Tag: Education and Outreach

“Horizon scanning” describes the process of trying to rationally predict the future.  Wintle et al. describe the results from a horizon-scanning exercise to identify emerging issues in biological engineering. The authors used an iterative approach to identify key issues in the near and longer-term…

Friesner and 38 other authors have written a Commentary outlining the need to radically redesign training for plant scientists to work with the massive production of biological data. They recommend a comprehensive revision of how we train undergraduate through post-docs, as well as opportunities for…

In a new Commentary in Plant Physiology, Friesner et al. write a compelling vision for next-generation training for plant scientists. We asked three of the 39 authors, Joanna Friesner, Molly Megrew and Siobhan Brady, to tell us about their motivations and goals for writing this commentary. You…

Shendure et al. provide a superb review of how DNA sequencing technology has changed over the years and how these changes open up new applications. They start with the Maxam and Gilbert chemical cleavage and the Sanger “chain-termination” methods developed in the 1970s, and describe the scale-ups…

Browsing the table of contents of the “The Making of a Plant” special issue of Current Biology feels like a birthday celebration; there are so many exciting goodies it’s hard to know which to open first. The issue consists of well-written and well-illustrated short reviews (and Quick Guides and…

Really useful post about whether or not graduate school is right for you. "If you’re unsure about whether you should pursue a Ph.D., taking some time away from academia to explore your career interests and professional goals can help crystallize whether further training makes sense. For chemical…

Doublday and Connell ask whether scientific writing has to be so dull, and conclude that there is room for improvement. They are quick to argue that sensationalism and inaccuracy are not acceptable, but that it is possible for scientific writing to be both objective and charismatic. However, for the…

 Dr. Sarah Schmidt (@BananarootsBlog), Researcher and Science Communicator at The Sainsbury Laboratory Science. Sarah got hooked on both banana research and science writing when she joined a banana Fusarium wilt field trip in Indonesia as a Fusarium expert. She began blogging at https://bananaroots.wordpress.com and…