Thursday, October 15, 2009






I have been having a little bit of a problem with my reader. I have subscribed to many news sites but i am not getting the information I want about my topic. By subscribing to sites such as CNN and NY Times my reader account is getting flooded with all different kinds of news updates, and most of them are not related to science technology. To resolve the problem of such clutter I have deleted them from my subscribtions. I still have many other science and technology subscriptions that are strictly for that topic, so i dont think it will deprive me of too many stories. On anote though, i have found some interesting things. It is still a little hard to sift through everything, but after a little looking i can find some interesting things abut my topic. I've subscribed to general science, plant science, solar science, nature, and electronics blogs. It is a good way to find interesting articles. I am enjoying google reader so far and plan on maybe using it in my free time as well. It is different from just going to the site becuase it is all there for you, it saves a lot of time. One thing i found, which caught my eye, was an article about a seed bank in the UK.
They have recently reached their initial goal of collecting 10% of the worlds known wild plant species. This seed bank is the largest in the world for wild plant species. ''The idea is that the seeds can all be accessed in one place to help researchers hunt for potential medicinal species and crops resilient to climate change.'' The Kew Gardens seed bank's next goal is to reach one quarter of the worlds wild plant species by 2020. I have also heard of other instances of seed banks around the world for other reasons being in case of draught, famine, disease or nuclear explosion. The idea behind these is that in case of these events we will still have all of the seeds to bring back any lost plants. The one i have heard of, also mentioned in the article, is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway consealed up high in the snowy mountains, aka the doomsday seedbank.


I think these seedbanks are a great idea becuase in case of a disater it would be a shame to lose some of the worlds plant species forever. It is like an animal becoming extinct, perhaps they will store animal DNA in the future in hopes to be able to clone them in case of disater? That would be interesting.

1 comment:

  1. Dylan, glad to see you making the Google Reader work more effectively for you. Keep reading.

    When you write entries, there are a couple of things to remember when writing your blog entries. Use an interesting, catchy title with each entry and include hyperlinks to sites or ideas you mention. Also, don't forget to cite the source of your photos. Include photo credits. Keep writing.

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