A day in the botanical garden
Yesterday was last day of working week in the Botanical Garden for me.
What did I do? How is our day there? As an intern, I am not indipendent and I always follow most experienced staff. Yesterday once I arrived, I got changed into the uniform and using a small radio I called the person I was supposed to work with to get some details on my duties.
So, hand fork, barrow and a lot of little purple Tradescantias and let's start the day!
I went into the tropical glasshouse to add some colors in some green grass bed.
Like this one, nice and healthy but in need of a splash of colour! So I started my job, removing this grass, move the soil and replant the purple plants.
Here the result. What do you think? I was so proud of my job 😍
I made other 2 of these areas and after I run out of plants 😂
At 1 pm it was lunch break, short break since it's Friday and we are allowed to go home at 3.30 😍😍
In the afternoon I went on with some admin work, making sure every document for use of chemicals was present in our folders!
Now looking forward to the weekend 😍😍
Hi read friends!
Goodmorning read users!
Maybe someone will remember me, someone has no idea who I am.... I'm Laura, 27 yo, Italian PhD student in UK.
I move here to follow my dreams, as you might notice from my previous (and old) articles here I am passionate about plants and my PhD is on plants, in particular immunity! I will tell you more about this lovely and interesting topic soon.
At the moment, I have just started a industry placement of 3 months in the Birmingham Botanical Garden. Here I will join the horticulture team, I will learn how to deal with all different kind of plants 🌿and how to keep them happy and pretty 😍 definitely the opposite of my everyday activity in the lab, I kill plants there - trying to find something interesting for my project.
In addition, I will be leaving soon for Shanghai, China to visit some collaborators. Their lab is inside the Botanical Garden in Shanghai, I am sure it is a stunning location and I can't wait to be there in person! I will take so many photos to share with you 😍
So, in summary a lot of new adventures starting at the moment and I can't be more excited! 😍
I am sure I will have a lot to tell you about my everyday life. Stay tuned 💪🏻
10 Random questions
Ei guys! Yesterday I saw @rebeysa85 post, where she answered 10 random questions using Toggl plan . I picked up 10 questions and here my answers for you https://toggl.com/blog/icebreaker-questions
**Have you ever been on a cruise? Where did you go?**
I have been on a cruise twice in my life. The first one it was really short, 4 days, we started visiting Savona (Italy) and we went to Barcellona and Marsiglia.
The second one was longer, 7 days, we left Venice and we visited Bari, Corfù, Athens, Kotor, and Dubrovnik.
I don't know which city is my favorite, really difficult to choose
**What is your favorite magical or mythological creature?**
I like unicorns, the classic answer probably. I see them as special and magic horses, white and pure. I remember watching Harry Potter's film, killing a unicorn is one of the most terrible crimes you can make in your life!
**If you could only eat one item of food for the rest of your life, what would you eat?**
The classic Italian answer is.... PIZZA! I can't live without a proper Italian pizza and if I can choose also different toppings every time is amazing!
**What is your favorite breakfast? Lunch? Dinner?**
I would answer this saying... "It depends", when I am on holiday and I am staying in a hotel with a huge buffer for breakfast, where you can eat all kinds of food without stopping I would definitely say breakfast! Otherwise, in general, in everyday life I would go for dinner because I can eat with calm and no rush of going back to work!
**What is something you love doing? Why?**
I love driving in the car alone because I can sing and no one can hear me, I am so bad ahahah Other staff that I like doing is walking with my airpods and think about nothing, so relaxing.
**Have you ever lived in another state?**
Lol, perfect question! I have lived in UK for 6 months and I am moving back there soon, to stay there for 4 years! Such a long time!
**If you had to choose between only having a cell phone or a car for the rest of your life, which would you choose?**
This is not easy, I am both phone and car dependent but... I would choose phone! I can always stay in contact with my friends, play a lot of games and... call a taxi! LOL
**If you could travel to any other planet (real or fictional), where would you go and why?**
I would go to Mars probably, not so faraway! To check how little is the earth from there and to check if there is life there!
