Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Elizabeth Beston @elizabethbeston.bsky.social · 9h

Tintinnina! These little ciliates have beautiful ‘cups’ called loricae.
#marineplankton 🦑

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Jelena Godrijan 🫧❾🌊🦋 @godi.bsky.social · 1d

🌍💙 Happy International Coccolithophore Day! 💙🌍
Today, Oct 10, we celebrate tiny ocean builders that capture CO₂, shape marine ecosystems & keep our climate in balance.
When Cocco talks, climate walks.
#CoccolithophoreDay #OceanClimate #InvisibleHeroes #OceanGuardians #ClimateWarriors #protistsonsky

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Matt Lemay @littorina.bsky.social · 14h

For #PhycologyFriday we've got a new paper out summarizing 13 years of intensive seaweed surveys on the Central Coast of BC:

cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

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Morgan Vis @fwredalgae.bsky.social · 15h

Anyone out there for #PhycologyFriday? Using this photo from my stash- #freshwater #algae Thorea. An absolutely beautiful 😍 press. Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

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Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · 14h

#PhycologyFriday #MarineLife 🌊🦑

Ryuta Terada @ryutaterada.bsky.social · 15h

Please take a look at our new article on the reassessment of the taxonomic status of Dictyoteae algae from Japan. Congratulations to Dr. Christophe Vieira on this excellent work!

Christophe Vieira et al. 2025.
Journal of Phycology
DOI: 10.1111/jpy.70084
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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Trine Bekkby @trinebekkby.bsky.social · 1d

The «little mermaid» Maia in an Arctic Ascophyllum bed. Soon the winter darkness will shut down our work in the north, at least us «summer time biologists» #PhycologyFriday

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Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · 21h

#Kelp, illuminated. #Egregia #PhycologyFriday #MarineLife 🦑🌊

Golden blades and bladelets of the feather-boa kelp with the sun shining through them.

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Adi Khen @adlysia.bsky.social · 22h

The iconic giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) for #PhycologyFriday!

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Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · 23h

#PhycologyFriday #MarineLife 🦑🌊

Caleb Weston @calebweston.bsky.social · 1d

Seaweed at Golden Hour

Last light of the day on this crop of washed-up seaweed made it really glow. Literally 10 minutes later, that glorious sheen was gone. I was so grateful to be there for that fleeting moment, wandering back from my beach explorations. Easily one of my favorites this year.

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 1d

MIT says no to the Trump admin higher-ed compact clearly and emphatically. Other universities would be well served to read, remix, and respond similarly.

"In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences."

orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

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IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group @iucnshark.bsky.social · 1d

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has just been updated and now includes assessments of 1,266 species of sharks, rays, and chimaeras.

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 1d

I have to fan-girl for a minute here. My friend @rosvall-lab.bsky.social built an app to gather data on bird behavior during the 2024 solar eclipse. 10,000+ citizen scientists contributed (including my kids), and the resulting paper was published in Science today!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Total solar eclipse triggers dawn behavior in birds: Insights from acoustic recordings and community science

On 8 April 2024, a total solar eclipse disrupted light-dark cycles for North American birds during the lead-up to spring reproduction. Compiling more than 10,000 community observations and artificial ...

www.science.org

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Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · 1d

A little bite of sea lettuce 🌊🥬 #Ulva #Seaweed #MarineLife

I am holding a thin, green seaweed blade between my thumb and forefinger.

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The Standard @thelondonstandard.bsky.social · 2d

Hydrating, detoxing and collagen-boosting — Eilidh Dorgan on why we should all be soaking in seaweed

Seaweed bathing: the new wellness trend about to take over your feed

www.standard.co.uk

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Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · 2d

🌅🌊

The sun sets over the Pacific, sending a shimmering light-stream across the ocean and damp sand.

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James A. Letts @lettsscience.bsky.social · 2d

Exciting new preprint from the Maldonado Lab @ucdavis.bsky.social
Structure of photosystem I from Giant Kelp!! First brown algae structure of a photosystem and the first structure of any protein from giant kelp a major primary producer, ecosystem defining species.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Structure of Photosystem I-FCP from giant kelp uncovers drivers of antenna evolution across the red lineage

Brown algae and other red-algae-derived organisms such as diatoms are major contributors to global CO2 fixation via photosynthesis. To understand the photosynthetic function of brown algae, we obtaine...

www.biorxiv.org

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UN Environment Programme @unep.org · 2d

Kelp forests, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs are vital blue ecosystems that sustain our planet.

Yet, they are severely threatened by climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and waste.

Here's why their protection matters: www.unep.org/interactives...

Underwater view of a seagrass meadow with green blades swaying in the water. Text overlay reads: “Seagrass meadows store carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests, and are an important habitat for dugong and seahorses. Join #GenerationRestoration.” Logos of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Life Below Water) appear at the bottom and top left.

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Todd Woody @toddwoody.bsky.social · 2d

One of today's winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is UC Berkeley professor Omar Yaghi. Last year I wrote about Yaghi and Atoco, the startup he founded to commercialize his scientific breakthrough with a device that extracts water from air using just sunlight.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Startups Are Racing to Make Water Out of Thin Air

Materials that are bigger on the inside than the outside provide a futuristic solution to supply water to an increasingly arid planet.

www.bloomberg.com

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 3d

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

www.nobelprize.org

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Filip Husnik @filiphusnik.bsky.social · 4d

OIST is seeking up to four tenure-track or tenured faculty in Ecology, Environmental Science, Earth Science, and Oceanography. Application deadline: Oct 15. Please share. Thx!
www.oist.jp/careers/facu...

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J¡m Vaughn @jiminyspigot.bsky.social · 3d

jiminy's animal reviews: This is a Chihuahuan hook-nosed snake (𝘎𝘺𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘮), and it is unassuming at first glance. A nocturnal snake found in the Southern US through Mexico, they grow to about a foot long (28cm), and eat lots of spiders. Normal snake stuff. But they have a superpower: farting!

A small snake layed across rocky desert ground. It is soft white underneath, and tan with a pattern of brown markings down it's back. It has small beady black eyes, a black tongue, and a small bump on the end of it's nose.

"chihuahuan hook-nosed snake, naricilla chihuahuense, western hooknose snake" by highsinger is licensed under CC BY 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/?ref=openverse.

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Dr. Brendan Anderson @fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social · 4d

Interesting paper using mollusks as climate archives🦑⚒️:
Recent and early 20th century destabilization of the subpolar North Atlantic recorded in bivalves | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recent and early 20th century destabilization of the subpolar North Atlantic recorded in bivalves

Clams reveal North Atlantic destabilization in the early 20th century and at present.

www.science.org

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franz @franzanth.bsky.social · 4d

i just remembered that some people got genuinely upset when i pointed out that live action little mermaid's sebastian would die underwater

Joaquín Baldwin @joabaldwin.com · 7d

Outrageous! The moon rotation in this shot of
The Lion King remake implies it was shot far into the northern hemisphere. What happened to realism? Literally unwatchable.

Screenshot of shot with the full moon rising in front of Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa. Below are three moon diagrams showing the proper orientation of the moon from the northern hemisphere, equator (Kenya) and southern hemisphere. The moon from the film is aligned to the northern hemisphere version because realism means nothing any longer.

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MA Drinkwater @madrinkwater.bsky.social · 4d

A hummingbird's eyelashes 🖤
#macromonday #hummingbirds #birds #blackandwhite #naturephotography #photography 📷 🪶

A black and white close-up of a hummingbird's face with brush-like eyelashes.

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CeeJay Johnson-Yellow Hawk @adriftalchemist.bsky.social · 4d

forget-me-not

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