Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 2h

🎶 One of these things is not like the others... 🎶

Just bitterly disappointing to see so few women recognized with scientific Nobels, year after year after year.

The nine 2025 Nobel Prize winners in the science categories, eight of which are men.

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 5h

So what’s the final gender skew on this year’s science Nobels? Seven men, one woman?

Terrible.

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 15h

A couple of years old but this post might be helpful:

betterposters.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-...

The view from SICB 2020: Fabrics!

I recently attended the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology conference in Austin ( #SICB2020 on Twitter). I saw hundreds of po...

betterposters.blogspot.com

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 16h

10 "maybe not exactly horror movies" to get to know me by

🎩 The Prestige
🐢 Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris
🏫 Les Diaboliques (original)
🌿 Invasion of the Body Snatchers
⛵ Cape Fear (original)
🦈 Jaws
👻 The Haunting (Robert Wise version)
Ⓜ️ M (Fritz Lang)
🐍 Venom
🐊 Lake Placid

Riley Black 🦕 🏳️‍⚧️ @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 16h

10 horror movies to get to know me by

🐊 Alligator
🧀 Mandy
🐆 Cat People
🐺 An American Werewolf in London
💉The Substance
☄️ The Deadly Spawn
⚛️ Gojira
🥚 ALIEN
🚿 Death Spa
🦑 Deep Rising

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 16h

10 horror movies to get to know me by

🦇Bram Stoker's Dracula
✝️The Devils
🍼Rosemary's Baby
👻The Medium
👫Possession
📹Lost Highway
💉Audition
🐸The Wicker Man ('73)
⚫Under the Skin
♦️The Neon Demon

Reposted by Zen Faulkes

El Lower @helloellower.bsky.social · 19h

This was such a fun episode — thanks to the folks at IISG for inviting me back on the show (and to my fellow guests for letting me talk about the self-cloning crayfish we ALL wanted to discuss! 🦞🦞🦞)

Katie O'Reilly @drkatfish.bsky.social · 20h

New episode of the Teach Me About the Great Lakes podcast is out! I joined a couple other invasive species folks to talk about the new-ish aquatic invasive species in the #GreatLakes region we think people should know about www.teachmeaboutthegreatlakes.com/113

Teach Me About the Great Lakes | Spoiler Alert: This is Not Fine

What are the aquatic invasive species that Great Lakes experts wish you knew more about? Megan and Carolyn discuss with TMATGL all-stars El Lower, Katie O'Reilly, and Brian Roth.Links:Past episodes...

www.teachmeaboutthegreatlakes.com

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 20h

That statement come from a press release that doesn't provide any evidence supporting those numbers. "Five animals + 12 plants = 75% of food" is just asserted.

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 1d

This is true for students too. Yes there are many factors impacting student reading, but working 30+ hours a week to be able to afford college is definitely one of them.

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 1d

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 1d

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Jonathan @renewableenergy.bsky.social · 1d

Huge historic turning point — Renewables surpassed coal as the world’s leading electricity source for the first half of 2025!

#greensky #energysky #renewableenergy

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

Miguel Clavero @chikichanka.bsky.social · 1d

17th century crayfish
Astacus Minor (Austropotamobius?) and Astacus Maior (Astacus?)
Joannes Jonstonus, 1657
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4091808...

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 1d

For instance, DORA released a practical guide to reforming research assessment a few months back:

sfdora.org/resource/pra...

A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations | DORA

"A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations" provides action-oriented guidance, resources, and illustrative examples, for research performin...

sfdora.org

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 1d

Not sure why this new initiative is out there when organizations like DORA already exist. But rising tide, I guess.

Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 1d

Several organizations are now putting more than $1 million toward reimagining hiring, promotion and tenure at U.S. universities.

$1.5 million program targets changes to academic incentives

The incentive systems that drive academic research underlie nearly every story we write: publication counts for promotion, pressure to produce positive results, hitting certain metrics, and so on. …

retractionwatch.com

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 1d

Monterey Bay is my favourite, I think. Beautiful location, building, exhibits.

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 1d

Old problem, just in bigger quantities.

What’s next is probably bad?

I think we will sit through a bunch of people saying this is a problem that can be fixed with technology and that tech companies should be allowed time to develop their own guardrails and watch that approach fail and fail again.

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 1d

My fieldwork was usually half a day in the morning, so I didn’t need snacks during field work. I would have lunch right after - usually Burger Fi after they opened a local franchise.

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 2d

I wrote an article about that. Pilots are more promising than I expected, but I would love to see people engage with the details of what paid per review would look like MUCH more.

origineditorial.com/origin-edito...

Making “Pay Peer Reviewers” More Than a Slogan

Is it time to pay peer reviewers?Peer review is crucial to the academic publishing process. However, the system is under strain, with fewer researchers volunteering to review, resulting in delays that...

origineditorial.com

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 2d

There’s already a publishing system that is well established, free to publish, and #OpenAccess.

It’s called SciELO:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SciELO

Let’s not reinvent the wheel. 🛞

SciELO - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 2d

The new Wiley journal review system is an absolute nightmare. Editorial assistants have been replaced by a clunky, AI-enabled website that makes it harder to find and invite reviewers. Associate editor workloads have increased. I'm not convinced the invitations to reviewers are even going through.

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 2d

Recent MDPI paper including diagram of a bacterial cell with a mitochondrion 🤦‍♀️ The authors propose a mechanism for the toxicity of silver nanoparticles: "Ag+ ions in AgNPs bombard the bacterial mitochondria’s electron transport chain, resulting in cell death".

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 3d

There’s been a surplus of qualified personnel for decades.

Prediction: Management for most higher ed institutions don’t give much more than a second’s thought to faculty leaving. I’ve don’t think I’ve ever heard an administrator mention it.

Graph showing PhD students increasing at rates far faster than faculty positions.

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 3d

One of the cool things about aging is you get to see science progressing.

To think, there was a time (in my lifetime!) when we literally didn’t know as an observable fact that there were other planets 🪐 outside our solar system!

I mean, we were PRETTY sure there were, but still. 🤔

Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 5d

This week (!) is the 30th anniversary of the announcement of 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet found orbiting a star like our Sun - since then, we've found over 6,000!

To celebrate, @alexwitze.bsky.social and @nature.com collected some astronomers' favourite planets:

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

These alien planets are astronomers’ favourites: here’s why

Space scientists look back on 30 years of exoplanet discoveries — from rows of massive ‘super-Earths‘ to worlds with perfectly synchronized orbits.

www.nature.com

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 3d

Those initiatives seem aimed at a small number of perceived “star” researchers and would thus be irrelevant to 99% plus of American researchers.

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

Alex Nelson @alxnelson.bsky.social · 3d

Roseate spoonbills will splash their wings through the water as part of their beauty routine. Here's one doing so mid-splash, facing straight ahead towards the camera. I really love this shot. #birds

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 3d

Academics: I heard that some administrators are saying "things are bad everywhere, faculty won't leave" as a reason for not improving things on campuses for faculty. Have you heard that? Is that true? How is that affecting union negotiations?

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Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 3d

I got DROME partly because it had a great big crab. 🦀

🤯

What an absolutely brilliant comic. It uses the medium so well.

Made the mistake of getting the ebook version, which lessened the impact of some fabulous two page spreads.

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes

Manoel Horta Ribeiro @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social · 22d

Social media feeds today are optimized for engagement, often leading to misalignment between users' intentions and technology use.

In a new paper, we introduce Bonsai, a tool to create feeds based on stated preferences, rather than predicted engagement.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.10776

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