One of my favorite podcasts is Flash Forward, created (& hosted) by Rose Eveleth. She explores a potential future and then comes back to the present to discuss how plausible it is and the implications of a future like that, and just what that future says about our present world. So with that in mind, … More Chez GMO
Friday, January 22nd was the 151st anniversary of Wilbur Scoville’s birthday commemorated by the Google Doodle with a fun game: Scoville was born in 1865. Another famous Wilbur, Wilbur Wright, just a few years late (A post US Civil War baby Wilbur boom?). Both of course were contributors to our modern age and culture (and … More Wilbur Scoville and His Famous Heat Scale
The Quiet Branches turns 1 year old in a few days. According to wordpress I had 9400 views this year. And readers from a total of 109 countries. Of course, I know most of my readers are from the US, but still cool to have breadth of countries. I started off this blog talking about … More One year of The Quiet Branches
Never did I think I could get almost 10k views of my blog in a year. Thanks to everyone that read, shared, guest posted, or even just took a quick look. The blog even got to join SciLogs this year (I’ll continue to double post)! I’m open to hearing stories and definitely want to talk … More 2015 in review
The Quiet Branches is joining the SciLogs network. I’m excited to be a part of it! I’ll continue to crosspost here too. I look forward to continuing to share the world of plant science and the picture of the plant world revealed by plant science there. This first post will discuss some thoughts on communicating … More Plant Biotechnology, black boxes, and the Complex World.
It’s no accident that a lot of things humans have build resemble natural systems. The internet is a decentralized network of networks, a distributed system. There are networks in nature that are similar. Like packets of information on the internet, information in the form of genetic info is shuffled throughout nature as time goes on. … More Labels and information.
This week, I’m going to write about a Genetically modified crop plant brought into the world by nature. Did you think only humans could genetically modify organisms? Nature’s been at it since long before humans were around. An international team of researchers published a paper in PNAS about the discovery of two T-DNA loci in … More A Naturally Genetically Modified Organism.
Good coffee has arrived on the International Space Station (ISS). An Italian designed espresso machine designed to fill a pouch with espresso will be installed on the ISS. They do have coffee in space currently, but it is apparently the instant stuff that tastes terrible, but works. I’m by no means a coffee snob and … More ISSpresso.
Say you write something and submit it for editing. Your editor sends it back with comments. And you create a new version and re-submit and so on. it’s a feedback loop. With editor/writer, it’s a loop of iterative improvement resulting in something publishable (ideally). Feedback loops in biology are also quite common. A recent paper … More Small surprises and a new feedback loop.
Quiet Branches started off with a broad definition of how plants show up in our lives. Two weeks ago, I wrote about translating research into practical products. And highlighted the many ways biotechnology shows up in our lives every day, in some critical (feeding the world) and fun ways (color changing petunias!). The video from … More Norman Borlaug.
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