University of Helsinki
As part of my participation in the COST Action UV4growth I have been working on an R packages for analysing and acquiring spectral data using the R system for statistics. They are described and can be downloaded from the blog of the Technical Group 1 (TG1) of the COST Action. The package UVcalc is at version 1.2.0 and will be ready for wide use after a few days of additional testing. There are another two packages under development, but not yet ready for release: one of them is for applying advanced correction algorithms as developed by Lasse Ylianttila from STUK for improving the performance of array spectrometers in the UV region of the spectrum. Another package under development will allow the control and acquisition of spectral data from Ocean Optics spectrometers directly from within R. If you are willing to test or use any of these packages, or even help with the coding, please, contact me. The packages will be released under GPL licence and at the moment are in a Git repository hosted at Bitbucket. The UVcalc repository is already public, the others are private.
The handbook has been published
Aphalo, P. J.; Albert, A.; Björn, L. O.; McLeod, A.; Robson, T. M.; Rosenqvist, E. (eds.) 2012. Beyond the visible: A handbook of best practice in plant UV photobiology. COST Action FA0906 UV4growth. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Biosciences, Division of Plant Biology. ISBN 978-952-10-8362-4 (Paperback), 978-952-10-8363-1 (PDF). xxx + 176 pp.
See the handbook’s webpage for how to download a PDF or how to buy a printed copy.
COST action UV4growth conference in Szeged, Hungary
Matt, Luis, Lasse Ylianttila and myself participated in this meeting. All of us gave talks, and Lasse and myself taught at the worshop for ESRs on the day after the conference ended. The management committee (MC) meeting was on Monday. I took over from Lars Olof Björn the coordination of TG 1 “UV technology”. Lars Olof stepped down as leader for personal reasons. Lars Olof will replace me as assistant leader. Because I am now leader of TG 1, I stepped down as leader of working group 3 (WG3) and will be replaced by Riitta Julkunen-Titto.
There were about 100 participants in the conference (7 or 8 from Finland), including many of the most prominent researchers working on the effects of UV on plants. We made many contacts and had very interesting discussions. From the data presented in several talks, it is now clear that UVR8 is almost for sure the UV-B photoreceptor in plants.
In the conference Lasse talked about the calibrations and stray light corrections needed to take UV measurements with array spectrometers. He presented data from STUK’s Ocean Optics S2000 and our Ocean Optics Maya 2000 Pro. Matt presented his data on Nothofagus (both from his experiments in Tierra del Fuego and in Viikki). Luis presented some results on epidermal transmittance measured in Arabidopsis with our Dualex 3 FLAV. I presented our work on action spectra, from Titta’s, Luis’s and Sari’s experiments.
In the workshop Lasse gave a lecture on the pitfalls that one can run into when measuring UV-B. I gave a lecture on biological spectral weighting functions, biologically effective doses, and how to compare doses of UV from lamps and the sun. For the workshop practicals we took the Dualex and the Maya spectrometer to Szeged.
Szeged is a nice city and we managed to wander through the old city in spite of the packed conference programme. None of us took a camera to Szeged so we have no photos to post.