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NAASC-Seeds of Change: Using Plants to Broaden the Impact of Science in Society

In November 2018, NAASC hosted an NSF-funded* workshop entitled "Broadening the Impact of Plant Science Through Community-Based Innovation, Evaluation and Sharing of Outreach Programs" at the University of California, Davis. The 3-day workshop was organized by members of NAASC**, and before it started…

The SingAboutScience.org database: An educational resource for instructors and students

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Setting something to music is a well-known method for supporting learning (think about the alphabet song that you learned as a child). Gregory J. Crowther has assembled a searchable database of science-themed songs, along with lesson plans and suggestions for how to use songs in your teaching.…

Why can't scientists be better communicators? (SciAm blog)

Author Katherine Wu highlights some of the challenges that interfere with scientists communicating. She says, "Both scientists and non-scientists must commit to not only communication, but also a drastic reassessment of how we communicate with each other. I believe mending the rift starts with…

Australia's giant parasitic Christmas tree, with blades sharp enough to cut telephone wire

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Here's a fascinating plant in honor of Fascination of Plants Day #PlantDay By Tim Low, published in Australian Geographic AUSTRALIA HAS A PARASITE believed to be the largest in the world, a tree whose greedy roots stab victims up to 110m away. The Christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda) has blades…

Plant Scientists in the Wild (#FoPD)

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Guest post by Emily Larson  @erlarson_phd and Maria Papanatsiou @m_papanatsiou, postdocs at the University of Glasgow, Scotland If there is one stereotype about some scientists that contains a shred of truth it is that we are definitely indoor kids – at least professionally speaking. We spend a…

How to make a DNA Bracelet

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Cross-posted from Kelsey Wood with permission. Kelsey is a PhD student at U.C. Davis. How to make a DNA bracelet, from any organism and any gene! I study plant-pathogen interactions, so I chose to make a sequence from a wild tobacco gene that is important for plant defense against pathogens. What…

Launching Botany Live! for Fascination of Plants Day

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May 18th is the Fascination of Plants Day, and we want to help in this international effort to highlight the importance of plants and plant science. Therefore, we’re supporting the #BotanyLive e-event! In a nutshell, we’re asking planty folks (curious, enthusiasts, professionals) to share something…

Are GMOs good or bad? From the video series "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell"

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Amazing - over 1.5 million views in less than 24 hours - this is a popular video series! Here is a list of sources from the YouTube page: SOURCES: #What is natural: GM insulin: http://bit.ly/2ncHaW5 Genetic engineering for thousands of years: http://bit.ly/2eCHKfi http://bit.ly/2mLCvPm CRISPR: http://bit.ly/2ncI2uN #…

Plant evolution and diversity word search

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Botanical terms can seem obscure. Why not help your students master some terminology through a word search puzzle? Download it here: http://aspb.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Plant-Evolution-SearchaWord.pdf