Osama Shimomura known as Green Fluorescent has revolutionized molecular biology. Movement of living molecules generally can be seen but the advent of GFP made the invisible visible. The protein, found in jellyfish helps…
Yesterday I came across this video that demonstrates how to make Glowing Sushi, using genetically modified zebrafish to produce a fluorescent “kryptonite roll”. When I first watched the video, my main question was: Why would you want to use fluorescent…
What did I do at work today? Shuttled DNA into bacteria. Dipped arabidopsis plants into bacteria. Meeting. Another meeting. Another meeting. Oh, and I made a balloon kebab! Why did I make one? Because I can! Just kidding. Because we…
