Asceptic germination and manipulation

[Tucson Grower]

A few times, back in college (late 1980's), when my student job was to culture and mass produce plant pathogens (for use in breeding for disease resistance), I was allowed to use the lab gear for my own projects. I just needed to purchase my own supplies. I had many seed of carnivorous plants, which I had saved from plants I'd grown in the early 1970's. So, in order to get the most out of my old seed, I would sow it in asceptic culture. I got interesting results; some seed would germinate in less than 24 hours, some were so age damaged, their dormant embryos no longer viable, but they'd sometimes regenerate from a few cells of the embryos that were still alive - though this was a much longer process, than simple germination. I wish I still had access to that type of equipment.

In 1972, at Shadyside HS my science professor had gone to HS with my father. I was given free access to use the lab facilities, it's where I first practiced asceptic protocol.

[macmex]

Sounds like a fantastic technology! I wish I could have used it to recover Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin, which I lost about ten years ago.

[Tucson Grower]

One fun thing to do with this asceptic nutrient culture is to grow haploid plants from ovules or pollen grains. Grow them out to evaluate for desirable traits, then, using another technique to double the selected plants genes, turning a haploid plant (a single set of chromosomes) into a completely homozygous (matching - or "the same"), diploid plant (dual sets of identical chromosomes). Haploid plants have no recessive traits. Diploid plants, produced this way, when self-pollinated, produce offspring virtually identical twins/clones of their parents.

I'm sure this technology has advanced since then. Some day soon I should update myself. Maybe there are better protocols, now.

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson,

What university did you attend that had all of that equipment on hand? It would be so cool to see something like that!

Unfortunately, our Genetics Professor had no clue what he was up to. We didn't learn much of anything in his classes. In fact, most of our classes were like that. Oklahoma's State Universities are a joke. NSU didn't even have pencil sharpeners.  Half the time, it was so cold in our classrooms that all I could think about was "I wish they'd spent my tuition on an electric blanket." Our desks looked like grade-school rejects, and our classes were so crowded that half the time my knees were in the backside of the person sitting in front of me.  Our football field had a brand new installation of artificial turf though, and we had an indoor 50 yard practice field, just in case it was raining outside or something.

Our Country does our citizenry a great injustice by skimping on education to the point that most of us never get much beyond basic Arithmetic. And Science ... Forget about Science ... Our teachers couldn't pass on what they never learned themselves.

The sad part is that NSU is our State's premier 'College of Education' turning out Oklahoma's next generation of poorly equipped, poorly educated, Teachers.

[Tucson Grower]

It was at New Mexico State University. I worked, as a student worker,  for Dr. Paul Bosland and with several of his graduate students, in the chile breeding program. It was some of the most interesting time of my life. I had just finished 13 years in the navy, which was also very interesting, but this was way better.

I had earned a position on the NMSU flower judging team. The inter-collegiate competition was in Illinois, that winter. When we socialized with the competing students, we were frequently asked, why we were all so tan. Our answer; "sometimes we need to go between our vehicles and the buildings".

[Tucson Grower]

I consider myself to be extremely fortunate when it comes to education. I began kindergarten when I was just 4 y.o. - my 3rd and final kindergarten was in Los Alamos, CA, after frst attending kindergarten in Hawthorne and Redondo Beach, CA. It was a small community, with all the grades; K-12 in one compound. I finished kindergarten there, then 1st and 2nd grades, most of 3rd grade in Martins Ferry, OH - place of my birth, then the end of 3rd and most of 4th grade, were back there in Los Alamos. The principle at Los Alamos, was Olga Reed. She was, hands-down, one of the most amazing persons I've ever met, and definitely the most talented and competent educator, by far. She had several thousand students, and she made a point to know each and every one of us. She also found a way to give each of her teachers a break, each week, and personally teach a portion of daily classes. Usually music or reading to us, or also having us participate in the reading. She read in a fascinating, 'narrator' style. It got me curious, what was the way she read. It was so interesting. She explained it to me, and because of her example I was able to learn to read in similar fashion.

After she passed, they renamed the school after her. Since interacting with her I developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge. In the remainder of my educational life, I managed to avoid most homework. I would devour the textbooks, in a night or two, then make the challenge to the instructor, that if my grade on any exam dropped below a certain mark, I would then expect to be doing homework. Hee hee. I really didn't like to use a pen or pencil to write - too tedious; it was wonderful that my last class in my last year of HS, was typing.

[heavyhitterokra]

That's an amazing story, Tucson. What an honor that must have been to have been one of Olga Reed's students or to have attended NMSU, or Los Alamos, for that matter. I had a professor sort of like your Ms Reed. No matter what he was up to, no matter how busy he was, no matter if you were one of his students or someone else's, he'd drop everything he was doing to assist any individual with any sort of problem.

I absolutely loved that guy's teaching style and his wonderful persona. Then one day, I heard the Dean of the Math Department degrading him, talking to some other faculty members behind closed doors about wanting to get rid of him because he did not have a Doctorate, he only had a Master's Degree in Math.

I had just recently found out that this very gifted Professor of ours had not long ago, sold his former home in Tulsa, where he had been teaching at the Spartan School of Aeronautics. He had just recently bought another home closer to Tahlequah, where his new position was to be.  Now, they were talking of dissolving his new position there. 

Hearing that conversation about his lack of credentials enraged me; he was orders of magnitude better at Teaching, than anyone else there with any sort of Ph.D. They took no consideration of his unique teaching skills or the quality of his classes; all they cared about were his credentials.

