Prakash Lab at Stanford

““Ice is an incredible porous architecture of highways,” Prakash explained. “Light comes from the top in the ice column, and nutrients come from the bottom. There is an optimal location that [a diatom] might want to be, and that can only be possible with motility.”“

“Scientists used to think that sea ice was simply an inactive barrier on the ocean surface, but discoveries like these reveal that sea ice is a rich habitat full of biological diversity and innovation,”

#ProtistsOnSky (XS Torvill and Dean)

Ice Diatoms Glide at Record-Low Temperatures - Eos New observations reveal how microscopic organisms move through polar ice and illustrate how they may have evolved to thrive in extreme environments.

Life knows how to keep going - even if it’s freezing -15 degrees C 🥶 outside. AGU just covered our discovery of ultra resistant ice diatoms gliding into a world record! 🧪🔬Enjoy the story here:

eos.org/articles/ice...

Want to engage and « do something » about microplastics in your own environment.

Consider joining the foldscope community that has been mapping novel sources of microplastics around the world.

microcosmos.foldscope.com/post/zCoLNt3...

Worried about microplastics around you. We are excited about utilization of our low cost Raman microscopy tools in identifying microplastic pollution - from human body to California beaches to deep ocean.

Read the story here:
news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Biology Colloquium

The same posters in the infinite corridor - and the same chance meeting with old friends walking across.

Title: "Recreational biology: Topological puzzles across scales"

Here are the coordinates: calendar.mit.edu/event/copy-o...

Excited to be returning to MIT to give a talk at MIT Biology tomorrow - after nearly a decade and a half. This campus has changed so much and yet almost nothing has changed. If you are in the area and want to join for a little “joy ride around the planet” searching for oddities of the living world!

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

For last 10 years - we have worked with thousands of organizations around the world helping support them in integrating foldscope programs.

To bring in a new cohort of organizations - we are re-launching “fast and curious” 2025 edition - apply and get a Foldscope trainer and Foldscopes for free!

🔬 Free microscopes + teacher training!

📅 Applications are now open. To apply, visit www.foldscope.com or scan the QR code (video)

✉️ Any questions? Email us at training@foldscope.com

#stem #education #science #teachers #training #free #microscopy #educators #professionaldevelopment #microscope

🚨Calling all SciFri Fans in the Bay Area🚨

🎉 SciFri is going LIVE in Redwood City, California!

Join us and @KQED for a special 2-hour live show. And yes, ToddlerBot will be there. 🤖

🎟️ Grab your tickets now and use code SCIFRI50 for 50% off!

🔗 buff.ly/HxfLJjc

A hummingbird flying through fog, which forms whirly shapes by its wings. Text says: September 12 Octopus suckers, stunning nature shots, invasive mushrooms, teamwork between species, and more.

Happy Science Friday! Here’s what we’re covering today on the show. Listen on your local public radio station, 2-4 p.m. ET. 🐙 🍄🎧

Congratulations Grace!!!! So great to talk with her this summer in Portland about symbioses in non-model systems :)

A fantastic walk into the land of ideas - and now we have a new PhD in the house - congratulations Dr Grace Zhong. That was a spectacular defense covering everything from biophysics to neuroscience to symbiosis and actin-driven motility. So proud of this wonderful moment!

Ice gliding diatoms establish record-low temperature limits for motility in a eukaryotic cell | PNAS Despite periods of permanent darkness and extensive ice coverage in polar environments, photosynthetic ice diatoms display a remarkable capability ...

Read the full story: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Learn more from @stanford.edu : news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...
#Arctic #SeaIce #Diatoms #Ecology #Microbiology

Did you know tiny algae can "skate" within Arctic sea ice? ⛸️ Our new study in @pnas.org reveals the secret life of ice diatoms: they are actively gliding to navigate the ice! This adds a new dimension to the sea ice ecosystem, revealing an active, dynamic ecological niche. @prakashlab.bsky.social

Point vocabulaire : On est passés de "innovation/recyclage ingénieux aka jugaad" cher à Manu Prakash par ex (pour lequel j'ai fait des illus pour son projet Foldscope) à "Frankenstein laptops repair markets", quel monde.