**A genie grants you three wishes but none of them can directly benefit you. What would those wishes be?**
I would probably ask for health and happiness for my parents, they did a lot for me and they deserve happiness! And there other two will go to less lucky people that can't earn enough to support their family o ill people, to wish them a better life!
**What’s the most embarrassing moment from your teen years?**
Probably the year of a social network called "Netlog", where we posted a lot of photos of us, with a lot of make-up or edited with random text with strange and funny characters. The point is that we found it cool!
Here my answer at some questions, you can find a lot on the website! Check it and do your article, don't forget to tag @rebeysa85
My past month
Ohoh, I have been absent for a long time, maybe too much and I am really sorry... I think I need to explain what is happening to me right now, in few words: my life is changing completely.
Why? As I mentioned in past articles and posts I am starting a PhD program in the UK. This program is amazing, in the first term we are having programming, maths and statistics lessons.
In January I'll start a 3 months project in a lab, I need to talk and discuss the topic with my supervisor in November. In April I'll start a 3 months placement in a company not related to research, I need to choose this company carefully because this choice will affect my future. And later in summer I'll start a little mini project strictly related to what I will do in my PhD!
As you read I'll be really busy next year but I would like to find time to write something again here, once my life is balanced again.
By the way, I have started my courses on 27th September.
Week 0 was the "induction week", the Professor presented us the program, some projects etc. and we did a super foolish thing called "speed PhD". In 3 days we were asked to complete a PhD, lol, with all the reports, submission of thesis and papers. It was something crazy but we had fun at the end!
Week 1 we started some maths revision, it was ok because it was a full revision of all the maths programs I did in high school. Something soft as a start! We also started R coding, I think this code is not so difficult as could be and it quite user-friendly... there are also a lot of suggestions and tutorials available on the internet since it is the most universal code for data scientists! We did some basic graphs as plots and histograms. We also had 2 lessons of statistics with a super nice teacher, she is so excited about the topic and listening to her is amazing!
Week 2 (this week) We are going on with R coding, learning new function and starting doing some tricky stuff. We have started using/studying another code called shell", it is not easy at all, not user-friendly and I don't like it too much... but on the other hand, it will be really useful for RNAseq analysis!
Next week we will go on with the training, learning a lot more on coding and being always more hacker people ahahah
I'll move at the end of the Month so probably I'll tell you about my journey!
Not a lot of time to write in this period! So, sorry for me being inactive, I'll try to be back as soon as possible!
Sunday: Friends and bbq
Hi everyone! I have been quite busy this weekend, so I didn't have much time to write here but at the same time now I can tell you what I did!
Yesterday, Sunday, I went to a bbq with some friends... The house owner luckily did all the shopping: he bought the meat for the bbq, some beer and wine! We, as guests, were asked to make something for an appetizer or some dessert for the end of the meal.
Saturday: preparation day
I went for something for appetizer, so I decided to prepare 2 savory pies.
The first one is a classic one for Italian people, with spinach and ricotta cheese - I have only the photo before going into the oven. This one is perfect, basically everyone likes it, so you are sure that at least 90% of people present will enjoy it!
The second one was an experiment for me, I did a "braid" with sausage, brie cheese and grapes. The flavour was particular, but I really appreciate it so I am going to do it again for sure! This one I have the photo after the oven :D
I love testing some new flavour combination, so suggest me new combo to try!
Sunday: bbq day
Unfortunately yesterday the weather was rainy, not a perfect day for a bbq but we had an amazing time together!
First of all we needed to reach the place, I thought it was nearer... It took around an hour by car to arrive there! We sang all the Italian summer song and we danced in the car during the trip.
We arrived there: time for starting the fire! Some guys started the preparation and I did... nothing ahah I watched them and starting cutting my pies for everyone!
After almost 2 hours the meat was ready to be eaten! We sit at all the tables together. There was a lot to eat and drink (beer, red wine and white wine!). Maybe the food was too much because we left some meat and at the end of the day we divided everything not to throw away the food. After lunch we played some board games together and we went home, I get home quite late, around 8 pm... I was really tired!
Special house-owner
How can I forget to mention the special owner of the house?
