Recent Posts

BotanyOnline: Shared learning-support resources for improving Botanical Literacy

/
Guest post by Rosanne Quinelle, an Associate Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Science at the University of Sydney, Australia. Proficiency in any discipline requires exposure to both breadth and depth, where “breadth” is akin to acquiring the vocabulary and “depth” is akin…

Science In Real Life (IRL) - an educational YouTube series

/
Science In Real Life (IRL) is an educational YouTube series that’s here to show you how textbook science concepts come to life in the lab. Since each episode revolves around an experiment that a scientist does every day in the lab or field, our viewers also get to see what being a scientist is like,…

Images for Impact with Mary Williams

/
Images for Impact Recorded October 2016  Download a handout with links and other information here. About this Webinar:  Whether you’re Tweeting or teaching, well-designed images increase the impact of your message. It’s easy to make high-quality images for use in science communication (whether…

Communicating Effectively with Graphics

Frédéric Bouché, a postdoctoral research with Richard Amasino at the University of Wisconsin, recently caught our attention when he published a set of impressive visual abstracts to support his latest research papers. We invited him to share how and why he makes these images. -Editors When you…

Review: The sexual advantage of looking, smelling and tasting good, the metabolic network that produces signals for pollinators ($)

The interaction between angiosperms and their pollinators provides an excellent system to study co-evolution, and underpins the evolution of the biosynthesis of numerous interesting and useful specialized metabolites, from pigments to fragrances. Borghi et al. review the metabolic pathways that produce…

Getting a scientific message across means taking human nature into account (The Conversation)

Rose Hendricks, University of California, San Diego We humans have collectively accumulated a lot of science knowledge. We’ve developed vaccines that can eradicate some of the most devastating diseases. We’ve engineered bridges and cities and the internet. We’ve created massive metal vehicles…

Editorial: Rigorous Science: a How-To Guide

/
Casadevall and Fang set out several proposals for research training to help ensure scientific “rigor”, which they define as promoting confidence in the truth or accuracy of the findings. The authors propose and elaborate on five foundations for scientific rigor: Redundancy in experimental design,…

Homeodomain protein underpins leaf shape variation in cotton ($)

/
Homeodomain transcription factors are well-known as regulators of developmental patterning, including in leaves. Andres et al. examine the molecular basis behind leaf shape in cotton, particularly the Okra locus that was identified by breeders as a regulator of leaf shape. They show that the Okra locus…