📝 How does fluid flow reshape cyanobacterial blooms?
Experiemnts + Theory + Field work, led by Yuri Sinzato to show when colonies break or stick, and why that matters for bloom dynamics.
eLife: elifesciences.org/articles/103...
Digest: elifesciences.org/digests/1035...
#Cyanobacteria #Ecology
Opalized turtle shell fossil
💔
Icebergs can self-propel 🧊➡️
Dive into the microscopic world of pond critters! These stunning images reveal ciliates and water bears in incredible detail, showcasing nature's hidden wonders.
Researchers tracked individual diatoms—unicellular photosynthetic microalgae with rigid silica cell walls—as they glided along a surface using mobile adhesive strands that protrude through slits in their cell walls, known as raphes. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/3GnU50YFJwL
We have postdoc openings for data-driven modeling and information flows in living systems, with a focus on embryonic development. mattiaserra.com
Requirements: PhD in Physics, Applied Math, or similar; prior exposure to biological data preferred.
Please share with potential candidates. Thank you!
Preprint 🌱 Plants build nonlinear vectorial representations of light patterns!
Surprising results: Opposing cues cancel, so plants grow towards a weaker tie-breaker light.
Plants respond to sum of transduced signals, not physical sum of light: optical “illusions”! 🪩
tinyurl.com/44f83xh8
A new study from an associate scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory shows that two different cell populations in a skate embryo can give rise to the same repeating structures (or “serial homologs”) in the adult.
Read the full story here: go.mbl.edu/fft
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
Born #OnThisDay in 1866 was Antonia Maury, astronomer and one of the Harvard Computers. Maury worked on the classification of stellar spectra and binary stars, and was called "the single greatest mind that has ever engaged itself in the field of the morphology of stellar spectra."
#WomenInSTEM
A thing of beauty and mystery
I'm backing @peatfree.bsky.social's campaign for a peat free future . Last October the UK Govt committed to ending the sale of peat– but we need action . Sign the petition calling for legislation in 2026 to bring peat sales to an end at long last . actnow.peatfreepartnership.org.uk/end-peat-sal...
Solidarity!
International Congress in Biological Physics, Genova, Italy, 28 June to 3 July 2026.
URGENT: submission deadline 25 March.
Session topics, plenary and invited speakers:
www.icbp2026.org
IUPAP Physics of Life medal awarded at meeting.
Spread the word - and act quickly to submit your work.
As it’s #IWD26 seems appropriate this message should be heard loud and clear
A vintage portrait of a person wearing an ornate lace bonnet and high-collared garment. The attire appears historical and formal. The person gazes forward with a calm expression. The image is in black and white.
In 1787, the first paper by a woman was read to a meeting of the Royal Society, Caroline Herschel's 'Account of a new comet'. See more on our interactive timeline: #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistoryMonth royalsociety.org/news-resources/women-in-...
#OnThisDay in 1938, American evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis was born. Margulis is most known for developing and popularising the endosymbiotic theory, which explains how eukaryotic cells evolved organelles from simpler prokaryotic organisms that resided within another and became incorporated.
@nicolesharp.com the link is broken. Love your posts!
Some algae swim in circles, by exercising exquisite control of their breaststroke. And they switch direction under light of different intensity. Here's how. (No one is yet quite sure why.)
physics.aps.org/articles/v19...
Great to see our paper on light-intensity dependent swimming patterns in #Chlamydomonas out now in Phys Rev Lett. as an Editors' suggestion! With a nice commentary by @philipcball.bsky.social.
Chlamy actively modulate the beat planes of their #cilia!
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... #protistsonsky
Wish I could attend!
good morning, it’s day 4 of strikes at the University of Essex to save 400 jobs across all departments, the Southend campus and our Foundation programme — many members are worried about making ends meet. if you can, please donate to our strike fund: gofund.me/059af6be8
Happy #FluorescenceFriday! This week we are highlighting an awesome image of an Arabidopsis root from @janmartinek.bsky.social.
Check out our post to learn more about the image and about Jan’s research: focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/13/f...
#sciart #plants #microscopy
Heroic
Next, a glorious combo of maths, metals, and microbial ecology. This one is supervised by Denis Patterson and @blindmath.bsky.social, also at Durham.
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
About time! 🦭🦈🐬🐋🐳🐟🐠🐡🦐🦞🦀🦑🐙🪼🦪🪸
Blue and grey text on white background. Early Career Fellowships. Three images and current project titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences and sciences. Leverhulme Trust logo and URL media.leverhulme.ac.uk/features.
The Trust's Early Career Fellowships offer a three-year salaried post for researchers at the beginning of their academic career to undertake a significant piece of research. Interested? Apply here: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/early-career... Closing date: 19 February 2026, 4pm
A black and white photo of a woman in half-profile, looking to the left of the camera. She is wearing a nineteenth-century coat and collar.
Born #OnThisDay in 1850 was mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, who made significant contributions to several fields of mathematics. She was the first woman to be awarded a PhD in mathematics and one of the first women to work as an editor at a scientific journal. #WomenInSTEM