Emma obviously came to say "Hi" to us, this amazing Persiano was there all the time with us. She was similar to grumpy cat! She knew to be super fluffy and beautiful because it has been really difficult to get near her for some cuddles.
How did you spend your day? Did you relax or did something particular?
Cats: champions in pretending
We all know that pets are definitely champions in a super-difficult discipline, not present at the last Olympic games: pretending.
Having three cats I can tell you my experience with them but I am sure that other pets such as dogs have similar behavior!
Pretending to be hungry
What they can do better is pretending to be hungry all the time. When I come home from work I'll give them immediately food/water, and all the time when my mum comes home after me (maybe even 10 mins later) they go after her and pretend to be hungry since the plate is empty. And you why is it empy? Easy, because they have already eaten everything.
All the time I feel guilty, because it seems to me that I didn't give them enough to eat but in reality they are looking for attention.
Pretending to be sleepy
One other thing is about sleep, they pretend all the time to be sleepy... They pretend that for cuddles, but if you make some little noise they quickly get up and they come to see what you are doing. Here a photo of Teo this morning, pretending to sleep on my legs only to receive more cuddles from me.
Pretending to be innocent
They pretend that all the time to be angels and not to do any kind of messes. If something happens in the house and you are looking for them, the are 2 main options: 1. they hide if they feel really guilty; 2. they look at you with big innocent eyes as to say "What? Me? Why? I am an angel!".
Here an example of this morning for you: I have a lot of cactus and in this period plants are doing little "plant-son", Teo manages to remove this little part from the mother-plant and start playing with it... He managed to put one piece inside my shoe! In this way while I was putting on the shoes this morning I felt a little hurt... it was a piece of cactus! D: But Teo was looking at me with innocent eyes, not his fault for sure he would say.
Pretending not to receive cuddles
This happens to us really often with my ginger cat: Achille. He loves meowing with people and when some relatives/friends or even neighbors come to us for a quick visit, he starts meowing so loudly... And after he starts rolling on the floor looking for cuddles as what we do for him is not enough! Obviously, he is the winner and all the time he receives a lot of cuddles from everyone :D
And your cats? Or pets in general? How do they behave? Tell me and let's find some similarities :)
Bolognese sauce
I wrote some articles last few days about Italy (Italian gestures and 10 questions for Italian people), now it is time for Italian food - again!
Since I am from Bologna, what is know in all the world? Bolognese sauce, obviously!
I write here what is the traditional recipe for my family, for sure there are other versions that you can find online or talking with people.
1. "Soffritto preparation".
First of all, we need "soffritto". Soffritto is made by chopping 3 vegetables: **white onions**, **carrots**, and **celery.** It is important to chop them quite a little, over carrots. This is because onions and celery will melt during the cooking, whereas carrots will remain in pieces. Just put soffritto in an angle know.
2. Meat preparation
This point is arguable, we use 3 kinds of mince (**beef mince, pork mince**, and **"bacon" mince**) and we put the same weight of each (usually 300 g of each mince). I would not able to find bacon mince in the UK, so I bought bacon and chopped it using a really sharp knife. We add this as "fat" part, but you can avoid using bacon and use only beef and pork mine (using 500 g of each).
**3. Cook soffritto**
First of all, we need to put **olive oil** in a pot and heat it. When the oil is warm put the soffrito inside to cook, remember to use a wooden spoon to mix it otherwise you risk burning everything, leave it 3/4 minutes until is cook and the onion is transparent.
**4. Add meat**
At this point add meat to the pot, move it and let it cook. You need to leave it cooking inside his own "water", this means that you have to let all the water/fat evaporates.
**5. Add wine (optional)**
Now, when all the water is consumed, it's time for **wine**! I usually put red wine, the same wine that I am going to drink with pasta later haha but you can also use white wine if you have something left open. I usually ad 1 glass, to finish the cooking.
**6. Add tomato sauce**
Now add **tomato sauce** and let it cook. What time? It would say at least 2 hours, but if you have more time it is better... talking with some nannies they support the idea that with less than 4 hours you can't call this sauce a proper "ragù"!
