Dr Clifford Evans passes away

It is with sadness that we learn of the passing of Dr Clifford Evans, a former stalwart of the Botany School from 1937 to 1979, and reported by St John's on the 22nd September as follows:

Dr George Clifford Evans, M.A., Ph.D., Sc.D., Fellow of St John's College 1938-2006, sometime Bursar in Charge of College Buildings, and Emeritus Reader in Experimental Ecology, died on 12 September 2006, aged 93 years.
His reputation was founded on highly original work on light interception in forest understories and the pioneering the use fisheye lens photography to characterise sunflecks. His book, Quantitative analysis of Plant Growth (1972) brought widespread recognition to rigorous methods required for growth analysis, a long standing Departmental tradition.

The funeral was on Monday October 2nd at St Peter's Church, Coton.

What Makes Nature's Clock Tick

What Makes Nature's Clocks Tick (a Daily Telegraph article)
Dr Alex Webb is part of a European project to delve into nature's clock

Some bumblebees like it hot

Some bumblebees like it hot
Bumblebees prefer warmer flowers and can learn to use colour to predict floral temperature before landing, a new study reports.

National Fellowship for outstanding contribution

Dr Keith Johnstone, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences, has won a national award for his part in improving teaching and learning across the biological sciences at the University of Cambridge.
More information here.

Dr Max Walters passes away

There is to be a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Dr Max Walters at Grantchester Parish Church on Sat 3 June 2006 at 2.30 pm. All are welcome.
Obituary by Professor Peter Grubb for the Guardian.

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.