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Non-Technical Introduction:
Proteins are the building block of life and the functional downstream product of a gene. They are an integral part of the Central Dogma of…
Programming is just implementing complex calculations, right? I naively assumed so, but when I embarked upon the data scientists’ journey, the data began to balloon; and so did the fundamental…
During the summer of 2020, protests erupted across the nation to support the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the murder of George Floyd. As people took to the streets to raise their…
I was recently able to attend the 26th Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics (SISG) via zoom. The summer workshop is offered by the Department of Biostatistics at the University of…
A new biofuel cover crop is on the horizon for farmers in the Midwest. Field pennycress is a winter annual with extreme cold tolerance, making it an excellent candidate for a winter cover crop…
My great-grandfather was an iceman. My family owned a local dam and sold ice by horse and cart to my hometown for decades. This process, which many people may have only been cursorily exposed to…
I recently graduated with my PhD from the TPS program at Ohio State. I still distinctly remember the moment I got the email from TPS in early 2015 saying I’d been admitted to the program. After…
Written by TPS PhD candidate Zach Konkel
COVID-19 has transformed the world in myriad ways. I owe empathy and respect to the people I do and don’t see affected by the disease. Perhaps in a…
Written by TPS Fellow Alex Turo
Times being what they are, it’s important to have not just the right information in front of you, but also to have it in a way you enjoy consuming. Enter one…
Photo: The first vaccinations being administered at The Ohio State University on December 14th, 2020.
Earlier this month the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved in the EU and the US with…
There is a peacefulness to enduring the screeching dune grass, observing the tumultuous waves, and being subject to the abuse of the sand. At the end of its journey with no additions to success or…
Networking, socializing, talking to people you don’t know – your social skills can come to play a much more important role in your career than you may think. Perhaps you were caught up in imaging…
The Fabaceae or Leguminosae family is one of the largest and most diverse families of flowering plants and consists of more than 700 genera and upwards of 19,500 species. Fabaceae is recognized…
My wife and I enjoy walking around OSU's Wetland Research Park which has some cool trails within walking distance of our home. I never paid attention to the output of the center though, so I was…
Edible mushrooms are ubiquitous and, in many scenarios, relatively easy to cultivate following the initial effort. Many species consume a variety of substrates, including mulch and compost, which…
In July 2019 I wrote a post showing how I customize my settings in MATLAB using startup files. This post shows how to make and run startup files in MATLAB, R, Python, and zsh.
I was fortunate enough to start my PhD program by traveling to a country to gain insight on all facets of rice research and production and gain international agricultural research experience. I am…
Photo taken by Molly Page @idahomolly
Most farmers have experienced the crop loss that comes with environmental issues, pests, and diseases. Experiencing an extreme oversupply of…
In April 2019 I wrote about using LaTeX to format dissertations, presentations, blogs, and publications. This post documents a method for generating citations for LaTeX documents. Many citation…
With the coronavirus pandemic mandating working remotely, it afforded me the opportunity to head home to work while also seeing my family. When I returned home, I saw that the variety of…
In the mid 20th century there was an emerging field of research on novel natural products and their synthetic analogues. Some of these compounds possessed unparalled potential in treating…
Catnip (Nepeta cataria) (Image Source: https://michiganflora.net/image.aspx?img=12328&id=1576)
Most cat-owners know that kitties go a bit bonkers over catnip. But what is it…
"As sessile organisms", these plants are unlikley to uproot themselves and walk around.
