Category: Education General Public

What better advertisement for plant sciences than an important drug developed from plants, and recognition of that achievement by a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine? Source: New York Times, October 6, 2015 View full article

The story of how humans changed corn and how corn changed human history. Topics include domestication, hybrid vigor, genome sequencing, jumping genes, and biofortification. The Weed to Wonder site is a flexible "e-book" that can be viewed as a website, an app, or a printable PDF. The site features…

NPR (National Public Radio) story from 2012 discusses how drought kills trees. Read full article

In February 2016, Death Valley in California (the place where the hottest temperature ever was recorded) had a "superbloom" as millions of seeds of desert ephemeral plants germinated, leading to a massive floral bloom. See pictures and a video of this once-in-a-decade event. View full article

By Lou Del Bello If a few decades ago environmental and climatic changes were the remit of scientists and activists only, now concerns over the future of the planet have gone mainstream. Climate change and industrial pollution are now threatening the availability of food, and given the current…

"Researchers from a dozen institutions recently completed a three-year effort to combine tens of thousands of trees into one diagram, most readable as a circle. The lines inside the circle represent all 2.3 million species that have been named. Biologists have genetic sequences for only about 5 percent…

This free guide (PDF) has over forty hands-on activities for PreK-12th grade students and the public. Activities are succinctly & beautifully presented. Each one includes goals, materials, procedures, age guidelines and teaching tips useful photos on 1-2 pages. Overarching themes include: Art, Recreation,…