Monthly Archives: May 2015

IIB photo competition: “buildings” live blog

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The photos submitted in the “buildings” category of our competition will be aggregated here.

IIB photo competition: “instruments” live blog

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The photos submitted in the “instruments” category of our competition will be aggregated here.

IIB photo competition: “people” live blog

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The photos submitted in the “people” category of our competition will be aggregated here.

IIB photo competition open

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UPDATE: Good news: the deadline has been extended by one week!

The IIB Public Engagement and Communication Committee (PECC) invites IIB staff (support and academic staff, post-doctoral researchers & fellows) and post-graduate students to participate to a photo competition.

There are three categories: people, instruments, buildings. The winners in each category will receive a £50.00 Waterstones voucher. The jury will be composed of the PECC members (and therefore they are not allowed to participate).

Entries should be submitted exclusively via Twitter using the hashtags #IIBphoto1 (people), #IIBphoto2 (instruments) and #IIBphoto3 (buildings). You can find the submission

All submitted pictures will be aggregated and posted at Blog and Log.

The competition is open now and will close on the 15th 22nd of June. The prizes will be announced and given on the 19th 26th of June at 11 am in the common room during the Institute Coffee Morning.

Important notes:

  1. Include proper attribution, i.e. the photographer’s name, in the Tweet. (“#IIBphoto1 by Josephine Pic”)
  2. By submitting an entry via Twitter, you accept that your picture might be re-used by others; including others in IIB for talks or other IIB communication purposes.
  3. If your photo shows other individuals, you must confirm with them that they agree to the posting of the picture.

Multiple entries are welcome: 1, 2, 3 go. Start posting now. We are looking forward to see your entries!

Raphaël, on behalf of PECC

@livuniIIBpec

PECC members:  Louise‎ Crompton, Fatima Silva Franco, Juhi Gupta, Kate Hammond, Greg‎ Hurst, Kate‎ Jones, Rebecca Jones, Raphaël Lévy (Chair), Joao Pedro De Magalhaes, Thomas‎ Price, Natasha Savage

The importance of culturing cells in hypoxia – Dr. Violaine Sée

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The company don whitley scientific has produced a video of Violaine Sée explaining the importance of controlling the oxygen level when culturing cells; excerpt

For example, we have shown that if cells are cultured in hypoxia [low oxygen] for several days, then they become resistant to chemotherapeutic treatments

Fascination of Plants Day at Liverpool World Museum

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Report by Geraint Parry.

On May 16th the World Museum in Liverpool hosted its third Fascination of Plants Day (FoPD) in collaboration with scientists and educators from the University of Liverpool.

Before the doors opened!

Before the doors opened!

The organisation of an indoor event is one of the few reasons to hope for a rainy day but sadly it was nice and sunny in Liverpool! Nevertheless about 500 visitors passed through the exhibition, each spending at least 20 minutes learning about many aspects of plant science.

Everyone likes a free gift so the exhibit from Ness Botanic Gardens was very popular! Rose Froud and Andrew Lambie showing visitors of all ages how to make pots out of newspaper and then helped them plant either sunflowers or runner beans!

Dr Geraldine Reid from the Museums botany department set up a microscope where the visitors were challenged to try and find locally discovered new Diatom varieties.

Rose Froud from Ness Gardens rolls newspaper plant pots

Rose Froud from Ness Gardens rolls newspaper plant pots

Elsewhere techniques of plant science ancient and modern collided as dried and mounted specimens from the botanical collections were situated alongside a DNA sequencer that University of Liverpool researchers had used to sequence the wheat genome. This machine has recently been donated to the museum for future exhibitions and formed the second-stage of an exhibit that allowed (mostly) kids to extract strawberry DNA and then ‘load’ it onto the sequencer! Rumours are unfounded that this is the start of octoploid Strawberry Genome Project…… The group from UoL was led by Dr Geraint Parry and Professor Anthony Hall, ably helped by members the Life Science Outreach team.

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Preparing to extract strawberry, ready for the sequencer!

Overall it was extremely gratifying to see plenty of smiling faces leaving the exhibition clutching their DNA extractions and temporary plant pots!! Hopefully they’ll be back again next year!