Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Todd Woody @toddwoody.bsky.social · 11h

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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Jessica C. Huss @j2huss.bsky.social · 11h

This project was only possible due to funding from @fwf-at.bsky.social. Thank you very much!

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Jessica C. Huss @j2huss.bsky.social · 11h

Great work together with Finn Box, Martin Grömmer, Sebastian Antreich, Qun Zhang, Tofayel Ovee, Jean-Francois Louf, Juerg Schoenenberger, David G. Williams, @bokubionami.bsky.social, @mingchaoliu.bsky.social, @hultinelab.bsky.social

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Jessica C. Huss @j2huss.bsky.social · 11h

One day in the lab, we accidentally discovered that the spines of a cactus 🌵 straighten when exposed to fog. I was intrigued and so were my collaborators. How does this work and what can be gained from it? Here are some of the answers in our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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Jessica C. Huss @j2huss.bsky.social · 15d

I absolutely love your art 😻

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Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Beth Cimini 🔬💻📊 @bethcimini.bsky.social · 15d

Halfway to I2K is BACK, friends of all kinds! Last year, 650 people attended 30+ TOTALLY FREE image analysis workshops of all kinds, across many timezones.

If you make image analysis software and want to teach it, workshop submissions are open now! We'd love to have your tool highlighted.

BioImaging North America @bioimagingna.bsky.social · 19d

#HappyFluorescenceFriday!

#microscopycommunity- want to learn open source image analysis or share your knowledge to help others? We’ve got a FREE virtual workshop Nov 17-19! Now accepting workshop session applications!

Learn more & sign up: buff.ly/esGIotD

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Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf @rahmstorf.bsky.social · 29d

Here‘s a rare and excellent career opportunity for outstanding physical oceanographers at the Potsdam Institute (PIK) and the University of Potsdam, in beautiful surroundings just outside Berlin. Tell qualified friends or colleagues! 🌊
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Full Professorship (W3) for Physics of the Oceans - Potsdam-Mittelmark, Brandenburg (DE) job with Universität Potsdam | 12844582

Founded in 1991, the University of Potsdam has firmly established itself in the scientific landscape and has become an outstanding economic factor ...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Marc Somssich @somssich.bsky.social · Aug 22

What a statement... (see screenshots)

Great article by @derekseveri.bsky.social et al. on the importance of including "real world" conditions in #PlantScience work, to ensure that one is actually studying plant biology and not just plant behavior in a lab environment.

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

The use of a highly simplified environment may incur consid- erable collateral damage for all of plant biology; with the current status quo for in- door cultivation, especially of small ephemeral plants such as A. thaliana, similar artificial conditions are replicated

around the world, and there is a substan- tial risk that the phenotypes in this envi- ronment become confused with the base- line of what is ‘‘normal’’ for these plants.

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Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Laura Moody @moodytomato.bsky.social · Aug 12

Registration for the EMBO workshop ‘Plant evolution: from origins to diversification on land’ closes on 25th August. Don’t miss it! More details can be found here: meetings.embo.org/event/25-pla... 🌱 😀

Plant evolution: from origins to diversification on land

The evolution of plants – photosynthetic eukaryotes resulting from the endosymbiosis of a cyanobacterium and a non-photosynthetic host cell – transformed the earth system by reducing the amount of CO…

meetings.embo.org

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Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) @slcuplants.bsky.social · Jul 23

🚨Don’t miss out! Last weeks left to register for the Plant Computational Biology Workshop 2025, sponsored by @cambup-lifesci.cambridge.org 🌱
📆Deadline 31 July - www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/computationa...
#ComputationalBiology #PlantSci

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Reposted by Jessica C. Huss

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · Jun 19

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

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Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · Jun 20

This is a great article by @joachimgoedhart.bsky.social on @dev-journal.bsky.social about color choice in #DataViz, thenode.biologists.com/data-visuali..., also check out his super useful #DataViz tools at huygens.science.uva.nl 🧪🧬💻

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Jun 11

Climate.gov, a major US government website supporting public education on climate science, will likely shut down after almost all of its staff were fired. What would be worse is if the website were co-opted to publish climate denial content.

Major US climate website likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired

Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content

www.theguardian.com

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Adam Grant @adamgrant.bsky.social · Mar 9

People who can’t handle criticism are unfit to lead.