How much sauce it depends on how you like the ragù, I usually add 500 g of sauce and after I see how much is consumed during the cooking, if I see the sauce really dry I add other sauce, otherwise, I leave it.
If you like the sauce of bright red as a color you can also add a little bit of concentrated tomato.
Now it is only time for pasta! But please, don't use spaghetti with this ahahah.
You can only freeze it and keep it for a while, I usually prepare it and freeze a part to keep it in the next 2 weeks.
Let me know if you have any doubts or you need some cooking suggestions! I'll try to help!
Italian gesture
Yesterday I wrote an article about "10 questions for Italian people" and one of them regarded the fact that we used our hands a lot - maybe too much - when we speak.
So I thought, why not use some really common emoticon to explain our gesture? Pay attention, the lesson is starting!
**1. First gesture**
Pay attention here, only two fingers up (index finger and winkle). Thumb close to the others. This gesture is usually done shacking a little bit the hand (from left to right). This is not easy stuff, someone is trying to tell you that your boyfriend or your girlfriend is cheating on you!
Pay attention that is not this one down, check the difference in the thumb position!
**2. Second gesture**
This one is the most famous Italian gesture, with all the fingers together. It can have two meanings depending on how we move the hand. We can move the hand "up and down", this generally means "What are you saying?" and we do it when someone is saying something stupid or we don't agree with or maybe if we don't understand what someone is saying.
Instead, if we spin the hand it is different. This can be done in relation to an awkward situation, maybe you have been left alone with a couple of friends and you felt a little bit stupid and you were uncomfortable, so you can tell the story and add this gesture to enhance your negative feeling.
**3. Third gesture**
Here is it important to focus on one finger, the index finger. If we put the index near our check and we turn it we can have two topics: food or boys/girls. When we are at the restaurant, we eat something that is DELICIOUS, we turn our index in our check to let our people know that we appreciate a lot the food.
When we are out, if we see a really handsome boy or a beautiful girl, we can do the same gesture too, this can be a little bit rude/unpolite - so be careful!
**Fun fact**. A friend of mine came to Italy from the UK some years ago, he told he went into a bar for the coffee and the bartender looked at him, looked at the colleague, and did that gesture. He didn't understand and he thought about something racist (he is black and the bartender was white), for this reason, he went out a little bit upset/angry. I explained to him that it was a sort of compliment later, but I had a lot of fun during this story!
In the comment let me know if in some situation of your day you can use one of these three gestures (hope not the first one!), tell me something fun, and be ready to use the 2* gesture or eat something delicious to use the 3* gesture!
There are a lot of other gestures that can be explained to you, a lot of them regarding the full hand used in a different way... or better let me know if you are curious to know when or why we do something!
10 questions for Italian people
I have seen some articles about answering questions, the last one in @CoquiCoin profile! So I have found on Internet a list of 10 questions that foreign people usually ask Italian people. I have decided to try to answer, even if some are really strange!
1. How can you eat all that pasta and men are still so cool?
We eat pasta, it is true but not always. We are like to live in a Mediterranean country so our diet is the Mediterranean, really mixed with meat/fish and vegetables/fruits. In addition, we have really good and warm weather so outdoor activities are encouraged. Ps: we have "not cool" men too.
2. Do you eat always pasta and don't you get bored?
See answer 1, we don't eat only pasta... It would be the same as saying French people eat only crepes and croissants or English eating only fish and chips! We have also delicious Pizza, and yes, I could eat pizza every day without any problems.
3. How can be tanned every time in the year?
Luckily we have sun most of the time of the year and the weather is warm so it is pleasant to stay outside in some park or garden. I think that depends on people and what you do for a living, for example, I work in agriculture and obviously, people working in field can do more outdoor activities compared to someone that works in an office.
4. Why do you move always your hands when you talk?
I would say that help to explain our idea and enhance the concept! There are some jokes that say that if you want an Italian to be quiet you must bond his hands. Maybe this is true?
5. How can you be so sexy?
This is strange. I have experienced on myself and I think that people from other countries have this magic idea of us, I don't know why but we are not all sexy and not amazing at all. We have our faults too.
