Pantomime dvds available

The Department Pantomime, which we called “Aladdin the department”, was held on Friday 2nd December. DVD's are available from Reception!

New website launched

The Plant Sciences website has been undergoing an overhaul to coincide with the arrival of a new server. Several pages have moved, including the home page which has moved to http://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/ (so http://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/home.html will no longer work). Several pages are now accessible by adding a keyword to the http://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/ address: library; herbarium; seminars; jobs; news; grads and research.

There is a new section called Departmental Resources where members of the Department will be able to find announcements, a downloadable phone list (soon to be a searchable online database), service level agreements and other useful links and pieces of information. We've been working towards online copies of manuals, to remove some of the paper wastage and so the Safety Handbook can be found in the new Safety section where a What's New page will inform you of any changes since the last publication. The Welcome Pack and Graduate Student Handbook are also online. Another new section is Post-Graduate Training where we have tried to put anything useful for graduate students. Any ideas as to what's useful are always welcome! If you get lost navigating around the site then click on the A-Z button at the top right to find a site index and if you're really stuck, try the help button.

Clocks help plants grow faster

Researchers at the University of Cambridge found that the biological clock in plants increases photosynthesis, helping them grow faster.

More information here.

Darwin online

A comprehensive scholarly collection of Charles Darwin’s published and unpublished writings, except for correspondence, will be available on the world wide web.

More information here.

Changes in the Library

Richard Savage, the Plant Sciences Librarian, is retiring at the end of June. We have been discussing with Genetics the possibility of sharing their librarian, Christine Alexander. It has been agreed that from 1 July, Christine will spend 40% of her time in Plant Sciences and 60% in Genetics. She will be with us on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. The arrangement will be reviewed after six months, when a decision will be taken as to whether to continue with the scheme. Views from all library users will be welcome during the trial period.