(Photo…
California is often referred to as the breadbasket of the world due to its rich agricultural industry. Water supply and water quality are topics I would hear about almost every day as the most…
I first heard about cotton candy grapes a few years ago from my mother who brought some home after discovering that her class of fussy 2 year olds were suddenly cheerfully eating them in their…
There are many terms in life that we may hear from time to time but only vaguely have a true idea of what they mean. Filibuster, diode, aileron, poppycock – you may not know what they mean but in…
Clark Griswold: “We're kicking off our fun old-fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the…
How do we produce enough food to satisfy the growing demands of our growing population? How can we achieve this while also ensuring the stability of our food system despite growing ecological…
It’s a subtle day in Portland suburbia – a hint of rain on the stormfront. I’m okay, working on Windows, my childhood operating system. Just then, thunder claps and the roar reverberates into my…
1.1 Directory Separators
Directory separators are the characters computers use to delimit path components. Most operating systems use “/” as the directory separator, but Windows operating systems…
When you think of tropical fruits, what first comes to mind? Likely you envision exotic treats like pineapples or mangoes from places like Central America; you probably don’t think of the forests…
According to the eccentric forums of the mushroom realm, I hail from the mecca of fungi. Every year in the Pacific Northwest, the autumn rains quench the vast mycelial networks’…
Getting Properties A comprehensive list of user-manipulatable settings can be obtained by executing the following command at the MATLAB prompt: get(0,’Factory’) One of my least favorite MATLAB…
1.1 Avogadro and Adobe Illustrator I am currently working on a figure for a publication which requires the chemical structure of paranitrophenylphosphate, C6H6NO6P. I use Adobe Illustrator to create…
While maybe not the best compliment I have ever received, other entomologists will sometimes tell me I smell like a stinkbug. They know what stinkbugs smell like, and they assume I smell the way I…
Peer-reviewed publication is a fundamental aspect of science and provides a means to referee research before it is disseminated to the greater public. And owing to their importance, publications…
The past few months have been a whirlwind of packing and writing- followed by lots and lots of editing, as I finished my dissertation and embarked on my next adventure as an OSU Agriculture and…
TEX, LATEX, and LYX TEX is a typesetting language with macro capability. LATEX is a macro package built upon TEX. LYX is a visual document processor that uses LATEX to do its…
Though it was many years ago, I was once an undergraduate. What’s more? I was an undergraduate research assistant. Yes, it is true. Back in 2010, old Bill was burning through the money from his…
The last few months have been a transition, to say the least. For those moving for graduate school, there is another kind of rigor outside of grad school’s vocational challenge. As Bill mentioned a…
Are you interested in science policy and news, but don’t want to get bogged down in all the details? If so, sign up for the bi-weekly newsletter from ASA-CSSA-SSSA, a joint effort by the American…
The last time I wrote an article for this blog, I mentioned the scientist Rosalind Franklin in passing. In that blog post, I referred to her as the underappreciated co-discoverer of the structure…
New Years is a time for resolutions, and February is a time for breakin’ ‘em. But during the blissful month of January, many people make health-related resolutions to lose weight, workout…
In November of 2018, I was fortunate to attend the Entomological Society of America (ESA) conference in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. Several of the other entomology students, faculty and staff…
I found an absolutely remarkable thing on the internet a few weeks ago. Academic Tree is a site dedicated to “building a single, interdisciplinary academic genealogy.” Here's the premise: every…
Farmers sometimes don’t get the credit they deserve when it comes to providing the quality foods we enjoy every holiday season. From the turkey and mashed potatoes to the pumpkin pie and…
When I last wrote for the TPS blog, I observed that anyone interested in the intersection of plant science/biotech and current events in intellectual property will eventually find themselves…
Climate change due to human action is one of, it not the most important area of research at this time. Most feel that we need to dramatically reduce our effects on the environment. One area…
Research can feel isolating at times. There are many days I’ve felt alone in the lab, working by myself at the microscope. However, it is important to remember that research is not done in a…
As the days get colder and shorter and winter approaches, the silver lining for many is the beautiful array of colors exhibited by trees as they prepare for winter dormancy. Maples, oaks, and…
During my communications internship this summer with the Ohio Soybean Council, I had the opportunity to talk with many of the soybean researchers at The Ohio State University. One project that…
Everybody! We have a new TPS student in the program. Welcome aboard Zach Konkel. In the coming years, Zach will get to meet many scientists here at OSU. They will represent many departments, as…
