Category: Various

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Update on our R packages

We have been using R for our data analyses for several years, and accumulated expertise and scripts for calculations related to photobiology. After more than two years of work of programming and documentation writing, in the last year I have submitted eight packages to the CRAN repository, packages that are now widely available for anybody to use. All code and documentation is open-source and open-access.

There are still more packages under development of which the ones I find more interesting are two that allow direct acquisition of spectral data from within R allowing use of all the power of R to analyse spectra in almost real time during measurements. They also incorporate state of the art correction algorithms for array detector spectrometers.

The suite of packages has its own web site at http://www.r4photobiology.info and those already in CRAN can be searched through METACRAN.

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RCAFi

In recent times I have been participating in RCAFi (Red de Científicos Argentinos en Finlandia = Network of Argentinian Scientists in Finland) of which I am currently the scientific coordinator. The minister of Science and Technology of Argentina recently visited Finland, and RCAFi members had dinner with him at the Ambassador’s residence.

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Slides from my talk at UseR!2015

This afternoon I gave a talk at this important R conference, please, click below to access the PDF file of the slides I used.

First public presentation on the R packages I have been working on.
First public presentation on the R packages I have been working on.
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Stipends available for doing M.Sc. thesis

Update (6 June 2014): One grant has been awarded. We are still willing to receive applications for the second one, even for thesis work later in the year.

We have available stipends for supporting two M.Sc. students during their thesis research. Each stipend is 1100 €, and can be fully used to cover living expenses, as research costs will be paid by us.

There is some flexibility in subject but basically there are three options:

1) Study of the role of ultraviolet radiation in the pre-emptive acclimation of tree seedlings to drought. Location: Viikki field. Start: 4 June 2014. Measurements: water use, growth, gas-exchange and/or chlorophyll fluorescence. Supervisors: Pedro Aphalo and Luis Morales.

2) Study changes in gene expression in response to UV radiation in Arabidopsis photoreceptor mutants (and respective wild types). Location: Viikki greenhouse and labs. Start: 1 July at the latest. Measurements: gene expression by PCR. Light measurements.Supervisors: Luis Morales and Pedro Aphalo.

3) Study of accumulation of osmotica in guard cells of Arabidopsis photoreceptor mutants (and respective wild types) through histochemical methods (microscopy). Start: soon. Measurements: microphotography. Supervisors: Fang Wang, Pedro Aphalo, Kurt Fagerstedt.

Applications as PDF attachments to an e-mail to Pedro Aphalo (pedro.aphalo@helsinki.fi) sent before 31 May 2014, 16:00, EET.Each application should include: short CV including student number, an authorization to check records in Oodi or include a transcript. A motivation letter explaining why you would like to do your Gradu in our research group, also indicating which subject is of most interest, and which if any are of no interest to you. The name of a person (preferably a teacher) able to give references should be provided. This call is not limited to Plant Biology students but previous experience will be taken into account during selection.
Depending on number of applicants, informal interviews may be arranged.

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New web site is live!

Today I have deleted the old website and setup a redirection for the old address. From today this is the public site of our research group.