Entries by Mary Williams

Senior Editor Jim Birchler, SEC Professor of the Year

June 1, 2017 Source http://www.thesecu.com/news/for-sec-professor-of-the-year-teaching-is-in-the-genes/ For SEC Professor of the Year, Teaching is in the Genes Developing relationships with students has always been a priority for Dr. Jim Birchler, the 2017 SEC Professor of the Year. By: Bryant Welbourne SECU (Twitter: @TheSECU) Children are often asked, “What do you want to be when you grow […]

Alan Alda’s Experiment: Helping Scientists Learn To Talk To The Rest Of Us

An NPR interview with Alan Alda about his efforts to help scientists learn to communicate. “People are dying because we can’t communicate in ways that allow us to understand one another,” he writes. “It sounds like an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is. When patients can’t relate to their doctors and don’t follow their […]

Mapping a Mentoring Roadmap and Developing a Supportive Network for Strategic Career Advancement

By Beronda L. Montgomery, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA From SAGE Open, Vol 7, Issue 2, First published date: June-03-2017 http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/izCuY6fGpyIi7B5JREqZ/full Abstract This article presents a proactive, individual-centered mentoring model which meets a recognized need for defined, practical methods for supporting comprehensive career planning and strategic development grounded in personal career aspirations. The developed […]

The Big Idea: Phenotyping

Phenotyping, the process of measuring and analyzing observable plant characteristics, is a term used frequently in the College of Agriculture these days—and a technique that is now automated for field research at Purdue. The Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center, a 25,500-square-foot facility at the Purdue Agronomy Center for Research and Education (ACRE), opened in […]

What We’re Reading: June 2nd

For the remainder of June and July, several Plantae Fellows will take turns editing the What We’re Reading series. The Plantae Fellows were selected for their interest in communicating science, and they are looking forward to wearing the Editor hat and sharing their selections with you in the coming weeks. (Note – if you are […]

Rapid cytosolic calcium elevations in Arabidopsis during aphid feeding

Calcium signaling is a common plant response to many different stimuli. Vincent et al. used a fluorescent calcium reporter, GCaMP3, to record calcium responses in Arabidopsis to feeding by aphids (specifically, the green peach aphid Myzus persicae). Through analysis of various mutants, key components of the aphid calcium response were identified and a model proposed. […]

Monoterpenes support systemic acquired resistance within and between plants ($)

Pathogen perception leads to local and systemic immune responses including systemic acquired resistance (SAR). The nature of the mobile signals and their movements remain uncertain. Riedlmeier et al. demonstrated that certain monoterpenes including α- and β-pinene accumulate in SAR-inducing conditions and enhance systemic resistance. Futher, they show evidence for “a tight association between plant-to-plant SAR-like […]

Natural allelic variation of FRO2 modulates Arabidopsis root growth under iron deficiency

Iron is an essential nutrient that plants assimilate from the soil. Moderate iron deficiency induces an increase in primary root length and lateral root production. Satbhai et al. examined natural variation of root responses and showed a correlation between root length and allelic variation at the FRO2 locus which encodes a membrane-bound ferric chelate reductase […]