Plant science podcasts: PlantSci 2014 and Radio 4

Categories: Friday Film, resource
Comments: No Comments
Published on: August 22, 2014

Just a quick blog post this week on some new plant science podcasts, for your entertainment! 

First, Radio 4’s much-retweeted Plants: From Roots to Riches. This programme has been running all month and ends today so it’s not really news, but I’ve been listening to this bit by bit and was delighted to hear a familiar voice in the ‘Signals of Growth‘ episode. Nick Harberd, one of our Advisory Committee members, discussed the Green Revolution wheat and rice varieties with presenter Kathy Willis.

This is a great series, although the episodes are quite short and only focus on a small area of plant science so I’d advise skipping any episodes on a topic you know too much about or that just isn’t of interest to you. Highlights for me so far have been the ‘Blight on the Landscape‘ episode about plant-microbe interactions, which had a very interesting section on Beatrix Potter’s work on lichens; and the episode based entirely around Kew’s Arboretum, ‘An Ill Wind‘, which gave me a new appreciation of the great value of tree science and forestry. 

Friday’s episode was about Arabidopsis – I haven’t reached that one yet though!

Second, videos of talks from the UK Plant Sciences Federation conference PlantSci 2014 are now available on the Journal of Experimental Botany YouTube channel. The talks were all excellent and the videos make good teaching resources. All the speakers pitched their science for a well-informed general audience, and all were clear about why their research is important. The highlight of the conference for me was the panel discussion about UK plant science challenges, achievements and future needs and I’m happy to see that it’s there in it’s entirety, including the comments from the floor – all 1 hour 27 minutes of it.

It’s been very quiet here on the blog recently, but we’re pretty much caught up after being away at the International Conference on Arabidopsis Research in Vancouver (you can still see the #ICAR2014 stream here). Things will be back to normal very soon.

 

PlantSci 2014 and Plant Science Careers

Categories: resource, UKPSF
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: April 8, 2014

The GARNet team travelled up to York last week for the PlantSci 2014 conference. It was a fantastic event and I highly recommend it for future years. The variation between talks, which were all perfectly pitched for a general plant science audience, made the sessions exciting and maintained everyone’s interest.

A highlight of the conference was the Panel Discussion on the Future of UK Plant Science. The Panelists – Mike Bushell, Mark Chase, Sarah Gurr, Sandy Knapp and Dale Sanders – responded to the Status Report (download the PDF here) and spoke briefly about what they felt were the most important challenges for the UK plant science community to deal with.

To me, the most significant issues were put forward by early career researchers from the floor. The Panel and the report, which drew data from a community-wide survey, emphasised skills shortages and a lack of young talent entering the field; but several young researchers present spoke out about lack of support for those young scientists that are working in the field.

One person on a PhD program with funding for a short internship in industry or policy found it difficult to find a placement related to plant science. Two final year PhD students from very different research backgrounds spoke of their frustration in not knowing where to look for post-doctoral jobs. Despite being highly trained in areas within the ‘skills gap’ often referred to in reports, including the UKPSF report, they felt that academic post-doc positions (and the uncertain future that comes with them) were the only options they had.

If you feel passionately about education, training and/or plant science careers and career paths, see UKPSF working group call document (PDF) on information on what the UKPSF is doing to tackle these challenges. There will be UKPSF working groups on Training & Skills, Funding, Portfolio Balance, Regulation, and Translation.

Looking for a plant science job? (more…)

This much is known…Arabidopsis science-art

Proving that science and art aren’t mutually exclusive, check out this gorgeous animation that has recently been produced by engineer-turned-Fine Art student Andrew Styan.

this much is known from Andrew Styan on Vimeo.

Andrew recently took part in a science-art course, tutored in part by Dr Gordon Simpson, an Arabidopsis researcher who works within Dundee’s Department of Plant Sciences.

Inspired by Dr Simpson’s work, Andrew’s animation This Much is Known represents 25 years of Arabidopsis research and demonstrates how our understanding of this little weed has expanded in such a relatively short time.

Using the Scopus database, he searched for all Arabidopsis papers published in the last 25 years, and the keywords associated with them. Each bubble that appears on the screen represents a different keyword, with the size of the bubble growing as more papers on that topic are published.

I think it’s very clever and very beautiful! Thanks Andrew, and Gordon!

If there are any other budding science-artists out there who have produced some cool work on Arabidopsis or other plant science, we’d love to see it so please email lisa@garnetcommunity.org.uk.

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