Weak leaders fear dissent as a threat to their power. They silence their critics to shield their egos.

Strong leaders welcome dissent as an opportunity for growth. They silence their egos to learn from their critics.

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Alice Vayssières @alicevayssieres.bsky.social · Feb 26

SPS - Summer School 2025 on Advanced Plant Imaging – API : From super-resolution to fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy 🔬🌱 in Versailles 👑🇨🇵

For enthusiastic PhD students or young postdoctoral researchers !

Only one week left to apply 👇
eng-saclay-plant-sciences.hub.inrae.fr/teaching-and...

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Jessica C. Huss @j2huss.bsky.social · Feb 12

German anger at its best 😂

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Elisabeth Bik - Perpetrator 5, a fraudulent microbiologist @elisabethbik.bsky.social · Jan 31

Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research

fraudsters have infiltrated the academic publishing industry

Frederik Joelving, Cyril Labbé,
Guillaume Cabanac

theconversation.com/fake-papers-...

Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research

‘Paper mills’ are contaminating the world’s scholarly output with fake papers that hinder research. Lifesaving biomedical fields are especially hard hit.

theconversation.com

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Jan 28

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

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Plantae.org @plantaeofficial.bsky.social · Jan 8

📅New #PlantSciEvents Event Added: Plant-Herbivore Interaction GRC🌱

👉https://eventform.plantae.org/plantae.calendar/detail/1363/1739077200000

#PlantScience

Plant-Herbivore Interaction GRC

Sun 9 Feb - Fri 14 [EST]: The Plant-Herbivore Interaction GRC is a premier, international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge…

eventform.plantae.org

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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · Dec 25

If you've never donated to Wikipedia, now's the time. Elon Musk is attacking it because it's one of the only sources of honest, curated information that he can't control.
www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-ta...

Elon Musk takes aim at Wikipedia

The billionaire has become one of the most prominent supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.

www.newsweek.com

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Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · Dec 19

New collection: "Diffusion barriers in plants" nature.com/collections/...

Biogenesis of diffusion barriers like Casparian strip, suberin lamellae or root exodermis. Primarily focused on root diffusion barriers, but homologous structures were recently discovered in trichomes.

Probably a slice through a root to see the various layers.

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Ben Bond-Lamberty @benbondlamberty.bsky.social · Dec 12

Scientists are expected to do peer reviewing but no one tells you HOW. After talking with several folks about this today at #AGU24 , it seems a good time to link to this presentation I made several years ago -- feel free to use/share! docs.google.com/presentation...

Effective, efficient, and fair peer reviewing 2023

Effective, efficient, and fair peer reviewing Ben Bond-Lamberty Based on a presentation at the AGU Early Career Scientist Workshop, 2019 1

docs.google.com

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Ferris Jabr @ferrisjabr.bsky.social · Dec 15

We're used to seeing holly leaves depicted as exclusively spiny, but most wild holly plants have spiny and smooth leaves

Common holly (I. aquifolium) *changes its gene expression* to produce spines in response to damage by herbivores. Each pair here is from the same plant

📷 Herrera & Bazaga 2013

A collage of four pairs of holly leaves, each from a single plant. The leaves are dark green and glossy with a prominent midline vein of pale green or yellow. Each pair juxtaposes a leaf that has spines along its edge against a leaf with perfectly smooth edges. Credit: Carlos M. Herrera & Pilar Bazaga 2013 https://academic.oup.com/botlinnean/article-abstract/171/3/441/2416188?redirectedFrom=fulltext

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Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso @yoselin.bsky.social · Dec 8

Join us in the second UK Plant Biomechanic conference at Leeds. Organised together with the Institute of Physics. Registration closes on Jan 12th!

@physicsoflifeuk @physicsoflifeuk.bsky.social · Dec 5

And why not finish the week off strong and sign up to the🌿UK Plant Biomechanics Conference on 28 March 2025 in Leeds. Don’t miss out on this exciting one-day event! Details & registration: iop.eventsair.com/ukpbc2025/ #UKPBC2025

Home - UK Plant Biomechanics Conference 2025 - University of Leeds

iop.eventsair.com

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Jessica C. Huss @j2huss.bsky.social · Dec 6

Very cool, but try to avoid red-green combinations (colour blindness).