Recent Posts

From Data to Discovery: The Power of Statistics in Research

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The Crimean War was brutal on the soldiers and caused high mortality rates. It was believed that battle wounds were the leading cause of death. But the ‘lady with the lamp’, who was a nurse and also a gifted statistician, proved that unhygienic living conditions, not battle wounds, led to the increased…

Four Things Wrong with How We Teach Plant Science

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In 2011, with funding from the NSF, ASPB and the Botanical Society of America convened a workshop to work out how the Vision and Change recommendations might be put into practice in plant biology. The concern that emerged most was not a gap in research or in funding. It was that undergraduate curricula…

Terraforming with Plants: Can Green Life Make Mars Habitable?

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Why go to Mars Everyone wants to have a house with a garden later on in life. Producing your own vegetables, or just having a glass of wine in an armchair in the light spring wind, sounds charming. Imagine this on another planet, retiring to Mars and doing some gardening. Throughout history, when…

Reimagining Undergraduate Teaching and Research

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Setting the stage All of us remember sitting in front of a tutor and feeling completely inadequate for not understanding something that seemed obvious to everyone else. At the same time, many of us who have mentored students also remember encountering that one student who appeared unable to understand…