It’s plosing first…

Okay, everybody knows how plants can cope with adverse conditions, especially when it comes to dormant organs just waiting to resprout when spring or whatever environmental trigger lights on, and then “whoot whoot”, I’m here. I’m alive and well. This is a sign of resprouting, or let’s pretend. It’s been far too long this blog’s been dormant. Water in, light on, nutrients duh?

It’s been a long time there wasn’t much shameless self promotion here, so Seeds Aside is back whoot-whooting blatantly with open access science. I know, this isn’t the first time I get published in an OA venue, but this time it’s with a well known and almost historical part of OA. The ONE that turned what is called a science mega-journal (currently publishing over 23,000 papers a year): PLOSONE.

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2013 most read posts.

These were the most read accessed posts at Seeds Aside in 2013:

• Drip tips drain leaves more efficiently…
• How to tell orchid males from females?
• Male meiosis in onion
• Contrepèterie/Spoonerism
• Contre les escargots, saperlipopette!
• What are the two sexes of a plant moss?
• Achiote, roucou, Bixa!
• Méiose mâle d’un oignon
• Kiwano (quick)
• La dure vie de Grain de Pollen

Of course, these are mostly older posts. I should go back to older days writing style. I should…

The worste recorded was this one:

• Goodie oldies!

Title not so say! :)

Request were mostly single words, probably something that changed in search behaviour in recent years (too bad, it was funnier when people typed questions directly and resulting direction was mismatching…):

– roucou, mosses plants, drip tip leaves, achiote, contrepèterie en anglais, miltomate, male orchid, contrepetrie in english, meiosis, meiose…

 

 

 

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Commenting on a science poster !1!

In August, I presented a poster at ESEB 14th (biannual meeting of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology), that took place in Lisboa, Portugal. (ESEB was not especially commented upon by bloggers, maybe coverage was greater with other social media though… Anyway, you may find a few posts, there, there or there).

ESEB was apparently already known for its poster sessions… Just so you know.

Poster sessions this year were huge… I was breathing out with the latest genetics experiment (it was already 6 months old, but that’s still young to go to a science symposium). Maybe I was experiencing “poster solitude“. Indeed, people were’nt really staying that long. Maybe this is not a year to work on local dispersal, or maybe pathogenic fungi are just boring study models…

So, I always left readers stay, say, 10 seconds before I would show up and ask if there was any question. Safe bet, for 10 seconds is about the time needed to evaluate self interest in a random poster. Then, I got one attendee that stood up my own treshold. (I might even write swamped, because the time I went by it was probably already worth 20 seconds reading). “If you have any question…”, I enquired softly. But all I got back was a “Oh, I was just pretending!”. And she moved away.

This is the weirdest comment I ever had about a poster. Did it already happen to you?

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Tenured!

It’s been quite silent in here in the last weeks months… For several reasons, RL reasons.

One of them –and not the least- is that tenure clock was on the ringing phase. Let’s see a bit around now: since two weeks, I’m officially tenured. Whoot whoot. (ok, easy, but so happy).

Let’s admit this was nothing like a USA tenure thingie. Here in France you have only one year of practice before that tenure decision is made. Much shorter then a 10-year test. Of course, expectancies are a bit less fancy. I secured funding for a project (yay! I have something to investigate deeper in the next years), got a ms in the pipeline (and other experiments in the medium term pipeline), a lot of work for september and that was it. So I may really truly resume blogging only in next october.

But the news are good and you’ll see Seeds Aside soon.

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Simply wxrong rather than an easy get

I was just reading the following post on The Panda’s Thumb:  Challenge: research in the 1000 most common words. Basically, it is pointing to a list of the 1000 most common words in the English language and challenging you to write a simple statement of your research that is only using words from this list.

There’s this link that will check it for you when typing.

That’s really challenging. I lost at this game. This has a lot to do with the fact that I’m currently working in a discipline that cannot avoid a minimal jargon: phytopathology, the science of plant pests and plant illness. Any word related to pests (pathogens, fungi, microbes, viruses) are forbidden first. And it all begun with “plant” itself, which is not allowed (plants do not belong the 1000 commonest, does it make sense?). I’m afraid there’s no way I can express my research under such a challenging constraint. The best I came up with was this:

I study how small cell things are attacking bigger green things that need light and water to grow.

And frankly, this is just a way to weave in implicit meaning. That is, I’m utterly wrong. Anybody ignoring or not getting the implicit that green things that need light and water to grow means plant won’t have the slightest idea as to what I’m doing in my job. Not to say “small cell things” is any better -it is much worse indeed. It’s a very bad way to imply I’m working on fungi, the only idea I get somewhat right is that they are plant enemies.

I think I need to ponder about simpler ways to tell what I’m doing in my job…

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Mid Lent today.

It’s busy here finding a way to get the best place to the festivities, kids are hectic. This day, this is black & red theme for mid Lent.

An excerpt from previous local incarnations, so that you can participate too :)

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Plant species of the week: Dracula morleyi

A marvelous orchid:

Dracula morleyi

Yep, a vampire like flower, guess why? Interpreted as a fungal mimick. Other pixes follow from clicking to flickr…

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Hum…

WordPress tells me it’s officially my sixth year of blogging. Happy it!

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Happy 2013!

Yes, happy New Year! Let’s say it actually looks like that…

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Not so fast!

WordPress is telling me that the previous post is #500! That’s good enough. That’s roughly about a post every 3 days. Maybe it’s time for a huge party next January, after 5 years of almost blogging?!? Consider yourself invited! :)

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