6. In Italy do street rules exist? if yes, why don't you respect it?
Ahahahahahahah this is funny but sadly sometimes it is true, overall in traffic hours. We are all in a hurry and be feel the smartest at that moment, so we try not to follow rules even if it is really risky. So pay always attention when you drive!
7. Why do you have so many dialects?
We have a lot of dialects and for local people, these dialects are really important, sometimes more important than Italian. I think we have so many due to all the people that have reigned and tried to conquer Italy all over the years... Every population left a sign
8. How can you eat so much for dinner?
Personally, I don't eat so much for dinner but I know some people that skip lunch due to busy days at work so at the end of the day they are really hungry!
9. How can you be so elegant?
A lot of fashion brands are from Italy, this is real... but I don't think we are particularly elegant. Maybe thanks to all the brands here we have a huger choice of clothes and style?
10. Why are you so "mommy's boy"?
This is definitely true. We are really related to our parents and family and it is really difficult for us going to live away - I have seen this problem really spread among my friends. I think it is only more comfortable to stay at home with mum/dad doing all the cooking, housework, etc... We can say we are lazy too :D
Bolognese "Raviole"
Italy is famous for its delicious food and we, Italian people, know it really well. In Bologna, where I have born and I still live, we are famous for a lot of things: Bolognese sauce for sure, Lasagna, Tortellini etc but pay attention: **Bolognese Spaghetti doesn't exist** in Italy... I am sorry to reveal that, but we don't eat Spaghetti with bolognese sauce, we eat tagliatelle or other shapes of pasta, but not spaghetti. We eat Spaghetti with other sauce such as tomato sauce or carbonara!
Now that this is clear I would like to tell you something more about this sweet called "Raviole". This sweet is traditionally prepared in Bologna for St Giuseppe day, on 19 March, and here is Father's day. Sometimes you can decorate them writing something sweet on it as "Happy Father's day" or "I love you, Dad" - here in photo "Auguri papà" = "Auguri" can be translated with "Best wishes" and "papà" is "father/dad"... I bought it from a bakery some years ago and my dad was really happy :D
Nowadays you can find them in a bakery or supermarket almost every day of the year since it is perfect for breakfast, for snacks or also end a lunch/dinner.
Raviole is a short pastry filled with jam. Jam originally is "mostarda", a typical jam prepared with different kinds of fruits: usually you can find apple, pear, oranges, and plums, but the exact recipe can change depending on the season and which fruit is available and on the family tradition. Now you can fill raviole with what you like most: apricot jam, plum jam or in general every kind of jam and for children you can also put Nutella!
The recipe as I told you changes for every family, we have one that is secret - my mum is really jealous about her bake recipe! The only thing that I can tell you is we put flour, sugar, eggs, butter, milk, lemon, yeast, and obviously jam!
**Fun personal fact**
As I told you this is a traditional sweet from Bologna and last year I was in the UK and I was homesick so I decided to try to do raviole. The point is that I didn't find the yeast - in the UK it is not so common and they use a lot of baking soda in cake/biscuit that is different from yeast obviously. So, as I am really brave, I tried to bake without yeast and instead I put baking soda.... the result was not so good, I can also say terrible because I don't even take a photo lol! So, my final suggestion is put always yeast in your cake or at least try to find a full English recipe with all the right ingredients
Have you ever eaten this or something similar? Would you like to try?
Tulipark
Autumn is coming and I already miss the warm seasons as spring and summer. Scrolling down my photo galleries I saw some photos taken last April in a new place in my city called: Tulipark. Yes, as the name says, park entirely made of tulips, different shapes, different colors and different heights. It was so big and colorful that it was possible to see it from the highway (but not from the sky).
You enter the park and you see a lot of blooming rows of tulips. You can spot all the colors, pink, purple, red, yellow, white! Say your favourite color and you will find a tulip of that color. Indeed my favourite is yellow and here, yellow tulips for us! In my dream I even thought to see a windmill, like the one you can see in Holland but nothing of that kind for us, only flower... but I don't blame it! The place was amazing and unique!
