outreach

The wisdom of plants

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Feb 2021 18:41:37 +0000

The wisdom of plants Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/13/2021 - 11:41

La Nacion, one of the leading newspapers in Argentina, published an article about plant intelligence, and Rocío was one of the plant biologists interviewed for the piece. She was asked, are plants intelligent? And here's what she said (in Spanish and then translated into English):

“¿Si las plantas son inteligentes? Pero por supuesto. El tema para mí es cuánto más inteligentes son que nosotros. Imaginate ser una planta: estás en un sitio casi inmóvil, el alimento tiene que venir hacia vos y debés elaborar estrategias para aprovechar el que haya. Incluso si estás en un sitio ideal, con nutrientes, luz y agua, y necesitás ir hacia tus compañeros para la reproducción, o atraer un polinizador. Es más, abandonás a la progenie cuando recién empieza a crecer. Las plantas tienen mucho desafíos y aun así existen desde hace más de mil millones de años. Se originaron en océanos y después pasaron a medios terrestres, hace 500 millones de años. Cambiaron la atmósfera y las condiciones de suelo y ahí siguen.”

"Are plants intelligent? But of course. The question for me is how much more intelligent they are than us. Imagine being a plant: you're stuck in one spot, immobile, food has to come to you, and you've got to figure out strategies to take advantage of what you've got. And even if you're in a perfect spot, with nutrients, light and water, you've still got to connect with your fellow plants to reproduce, or attract pollinators. And more than this, you leave your offspring by themselves soon after they are born. Plants have many challenges and they've still existed for over a billion years. They originated in the ocean, and then they came onto land 500 million years ago. They changed the atmosphere and the soil and they're still here."

Brava, Rocío, for a wonderful piece of scicomm!

Rocío was interviewed by the newspaper La Nación about plant intelligence.

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Uniting early career graduate students with a GRFP workshop

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 22:32:37 +0000

Uniting early career graduate students with a GRFP workshop Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/03/2020 - 16:32

Over the last couple of years there has been discussion about how the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) awards tend to go to the most prestigious universities. In order to change the narrative, Chelsea partnered with the Botanical Society of America (BSA) to provide writing support for the GRFP for people at universities all over the US and US territories. The workshop started off with a seminar on how to apply for the GRFP with an emphasis on plant science research (pictured below: clockwise from top left, Chris Hill & Narcrisha Norman (current GRFP Program Directors), Amanda Ingram (NSF Program Director) & Rick McCourt (former GRFP Program Director)). Click here to view the seminar. The workshop continues to help student participants with the writing process by working in small groups. In these groups, participants work together reading drafts of the different components and receive feedback from someone in the group, a graduate student who has received the grant, and a post-PhD mentor. One of these post-PhD mentors is one of our own post-docs, Miranda!

Working with the Botanical Society of America, Chelsea organized a Graduate Research Fellowship Program workshop for plant researchers.

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Luke is a punk scientist!

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 04:26:19 +0000

Luke is a punk scientist! Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 07/06/2019 - 22:26

The Pinhead Institute is a non-profit science education organization based in Telluride, Colorado, and every summer, it runs a series of outdoor 'punk science' events. These are hands-on science experiments for kids and their families, led by invited punk scientists from around the country. Our own Luke Wheeler was this week's featured punk scientist and he traveled to Telluride and Ridgway, Colorado to share his color science. In both towns, he extracted pigments from flowers, fruits and vegetables, and he and the audience explored how pH affects the color. In a popular move, he made a basic green pigment solution with baking soda and an acidic red pigment solution with vinegar - mix the two together and you get exploding purple foam!

This week, the Pinhead Institute in Telluride featured Luke's color science.

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Spring outreach events

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 05:01:42 +0000

Spring outreach events Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/23/2017 - 23:01

Julia and Stacey led a day of plant pigment activities at the CU Science Discovery's Nano Days. The event was held at the Boulder Library, and visitors were invited to grind up fruit skins to extract pigments with an acidic mix, rather like what happens during our own digestive process! Julia enveiled her plant colors poster, which is available for download on the Resources page.

On Earth Day, Chelsea and Stacey went to the CU South Denver campus for one of CU's family fun days. Chelsea taught students about the parts of a flower and was brave enough to supervise dissection with exacto knives and forceps. Stacey manned the ever-popular fruits of the world table, passing out samples of jackfruit, durian, and guava.

You can check out pictures from these and previous outreach events on our photos page.

We have been busy this month with outreach events in Boulder and South Denver.

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