Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 18d

Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Honour McCann @honour.bsky.social · 20d

There’s a leak - and a conceptual artist - at the Max Planck 👌

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 23d

Bioinformaticians / computational biologists take note - know where you should take your OS tool chain from and do not introduce backdoors.

James Bonfield @jbonfield.bsky.social · 23d

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.

Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · 24d

there only are data for the actual numbers (linked in the first post). reasons why is only thoughtful speculation

Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · 25d

Not sure about a push to lead, but everyone sees opportunity to get the top talent no longer interested in the USA. ERC grants, for example, added a bonus for those joining Europe from outside. 2M bonus on a 1.5M starter grant, for example. erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

Increased ERC funding for top global researchers moving to Europe now confirmed

The European Research Council (ERC) decision to increase its support for leading researchers moving to Europe has today been formally adopted. On top of its standard grants, the ERC offers additional ...

erc.europa.eu

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · 25d

yeah, they go where the money is..

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · 25d

record 17,058 Marie Curie proposals in 2025 vs. 10,360 in 2024!!! the reason is pretty obvious, but wow that is a huge jump marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 receives record number of 17,058 proposals

This year’s annual MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call has attracted considerable interest from the research community with 17,058 proposals submitted.

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Oliver Bossdorf @bossdorf.bsky.social · 28d

Job Alert! The University of Tübingen is hiring a FULL PROFESSOR (W3) in FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY! Come and join our institute, and maybe our new excellence clusters @terra-cluster.org and @greenrobust.de. @gfoesoc.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Please repost!

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Sep 5

nicely done Sebastian!

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

James Lyle @radgrammar.bsky.social · Sep 4

In my experience, conference speakers are generally people who know stuff worth hearing, and not people who are great at public speaking. Listening to the content while ignoring whatever annoys you about the delivery is a good skill to cultivate, and you owe it to your intellect.

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · Sep 4

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Sep 3

this is so strange!!!!!!!

Nature @nature.com · Sep 3

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

go.nature.com

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Sep 1

send back an interview request [time here] [ZOOM link here]

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · Aug 29

@nature.com I love this article - but WHY are the only share options to X and Facebook when the whole point of the article is that science-based posts get more shares here?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Research posts on Bluesky are more original — and get better engagement

Bluesky posts about science garner more likes and reposts than similar ones on X.

www.nature.com

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Aug 28

reviewing for a major international journal and 1 in 6 refs are papers written in Chinese. Titles, journal names, and abstracts are English, so you don't realize it from the ref. list.("Journal of Plant Nutrition and Fertilizers".) I can't judge these..
Journal updating policy on ref language.

Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Klaus Schlaeppi @kschlaeppi.bsky.social · Aug 25

SynCom of maize root bacteria: in team work, they detox differently. Interacting they redirect the metabolisation to an alternative degradation product.

Credits: @lisathoenen.bsky.social, Dr. Christine Pestalozzi & teams @unibas.ch and @unibe.ch.

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Synthetic communities of maize root bacteria interact and redirect benzoxazinoid metabolization | mSphere

We investigated how maize root bacteria—alone or in community—tolerate and metabolize antimicrobial compounds of their host plant. We found that the capacity to metabolize such a compound impacts bact...

journals.asm.org

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

pussyfullawasps 🗡️ (they/she) @pussyfullawasps.bsky.social · Aug 15

this seems like a very good idea actually

reddit screenshot r/technology
70 people here

Al's Biggest Threat: Young People W...
4.3k upvotes • 442 comments
SonofRodney • 6h
I recently heard about a teacher who instead of trying to circumvent students using ai, which is impossible, she made assignments by going "ask ChatGPT to write a report on this subject, and then research how and why it's wrong".
Not only did the students discover that chatGPT is extremely wrong a lot of the time, it also lead them to realize that they should not use it as a primary source.

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · Aug 14

1/2 What's best: a field-first or lab-first approach? No easy answers but differences between lab and field should not be seen as failure but motivate further inquiry and allow complementary discovery. Read our thoughts on this here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lab to field: Challenges and opportunities for plant biology

Plant-microbe research offers many choices of model and strain and whether a field-first or lab-first approach is best. However, differences between l…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Aug 13

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How much environmental chaos to embrace in plant-microbe research, and to what end? A commentary on setting (with all choices OK as long as all options considered) w/ bergelsonlab.org, @fabriceroux7.bsky.social,
@plantevolution.bsky.social, tkarasovlab.org

authors.elsevier.com

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Aug 6

This extension turns off google AI on the chrome browser, for any others who don't want to read the often-wrong AI overview!

chromewebstore.google.com/detail/bye-b...

Bye Bye, Google AI: Turn off Google AI Overviews, Discussions and Ads - Chrome Web Store

Filter Google search results to hide AI overviews, ads, discussions or videos. You choose.

chromewebstore.google.com

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Jessica Budke 🌱🥼🔬 @mossplants.bsky.social · Aug 2

Know an Evolutionary Genomicist looking for a faculty position? Join us in EEB @utknoxville.bsky.social Position is open for studying any organism, but personally I have some botany bias. 🌱 Apply before Sept 19 for full consideration. apply.interfolio.com/170735 Please share widely. Thanks!

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · Aug 2

1/3 New preprint led by Shanshan Wang, in collaboration with the Timmermans lab.

Several groups have presented sc/snRNA-seq analyses of Arabidopsis leaves after bacterial infection before. Is there anything left to discover? Turns out: Yes.

#plantscience
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Sean Gibbons 🦠💩 @gibbological.bsky.social · Jul 31

You can get an accurate estimate of total bacterial biomass from stool metagenomes by simply normalizing by host read count, without needing any additional measurements.

Excellent work by UW Master's student Gechlang Tang in @asm.org #mSystems Journal.

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
🧵

Metagenomic estimation of absolute bacterial biomass in the mammalian gut through host-derived read normalization | mSystems

In this study, we asked whether normalization by host reads alone was sufficient to estimate absolute bacterial biomass directly from stool metagenomic data, without the need for synthetic spike-ins, ...

journals.asm.org

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Reposted by Derek Severi Lundberg

Gautam Shirsekar @coevolution.bsky.social · Jul 28

Come join EEB at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Evolutionary Genomics, Assistant Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Fall 2026
apply.interfolio.com/170735
functional and evolutionary genomics in any system 🌱, 🦠, or 🦌 (including 👫)

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Derek Severi Lundberg @derekseveri.bsky.social · Jul 25

I agree with the authors and think if there is no malpractice one should not "retract". I prefer a "special interest correction" be issued in exceptional cases like this, including by the journal without the authors' consent.

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