You can find also tulips called "parrot" tulips, with a lot of petals and the shape is not the classic one... And tulips with jagged petals, I find pink and red tulips of that type! Probably my favorite was the pink one. This is because the color changes from white to pink, so cute!
The point is the organizers say that you can enter for free but it is not true. To enter you need to purchase a ticket and with that ticket, you can pick up a different number of tulips. I don't remember all the prices, but I bought the 15 euros ticket and I picked up 7 tulips! There were also tickets to pick up until 50 tulips, more or less all the park... I think for that you should pay around 50 euros, that is a lot of money! At the same time, I saw a lot of girls having buckets full of colorful tulips and they were taking a lot of shots for Instagram, maybe a future influencer there? In particular, I remember one girl with her mum taking a lot of photos, she was really bored about being a mum-photographer that day!
So, as I said above, I had only 7 tulips to pick up and the choice has not been so easy, I did a full walk of the park two times to be sure to not avoid any genre of tulips and after I decide. Here is my tulips bucket:
"Parrot" purple tulip that is bending, some classic pink, yellow and purple tulips, one yellow and red, and the last one white and pink. Did I do a good choice? Which is your favorite? I can be honest with you saying that it was really difficult.
Suggestions
Since the place is really crowded (at the time few outdoor activities were allowed due to Corona-Virus) I suggest you go quite early in the morning, in this way you are free to walk through the park without a lot of people around and you can take all the photos you want.
Another suggestion is that this place is perfect for families, children can run and play with tulips and they can have a lot of fun. There are not car, bicycle or other vehicle inside the park, only people walking so it is really safe.
Everyone is forced to wear a mask even if we were outdoor and we must keep social distancing.
Chlroplast: wizard of plants.
I have always loved to think about plants as **something magical**, they can transform water, light, and CO2 into sugar! This is basically something mysterious and magic. How do they do that? Thanks to their little wizards: **chloroplasts**. First of all, chloroplasts are the ones that make the plants green, because they have molecules inside that, are able to get the lengths of light corresponding to blue, red, yellow, etc but reflect the green one.
Wizard needs a magic wand!
Talking about wizards, we all know that there are main **differences** between animal and plant cells, one of them is plants have chloroplasts (and they can so magic obviously). Another famous difference is the presence of cell wall in plants, this wall brings a lot of advantages: let the cell to have a rigid shape and not to change, pathogen can't enter easily thanks to this thick layer to overcome etc.
Chloroplast thanks to the power of light are able to transform CO2 (carbon dioxide) into sugar (glucose). This happens with a lot of different and difficult steps that I think are really complicated and are not so important for our story, the only thing you need to know is that our chloroplast-wizard can do magics only with a **magic wand**, in this it is an enzyme called **Rubisco**.
So, let's sum up our magic formula: we have our **basic ingredients** (water, CO2, lights), our **magic wand** (Rubisco) and our **wizard** (chloroplast). Bidibidobidibu! Puff... GLUCOSE for you!
Something wrong with the formula...
As we all know not always magic goes on perfectly and we can face some errors, in photosynthesis, some errors can happen if there is a different basic ingredient: **oxygen**. The main problem is that Rubisco is just a magic wand and doesn't understand the difference between CO2 and oxygen, so if in the cell there is oxygen, our enzyme takes it without any distinction so we enter in another path and the sugar produced is less.
**Different strategies: C3, C4 and CAM plants.**
**C3 plants** are the most common plants and work basically how I described above, quite normal, with some problems with oxygen but everything happens in the same cells.
**C4 plants**, instead, seems to have two magic room (cells) to perform magic, and the wizard has a **second magic wand: PEPco**. In the first cells, there is only PEPco enzyme, that can bond exclusive with CO2 (and not with oxygen). PEPco carries CO2 in the second room, another cell nearby where Rubisco is present and the photosynthesis can be completed. In this way, Rubisco will never enter in contact with oxygen and the problem are reduced to zero. We can say that in this way we have a "spatial" differentiation because something happens in one cell and something else in another one. The most famous example of C4 plants is maize!
