Prof in Agricultural Genetics & Genome Biol, Univ Leicester UK; Research, Teaching, Policy, Evaluation MolCyt.com

Joined May 2009
995 Photos and videos
Pat Heslop-Harrison retweeted
This photo of Earth, dubbed the Blue Marble, was taken by the Apollo 17 crew #OTD in 1972 as they traveled to the Moon. It soon became one of the most widely-distributed photographs in history.
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Exciting PhD project with me and @vorontsovams.bsky.social RBG Kew on Grass Diversity, developing a phylogeny using morphology and genomics for the tropical forage grass genus Urochloa. Applications at centa.ac.uk/studentship/2026… but contacts Bat or me to discuss

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One of the best dinners and then seminar I've had was with Frank Stahl. He sat down with overhead projector and all the 200 in the audience felt they had a personal tutorial on DNA replication and his super-elegant research. RIP age 95. nytimes.com/2025/07/07/scien…
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Grrr. My appeal every 5 years or so, as frustration boils over. Why doesn't any web browser print out roughly what you see on your screen? I see nice versions of the webpage - full screen, landscape, portrait, mobile phone - but no major browser can print anything like them.
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I'm finding LLM / AI models like Grok, Deepseek, ChatGPT, Google search lab useful to explain things at suitable level. Notable they don't just rehash Wikipedia or unhelpful Microsoft manuals. Today's examples: GANTT charts; IF/TRUE/FALSE in Excel; Harvard referencing
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For #internationalbiodiversityday I'm happy to post a program The Call of Plants bilibili.com/video/BV1gvJqzX… about our interests by pta.eco/ Plant Technology Alliance & Dency Cheng, Guangdong & Hong Kong. A great organization bringing nature back to us ... more later!
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Many opportunities to exploit rhizosphere microbiome for crops. No longer only consider plant genome/GWAS for traits: look at fungi/bacteria. New multisite field trial complexity we can analyse @TrendsPlantSci Rodomiro Ortiz, Sangam Dwivedi, @plgepts EtAl sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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"Doing you own research" on product/medicine safety means web searches now with AI answers. How can we ensure LLMs are informed primarily by refereed research publications, not activists on eg Facebook or Reddit?
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Are others getting 'verify' boxes when wanting to access published papers (even open access)? Is this major publishers trying to stop Deep Learning / Generative AI / ChatGPT accessing refereed work? I want my papers used by AI models easily, not push them to Reddit or Facebook
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Academic climate: It’s no longer ‘publish or perish’; It’s ‘Be visible or vanish’ says @drtimiolubiyi “It is not just what you publish; it is who sees it, talks about it, and shares it that matters." businessday.ng/opinion/artic… Hs analysis has a lot of sense; I don't agree all
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Has anyone tried this in submission cover letter:"We tick required ‘check/tick boxes’ randomly where there is no appropriate answer. Our answer has no validity. We include early career/retired authors where academic e-mails are deleted; and OA fees are covered by agreements."
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I'm reading PhD applications which have a question about time management. Every one I read thinks they apply for something where every hour is planned in advance and accounted for (and presumably billed!). Not one had time for getting ideas, reading, following up crazy thoughts
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It's early 2025, but I think I've found product-of-the-year: a USB Tester / Power Meter. Shows what is charging, measures voltage, battery mAh or Wh, tests batteries, adaptors, whether "PD" on a USB C means "power delivery" or "display port", graphs transfers etc. for c 10£$€
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It's early 2025, but I think I've found product-of-the-year: a USB Tester / Power Meter. Shows what is charging, measures voltage, battery mAh or Wh, tests batteries, adaptors, whether "PD" on a USB C means "power delivery" or "display port", graphs transfers etc. for c 10£$€
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Who guessed Search would change in 2024: 'People now expect answers to questions, not just a stack of links. Perplexity, OpenAI, & Google raced to create “answer engines”, combining web results with generative AI models' says @silverchairnews & @hum_works silverchair.com/news-blog/re…
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Immediate action point/question for me is: 'How do I get my material used for AI answers?' I'm impressed by Google "Search Labs AI Overview" accurately summarizin, in context, our paper from Sept 2024, when I use "flavonoids musaceae chromosomal location" as search keywords.
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My lecture on Biodiversity, Conservation & Agriculture to a public audience at Dinghu Nature Reserve, China. Discussing success of agriculture feeding people but at cost of sustainability: we can solve now global population is static molcyt.org/2024/12/30/biodiv…
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Genome-Wide Identification of Lectin Receptor-like Kinase Gene Family in Avena sativa and Role in Salt Stress Tolerance with Xiong Gui & Qing Liu: genomics, localization and expression shows the value of these genes mdpi.com/3062188 #mdpiijms @IJMS_MDPI @MDPIOpenAccess
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#COP29 message: . Now, (outside Africa) globally there is no meaningful increase in human population. We can put the continuing 0.75% increase in agricultural productivity that has been achieved in the last century towards making production more sustainable.
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#COP29 Message 2: Tertiary, University graduate-level, education is critical to solving the issues of Climate Change – both mitigation (reduction or capture of emissions) and adaptation (changing approaches for living with climate change). molcyt.org/2024/12/02/messag…
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