Manu Prakash, a bioengineer at Stanford University, interacts with students in a lab

Manu Prakash practices “recreational biology,” a scientific approach that explores life in the same playful way that puzzles probe math. “Basic science is not at the service of something, but the groundwork that is our entire society’s foundation.”
www.quantamagazine.org/how-paradoxi...

A wonderful interview in
@quantamagazine.bsky.social
with Manu Prakash, whose achievements include diagnosing malaria from the spectrum of infected blood cells, making a microscope for $1, and discovering photosynthetic algae that rise and fall in the water column by inflating like balloons.

Basic science is not at the service of something, but the groundwork that is our entire society’s foundation.
—Manu Prakash, bioengineer at Stanford University and proponent of “recreational biology”
QUANTA | 28 May 2025 | molly herring

How Paradoxical Questions and Simple Wonder Lead to Great Science | Quanta Magazine Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a philosophy he calls “recreational biology.”

Manu Prakash invented “frugal science” tools that drastically reduce the cost of diagnosing malaria.Talking to @mollyherring.bsky.social, he discusses the advantages of following curiosity: “Observation is a practice, and if you don’t practice, you lose it.”

How Paradoxical Questions and Simple Wonder Lead to Great Science | Quanta Magazine Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a philosophy he calls “recreational biology.”

Manu Prakash - a beautiful combination of working on the world's most pressing problems & looking at stuff because it's interesting with no idea what the outcome or use could be. Both are massively valuable & that both is and isn't the point. Make sure to play. www.quantamagazine.org/how-paradoxi...

That sinking feeling: cell biology of climate change | Ars Electronica Festival 2025: Panic Plankton drive Earth’s climate from beneath the surface. This exhibition transforms scientific data into immersive experiences—revealing how microscopic ocean life shapes our planet’s carbon cycle and...

If you are at Ars Electronica this year - come see the showing of “that sinking feeling” - our viewpoint on how to engage with multiple crisis unfolding in our oceans. See you in Linz!

ars.electronica.art/panic/en/vie...

New Dr. in the house.. Dr Ethan Li. 🎉🎉👏🏽 What a remarkable journey anchored in open science. Half a dozen open hardware projects ranging from global health (Octopi malaria diagnostics), ecological monitoring (Planktoscope, ESPressoscope), medical devices (Pufferfish) & more. So many scaling insights.

Spent a memorable summer at Physiology course at @mblscience.bsky.social Very coooool science with some lovely people! Thanks @brangwynnelab.bsky.social and @gladfelterlab.bsky.social for being amazinnnng course coordinators! 🧵

The suspensions landed perhaps most heavily in math. NSF suspended a $25 million grant for the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), an international center at UCLA that hosts about 2000 visiting researchers every year for workshops and other programs. One of its stars, Terence Tao, a Fields Medal winner frequently named as one of the greatest living mathematicians, also had his only NSF grant suspended. The $750,000 award was in its first year and supported Tao’s own research and a handful of graduate students in developing tools to tell whether a set of numbers is structured or random. Tao says he now cannot offer research assistant opportunities during the academic year, and he calls the cuts to IPAM “quite disastrous.”

NSF and NIH cut off almost 300 grants to UCLA. Story by @dangaristo.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

Stories make us human. An office view like this inspires many - I have been jotting them down non stop - hope to have the time one day to share them.

And today we are treated with a sunset of a life time. I have never seen pallet of nature shine so bright in the sky - if you were to paint this, you would run out of colors. With lab members Enrico and Hannah. Well deserved break in our grueling schedule to see the big picture of why we are here. 🌊

PlanktoScope Open and frugal modular imaging platform for citizen oceanography

The above dataset is from our open source tool - www.planktoscope.org anyone can build it, instructions on the site above.