**CAM plants**, instead, have a spatial and temporal differentiation. So in addition to the different activities in different cells, they differ the activities during day or night. Succulent plants are all CAM!
Did you know something about this difference before?
Stream of thoughts
Today I don't have time and I am not in the mood to write an article about my work or my study, yesterday night I slept terribly for two reasons: first one, my cats and the second one, my thoughts.
First reason: cats
Starting from the funniest reason, we can say that in these days I am a lot of time at work and I don't have a lot of spare time to play with my pets. They spend their day sleeping with nobody at home and when I come back in the evening or at night they are full of energy. Last night was the perfect example of that, Achille (oldest and ginger cat) decided that was time to "talk" with me, so he jumped up in my bed and started meowing so loud until I woke up and I started cuddling him.
Some hours later Teo and Polpetta, the two youngest cats, started playing with each other, running around the house, over my bed, and obviously over me. I woke up with two cats staring at me, being aware of what was wrong at that moment. Luckily later nothing more happened and I managed to sleep calmly until morning, alarm at 7.00 am. I don't know exactly if they behave in this way because they are still active or if it is a way to get revenge! Animals are so strange and funny, we will never understand them completely!
Secondo reason: thoughts
My sleep is not perfect for another reason: my serial and random thoughts. This is a period of change for me so a mix of emotions came into my mind, overall at night, when I am alone in the bed and I am not doing anything to distract. The main worry that I have is "not to be enough", enough for what? For everything: for my boyfriend, for my family, for my friends, and for my future. For example, sometimes I don't feel enough beautiful and I am worried about going out with my boyfriend or friends, other times I feel not have enough time to hang out with everyone or to chat a little with everyone, even if it is only "How are you doing?". For my family I feel sad leaving them here in Italy and travel to the UK, I feel like abandon them and this feeling is real and destroys me... at the same time is my future and it is what I want for me and my future life. In the end, I am worried about my future, I don't know if I will be good and smart enough if I will like the people and the project and everything... Who knows what the future has for us!
I'll keep you updated with my adventures around the Eupore and around the house with my cats
Arundo donax: biomass plant
Arundo donax, or Giant reed, is a plant belonging to the Poaceae family – the same as wheat, barley, maize, and rice. If you live in Italy you have seen that for sure near the street or near little rivers because this plant loves to stay in humid areas. Arundo has an important peculiarity and it is fascinating for scientists and farmers: the photosynthesis is classified as “C3” but the production of biomass is comparable to “C4 plant”.
Morphology of the plant
Focusing a while on the morphology this plant presents a principal stem and other secondary stems, the height can reach 5 meters and the diameter can be until 4 cm, sometimes the principal stem is higher than the other ones. Secondary stems grow from the rhizome (stem modified to be similar to roots) and go on sprouting during all the growing season. Talking about the flower, we can say that Arundo is sterile, this is caused by a malfunction in the formation of the female part of the flower, called megaspore. This characteristic can be seen as positive or negative, it is positive because in this way the plant can’t be invasive and can’t fill the field but from a genetic point of view this fact is negative, we are not allowed to cross plants and the breeding is really complex.
Another important feature to pay attention to is that not a lot of products and pesticides are legally allowed to be used on Arundo. Luckily this plant is not really susceptible to disease even if is a Poaceae, but in the future could be a problem if a pathogen developed an interest.
Harvesting and quality treats
The harvesting probably is the most difficult part, has to be done once per year, and here in Europe is done in late autumn. It is also really important to try not to destroy completely the plant during the harvesting and try to lose as little material as possible, and I know that it is not easy talking about 5-meter-high plants. The last information is the quality! So why do we produce this plant? It is not eaten, at least no one eats that here in Italy. It is used for biomass production, so cellulose is really important, lignin needs to be as lower as possible. Another investigated use it for building, in some cases can be seen as a plant really similar to bamboo.
Personal study and future perspective
In my study, we are comparing how different ecotypes of Arundo and other plants interesting for biomass production behave in stress conditions. We have some plants used as tests, so we water them constantly, keep the soil perfect and we give some nutrition and at the same time we have some plants stress, so no water, no nutrition, only my love.
