University of Helsinki
In attendence: Pedro, Matt, Titta, Luis, Fang, Sari.
1. Report by Fang on her course in Turku on Photosynthesis in Plants and Cyanobacteria.
She will give a presentation for the 2nd half of the course on March 11th, on “Stomatal Response to Environmental Stress”. She will give a practice run-through of this presentation at our next group meeting in March.
2. Update by Sari on her Results, particularly HPLC analysis of flavonoids.
At the next group meeting (or during the interim period on the blog) she will show some graphs of the (1) qualitative and quantitative response of phenolic compounds, and (2) plant growth, and (3) absorbance measured by the dualex, to light of different colours. The group will provide feedback on possible analysis techniques.
3. Copies of Nature and some assorted Spanish journals will be available in Matt’s office. If you have some comments on the articles in Nature, let Matt know, since he has to report back to them on the content.
4. Communications. Pedro, Fang, and Matt are trialing google-wave to see if it is useful. Likewise, google-calendar, which may be an alternative to the sign-up book for use of the Walz GFS-3000 IRGA. We will discuss this at a meeting for Walz GFS and PAM users. Use of this blog for discussion of interesting books, papers, webpages, and statistics was highlighted by Pedro. Try to post information of some general interest (not limited to the research group), and no privileged information. Update alerts can be obtained using the RSS feed.
5. At the next group meeting (9th March) each member will bring a draft of their summer research plan, to start coordinating the timing for use of the equipment, technical help and greenhouse space.
6. Journal Discussion Group. This is tentatively proposal to run once-a-month at first, like the lab meetings on the 4th Tuesday of the month. To kick off, on Feb 23rd, we suggest using the blog for each member to propose at least one paper that they would like to discuss, and building a consensus around one favourite to start with.
7. There will be a research group dinner on Tuesday 16th February in the centre of Helsinki. There will also be a group ‘activity’ (football?) yet to be finalised to pull participants away from their computers….
8. Pedro reported on the proposal submitted on the Finnish Academy of Sciences for a project on Integration of environmental signals by plants: phenomenon, mechanisms, and consequences for stomatal acclimation to drought and shade. Outlining the content and some proposed collaborators.