As TPS fellow Katie D’Amico previously alluded to in her blog post about mental health, it is important to set aside time for yourself during graduate school. Hobbies are a great way to recharge,…
One of the challenges of publishing academic manuscripts is the large amount of different information that is required to do so. In my (limited) experience one of the best solutions to combat this…
This summer, in addition to stepping up my research (and getting married), I’ve been helping run a class on intellectual property (IP) strategy in the business school here at Ohio State. The…
Everyone experiences occasional bouts of stress or worry or sadness, but when those feelings become extreme or interfere with daily functioning, they could be indicators of more serious mental…
I recently had the opportunity to teach 30 middle school students about soybean breeding as part of the Soy Smarts Summer Camp, an event sponsored by the Ohio Bioproducts Innovation…
Have you fired up your grill this year? Chances are that you have, as summer is just around the corner. While grilling hamburgers or steaks, have you ever thought about where that beef was from,…
As graduate students we have the privilege of completing our own ‘wet-work’ for our research projects. There are a lot of adjectives, both positive and negative, that can describe that experience…
Occasionally you will find something like “printed with soy-ink” on magazines, cereal boxes, and other labels. While it’s presented as a boon for the environment, that simple statement…
Graduate students can easily fall victim to tunnel vision. We are focused on our specific discipline and often let professional development fall on the wayside. I myself was especially guilty of…
I recently adopted a greyhound named Dogtor, Doc for short. Doc is a wonderful dog, who has what I thought to be a strange habit of grazing in my backyard. I feed him a high-quality grain-free…
During the summer of 2017, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work as an intern in Research and Development (R & D) in Entomology at Dow AgroSciences. I was there for 3 months, and I would…
We (or at least most of us) love the first spring flowers. Purple and yellow crocuses scattered throughout front yards remind us that winter will soon give way to warmer weather and beautiful…
You’ve probably heard many a story of despaired farmers over lost citrus crops or home gardeners over blackened flowers and ornamental plants – all caused by frost and freezing temperatures. Yet,…
Ask any graduate student how they are doing and the answer will likely depend on how their current experiments are going. Did the growth chamber stop working overnight? Did their samples get…
When talking with the other TPS fellows after seminar recently, we began discussing applications for nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are composed of units that are 1-100nm in at least one dimension(1…
I lived in the city for the first 13 years of my life and now in the country for about that long and I've never seen anything like what I found in my flowerbed this past week. As I was…
Above. Syngenta's watermelon breeder at their Woodland, CA location explains how seedless watermelon are produced. The small melons on the right side of the photo are diploid…
I came across a set of somewhat bizarre-looking weeds growing in a fence row this past weekend. Although not particularly aesthetic like some other flowering weeds, they caught my eye because of…
Enzymes are the molecular machines that carry out nearly all functions of cells across all domains of life. Biologists study enzymes in a variety of ways including characterizing their properties…
I held plant breeding innovation in my hand this week. No, I was not in the lab or greenhouse, but in my own backyard. I was doing my favorite spring task – planting the garden. Each seed…
It was nine a.m. on Wednesday, May 17th and already the Ohio Union’s Interfaith room was nearly filled to capacity. Perhaps drifting away from the room’s original purpose, the occupants had…
Saturday, April 22, 2017 was a big day for me. It marked the first time I have marched for something as an activist for a cause I believe in. The cause? Science. The problem? Science literacy and…
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
-George Bernard Shaw
Science communication…
Aphids are small insects that have a stylet (a piercing-sucking mouthpart) that acts as a straw and allows them to feed from plant sap (Figure 1A). Many species reproduce asexually, or clonally…
I was recently invited to address a public meeting of the Sierra Club, an environmental activism organization, in Columbus, OH to discuss the projected effects of climate change on agriculture. It…
Traditional optical microscopy is a powerful tool used by the majority of scientists, but it is not without limitations. Namley that a wavelength of light has an amplitude of approximately 550 nm …
The winter season in Ohio ultimately means some degree of snowfall and an ample application of salt and brine solutions to streets and sidewalks. A 2011 report by the Ohio Department of…
Soon you will be able to fill your grocery cart with the Arctic Apple, a non-browning apple developed by Neal and Louisa Carter. Would you hesitate though if you discovered this product was a…
Many travelers have road tripped across the heartland of U.S. Many of these trips occur during the summer growing season, allowing the layperson to see tremendous agricultural productivity of the…