In particular we are comparing Arundo donax, Saccharum spontaneum (a relative of sugarcane) and Mischatus spp. Let's see who will win the non-water race!
I am asking these questions for the next articles:
Do you know the difference between C3 and C4 plants?
Are you interested in some genetic characteristics of Arundo?
Do you want to know something more about biomass and the feature of the plant?
Pre-settled status received
Today is my lucky day: I, finally, received my pre-settled status. As I told you I am Italian, I lived in the UK for 6 months last year for an internship and I recently won a PhD position in the UK again.
What is different between 2020 and 2021?
Something happened: BREXIT. I traveled to UK last year without any problems, with my national ID and a simple flight ticket, I live my life without any problems, I move a little bit (following always COVID restrictions) and I had 0 problems.
This year, 2021, UK is not in Europe anymore. I don't want to discuss their choice, I am not an expert in politics and economics so I am not going to judge the decision, but I can tell you what happened to me. To enter the country now, even if we are European, we need a visa. The visa could be a work visa, a student visa, or a tourist visa depending on your situation. But in some cases, like mine, if you have lived before 31st December 2020 in the UK you can apply for this magic status called "pre-settled status", that you don't need a visa to enter/exit the UK.
Visa or pre-settled status?
The deadline to apply for this magic opportunity was 30th June, and guess when I received and decided to accept the offer for my PhD? Easy answer! 1 July. The day after. Luckily in some cases, the government gave an extension of the deadline and I managed to apply.
This application was not easy at all, we need to use an app to scan your document but my smartphone was not able to download this app. I needed to wait until evening and my boyfriend let me use his phone for all the procedures. After this, you should wait for 5 working days till 1 month to receive your answer. Well, I waited 2 months.
In the meantime, I was not sure about starting all the procedures for a student visa. A visa is really expensive and time-consuming, you need to travel to Rome to take so language exam and to sign all the documents. I tried to avoid all this waste of money and time.
Happy day! ... or not?
Yesterday evening, I was eating my favorite pizza and I received an email from the UK gov asking me to upload other evidence to support my stay in UK last year.
I did immediately, this was so important to me, and this morning they asked me for other documents. AGAIN.
I got angry, nervous, and anxious... I started crying, over-breathing due to stress so I decided to wait in the afternoon and my plan was to call the gov and try to understand what was the issue with my situation.
Final email!
During my calming and relaxing lunch, I receive another email, with the confirmation of the pre-settled status! I don't know what happened, something mysterious and magic happened because without uploading anything new I received my status. Long story, with a nice final, until now.
Not uploading any photos because all the data are sensitive.
Newbie on read.cash
Hi everyone, I am newbie here on read.cash and I have a lot of stories to tell you. Little bit of who I am:
First of all, I am Italian and my everyday name is Laura. For a lot of time I hated people mispronouncing my name, but now I have accepted it - I know that in English the pronounce is different and I have learnt to answer. I know how a lot of people are interested in Italian culture, overall our amazing and delicious food. I'll write here some of my favorite recipes for you, I really love pasta and cake/biscuits, in particular trying new recipes is really challenging for me.
I don't want to forget my love for pizza, here 2 of my fav toppings: sausages and "friarielli" (green vegetables) and bacon, potatoes and mushrooms on the other side.
Second, I am 25 years ago, just graduated in Agriculture in Italy (University of Bologna) and I am ready to move to UK for a PhD. I'll write about my study and my student life in a foreign country, this will be funny for sure. I have lived with my family for a long time, so I will face a lot of trouble... I already know that!
Third, I am a mom of 3 cats, so animal adventures will be present in my channel too.
My cat are: Teo, Polpetta and Achille. Teo is the youngest, 4 months old, black and white, loves playing with everything that is moving. Polpetta is 2 years old, mostly white, curious and he is standing little Teo. Achille, 9 years old, is the oldest, he loves meowing and waking me up in the early morning.
Hope this will help me, my writing skills are really low and I want to improve them!
Cheers,
Laura
@maxpollins
