Posts Tagged ‘ plants ’

Happy Fascination of Plants Day!

May 18, 2012
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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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Amazing succulent cupcakes

May 7, 2012
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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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Spring is here!

April 21, 2012
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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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How much is that pet plant in the window?

April 5, 2012
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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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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr Geraint Parry

February 28, 2012
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gerraint

I met Geraint Parry on Twitter, where he tweets under @LiverpoolPlants about his research. Fortunately, my colleagues were able to confirm that he indeed is real and a plant cell biologist studying the nuclear pore complex. He also scored 6 out of 10 points from the “10 signs you might be a plant biologist” post, plus I awarded him two more points for having a picture of Arabidopsis thaliana as avatar. All evidence combined, Geraint immediately qualified as today’s Face of Plant Cell Biology – thanks for taking part, Geraint! :-)) Please check out Geraint’s website for more information and...

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I bet plants look good on the dancefloor

February 22, 2012
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Dancing with plants

Plants don’t do much all day except sitting around and photosynthesising.Right? Wrong!! Plants move constantly, but much slower than animals. Therefore they manage to trick us by pretending to be really boring. But if you put up a hidden camera, take a picture every minute or hour and put it together to a time-lapse video, they won’t be able to fool you any longer. The “Plants in Motion” website created by Roger P. Hangarter has a really nice collection of plant time-lapse videos, ranging from germination to tropism (directional movement in response to an external signal such as light...

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr John Runions

February 15, 2012
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John Runions

John Runions is a little bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – only that his two identities both have a Dr title. Most of his time he spends working, teaching and playing with the microscopes at Oxford Brookes University. But when nobody is watching, he puts on his cape of knowledge, takes his sword of science enthusiasm and leaps on air as “Dr Molecule” for BBC Radio Oxford. John’s website is like a little treasure chest, full with microscopy images and movies. You can even watch one of his presentations from the last GARNet meeting 2011 on YouTube...

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Roses are red – but they don’t need to be, if you know how to use food dyes and Fibonacci

February 14, 2012
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Rainbow Rose

Happy Valentine’s Day! Looking for something more special than “just” a bunch of flowers? Read my post at the “Annals of Botany” blog to find out how to make rainbow roses. http://aobblog.com/2012/02/roses-are-red-but-they-dont-need-to-be-if-you-know-how-to-use-food-dyes-and-fibonacci/   A rainbow rose. Photo by Ryan Amos

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr Petra Boevink

February 7, 2012
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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr Petra Boevink

If someone asked me about the three most important papers which my research is based on, I might have to think for a minute or so about two of them. But my choice for the third one (or first one, if you wish) would be very clear: “Boevink et al. 1998!”   Petra Boevink, Karl Oparka, Simon Santa Cruz, Barry Martin, Alan Betteridge, Chris Hawes (1998). “Stacks on tracks: the plant Golgi apparatus travels on an actin/ER network”. Plant Journal 15(3): 441-447.               In this study the researchers linked green fluorescent protein (GFP)...

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr David C Logan

January 31, 2012
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logan

I will never forget the first time I met David Logan at the Botanical Microscopy Meeting in Salzburg in 2007. It was the first international conference that I attended as PhD student, and I  had to give a talk about my research. The lecture theatre was much larger than we all had thought and there was a microphone on a stand. David was talking just after me. He went to the mic, tapped it and said: “I feel like a rock star. – HELLO SALZBURG!” The reason that this made such an impression on me was because it was...

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison

January 24, 2012
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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison

Welcome to today’s installment of “Faces of Plant Cell Biology”! When I sent my five questions to Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison from the University of Leicester, I got something completely unexpected and utterly brilliant back: A full video interview in a virtual studio with its own talk show host! I immensely enjoyed watching Pat talking about his research and his advice for students and I hope that you will too. To me, this is the perfect example of how blogs and social media can be used in a fun and effective way to bring your science to a wider audience....

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Why peanuts are a lie

January 20, 2012
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Why peanuts are a lie

The other day I was digging through my nut storage box (yes, we have enough nut varieties for cooking and baking to hand to give them their own box). I was looking for pine nuts to use in a pasta dish and came across a peanuts pack. Easily amused as I am I thought “oh well, if I can’t find pine nuts, I’ll just use peanuts. Their names are close enough!” However, then I started wondering about the difference between peanuts and pine nuts, especially as my boss is allergic to nuts but keeps emphasising how he can eat...

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