I wrote a letter to the Dean of the Math Department ... When I saw that it was getting no traction, I wrote another letter to the President of the University, with the Dean's letter attached and hand delivered it myself.

A few weeks later, I got a visit from that gifted Professor. He was elated that his class load had gone from almost nonexistent to teaching so many classes that he could hardly keep up with the new load!

Sometimes, it pays to take things right to the top!

[macmex]

I was more of an average student. However, when I was in 5th grade I was honored to be selected as one of 5 students to take typing lessons with brand new, high tech electric typewriters. Someone donated five of those machines to our middle school and the administration asked the faculty about how to best use them. They decided to do a typing class for the fifth grade. They figured that they had five classrooms of 5th graders, so each classroom could send a student. They decided they'd pick the student with the worst handwriting in each class to be the "nominee" to take the class. I put nominee in quotes because we were not allowed to decline 

The teacher was a Mrs. Murphey, a former nun. She was very strict yet kind (Extremely good teacher). By the end of 5th grade I was typing about as fast as I can talk, and I still do. That class was a major blessing to me when I finally hit college and typed papers were a requirement. When I was in middle school we thought that only secretaries needed to learn to type.

[hmoosek]

Electric typewriters <<<Insert Evil Grin>>>

I was a prankster! I took typing because there wasn’t any homework. I used to play practical jokes during typing test. We only had 3 electrical typewriters. So I would set directly behind one of them and wait until they got about 1/2 or 3/4 through the 5 minute test, then use my feet to unplug one of the typewriters. I got away with it once as an accident, but the second time I did it, the teach moved me to the back of the room.

I was fortunate to be well prepared for first grade. My Mom had worked with me extensively. I could read, write, add, subtract. I actually thought my peers were stupid or something. I remember coming home and telling my Mom how dumb the kids were. I was so bored I’d get into trouble. The Teacher talked to my Mom about moving me up a grade or two, but since I was a runt, Mom was afraid the bigger kids might pick on me. I’m sort of glad they didn’t move me up now, but then I was really wanting to move up with the “smarter kids.” I was lucky that I never had to bring homework home, but Mom always insisted that I redo everything, so I quit doing it beforehand.

[amyinowasso]

George, typing is the only class I ever got a D in. Computers were the answer because I could back up and fix mistakes. I'm out of practice now because I use a tablet, so it's all one finger hunt and Peck.

[heavyhitterokra]

I only took typing class because there was no other class available for half a school year, while I took driver's Ed. for the other half.

Back then, it was like George mentioned above, "No one needed typing class unless you planned on being a secretary." Or so we thought ... Man, how I wish now that I had at least attempted to learn to type while in that class.

Now, it's one finger, hunt and peck for me too ... 

[Tucson Grower]

Now, when I'd finished my senior year of HS typing class, I wasn't really much of a typist. But, after holding down a few jobs, over the years, that involved typing (while in the navy). I had gotten somewhat better. One side-job I did, once, while in college was as a typesetter for a Dandy Dime, want add, weekly paper. I remember, when I was being interviewed for the position, taking their typing test. I got a score of 80 WPM, with no errors. I remember, the gal interviewing me was so amazed, she asked if I would be willing to take their typing test, again. I think she wasn't sure about the validity of the test - maybe she thought it was a fluke. I said, "sure". On the second test I got 88 WPM without errors. I was offered the job, right then. It was fun, then one night several weeks later (a layup night), where we print out all the adds and glue and paste them into the master of the paper to send to the printer. I went to print them out; the system we used was an Apple PC system, and all the adds for the week were in a single computer file. I discovered an issue that Apple computer files could develope. Suddenly I could only access the first days adds, the rest of the file had become unaccessible. They were there, and maybe an Apple programmer could rescue the file, but we didn't have one of those available, and only a few hours before we had to have the master available for the printer (we were in Las Cruces, NM and the printer was in San Antonio, TX). He drove up to pick up the master and was already on his way. Our only option was for me to retype all the adds from scratch. So I retyped a weeks worth of adds in just less than 2 hours, giving us just enough time to print them out and lay them up in the master. Boy was that hectic, and fun. Soon after we got new management, who switched up our system completely, going to an IBM style PC system and where the adds were keyed in by the front desk clerks who received them from the customers. I no longer had a job. It was fun while it lasted.

[hmoosek]

I was never a fast typer. I think the best I ever did was 42wpm. The girls in the class were way better. I happened to be the only boy in the class. I think I took it my sophomore or Junior year as best as I can remember. I know it wasn’t freshman and I had all my credits I needed to graduate by Senior year with the exception of English. We had to have four years of English. My Senior year was a blast. I took English, Shop and Study Hall, then I got out at Noon. Technically it was 1:00, but I didnt have any classes between lunch and 1, so you know how that went.

[Tucson Grower]

hmoosek, Now that you mention it, I too was the only boy in the class. There were probably 30-40 students in that class and they were manual typewriters. It was Orange High in the city of Orange, in Orange County CA and it was 1974. (In January of 1975, IBM released the model of electric typewritter I most often used while in the navy.) I had no problem being the only boy in class, lots of the girls were very cute. At that time I also participated in some advanced curricula classes, one being as a tutor in a remedial math class for earlier math challenged students - there were several of us tutors. That was one of my most difficult classes, and not because of what my role in the class was, but, for some reason many of the most attractive junior girls always came to me for tutoring. Staying entirely "professional" was my biggest challenge in that class. I might have had a grade issue if I'd overly socialized with the other students.