{"id":215,"date":"2018-12-12T22:07:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T20:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/?p=215"},"modified":"2019-02-04T18:54:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T16:54:49","slug":"square-tomatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/2018\/12\/12\/square-tomatoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Square Tomatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some days ago, I found out about\u00a0the square tomato<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In short, the “cultivar VF-145” was developed at UC Davis to get to a more sturdy kind of tomato that wouldn’t squish so easily and wouldn’t roll of conveyor belts. It is not really square, but just “less round” than a more round tomato.<\/p>\n

Anyway, many different ways to look at, and solve, a single problem (and all the subsequent problems that arise because of that).\u00a0Less manpower – Get in a machine to do it. The tomatoes roll off and get crushed by machines – Change the tomatoes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or perhaps it depends on the person you bring the problem to. Changing the tomato would probably be the first thing that comes to the mind of a plant breeder – but not necessarily to the mind of a solar cell researcher (not that solar cell researchers are the best people to solve tomato problems… It’s probably a\u00a0good idea to leave them to tomato experts). But it does make one wonder: would the solution be still the same had someone else been on this task? Someone with a slightly different background and technical expertise?<\/p>\n

I have had times in research when I was stumped by a mundane, and most of the times\u00a0non-scientific,\u00a0problem (which is, of course, mundane only in retrospect – no problem is too stupid, too mundane, or too small when it is in the phase of being a problem). I only had to move around, sometimes up and down some stairs, throwing the question at people I knew – and one of them would reply with an obvious solution that would leave you in a speechless why-didn’t-I-think-of-this state.<\/p>\n

Times like these are when you find out who your real friends are – They are the ones who will not hesitate to break you out of\u00a0your tunnel vision\u00a0and bring you play-doh to seal your glassware airtight when you need it.<\/p>\n

However, my biggest concern is completely unrelated to this now: Have I been eating square tomatoes all my life, thinking they were round when there were probably rounder tomatoes out there? Have I even seen a truly round tomato ever?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some days ago, I found out about\u00a0the square tomato. In short, the “cultivar VF-145” was developed at UC Davis to get to a more sturdy kind of tomato that wouldn’t squish so easily and wouldn’t roll of conveyor belts. It is not really square, but just “less round” than a more round tomato. Anyway, many … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Square Tomatoes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":404,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4,17,14,52,24,13,12,53],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-science","tag-doctorate","tag-experiments","tag-lab-work","tag-problems","tag-project","tag-research","tag-science","tag-solutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/squdsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}