🧵
In the spirit of "you can't get what you don't ask for" and "trying to be more positive about online community just like the old days", I have an immodest proposal for kind Mastodonians in Spain, France, Germany, and other European countries I might pass through.
I start in València and need to move on starting March 30, eventually arriving in Freiburg im Breisgau on April 23, then back to Albania. I'm somewhat flexible about where I go in between using my Eurail pass.
As a disabled woman who lost most of her stuff exiting the US to look for a funded PhD in Europe, I am actually broker than I seem. I'm SO GRATEFUL for the help of Mastodonians so far in helping me in this journey and survival.
I got late notice of a Mediterranean Forest conference/ Carob workshop right up my alley. The fares to go were already high, but I felt I had to take the risk. Other things have happened since to keep the costs high. So I'm looking for some way to make this work.
I’m trying to make a slow trip from Spain to #Spezi2026 in Freiburg as affordable, accessible, and joy-inspiring as I can given the circumstances.
I’m in my 60s and taking risks I was too cautious to take in my 20s, including asking Mastodonians if they know of or can offer ways I can make this month-long sojourn more affordable (and hopefully academically rewarding…got a good Pomology/Botany Department at your local university or research institution?)
Things I can present on:
- Carob (US history of it, wider history of it, as street trees, what I think are opportunities and challenges).
- Accessibility/ableism in academia, particularly in STEM/Hort/Ag. What the situation is, tools for changing it.
- Similarly, accessibility in cycling. I have extensive experience as a disabled cyclist of uprights, recumbents, and folders, as well as an activist for accessible cycle infrastructure.
You might only know carob as not-chocolate, which is a tragedy of its disco-era branding. This tough, gnarly, drought-resistant plant is the real-life Giving Tree, explains passionate Carobologist Megan Lynch. Dripping with leathery banana-shaped legume pods, this tree quietly dots suburban streets
#SciComm I can do:
- I can work with you (analog) to help you create pleasing accessible design for your scientific poster
- I can work with your institution to help you identify areas you can make your social media and other communication more accessible (both to disabled people & the general public). I can help you create a social media workflow that eliminates roadblocks to accessibility
- I can help you create (analog, 100% not AI) graphical abstracts and illustrations for your papers
Commercial sweet orange cultivars lack resistance to Huanglongbing (HLB), a serious phloem limited bacterial disease that is usually fatal. In order to develop sustained disease resistance to HLB, transgenic sweet orange cultivars ‘Hamlin’ and ‘Valencia’ expressing an Arabidopsis thaliana NPR1 gene under the control of a constitutive CaMV 35S promoter or a phloem specific Arabidopsis SUC2 (AtSUC2) promoter were produced. Overexpression of AtNPR1 resulted in trees with normal phenotypes that exhibited enhanced resistance to HLB. Phloem specific expression of NPR1 was equally effective for enhancing disease resistance. Transgenic trees exhibited reduced diseased severity and a few lines remained disease-free even after 36 months of planting in a high-disease pressure field site. Expression of the NPR1 gene induced expression of several native genes involved in the plant defense signaling pathways. The AtNPR1 gene being plant derived can serve as a component for the development of an all plant T-DNA derived consumer friendly GM tree.
@mschfr Probably all of the above. Plus introductions to any botanists/pomologists/horticulturalists at Freiburg institutions, if someone knows someone...
I have a ticket to camp on the grounds at Spezi (if I can get some camping equipment...I'm looking into doing that), but time before or after that requires additional COVID-cautious lodging.
https://en.spezialradmesse.de/unterkunft
I can't do Warm Showers because my trike isn't ready yet so I'm not riding to/from Spezi.
Megan Lynch (she/her)
Michael