Jacco

What is the impact of AI on productivity? Reconciling the micro and the macro evidence

New post: What is the impact of AI on productivity?

I review all of the studies and data that I can find and try to provide a synthesis.

A disagreement emerges: micro studies find positive benefits but these benefits are yet to show up in the macro data.

aleximas.substack.com/p/what-is-th... 🧵

Welcome to the era of vibe science!
openai.com/index/introd...

Germany faces questions over publishing agreement with MDPI Landmark deal should raise questions about publisher’s practices on peer review, citations and special issues, say research sleuths

Plus, MDPI/Frontiers spend big money to convince governments they're not just legit, but leaders. Frontiers just sponsored WEF Davos, MDPI signed a deal with German national science agency.

🇩🇪+MDPI: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/germany...
Davos: sciencehouse.frontiersin.org/event/945d08...

2/3

Isn't it #S3IC2026 instead of 2027?

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

The image on the cover shows two sugars from the same cell-surface glycan separated by 9 Å, visualized with RESI (resolution enhancement by sequential imaging) enabled by metabolic labelling with DNA barcodes. IMAGE: Luciano A. Masullo, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Germany. COVER DESIGN: Vanitha Selvarajan Original paper: Masullo, L.A., et al. Ångström-resolution imaging of cell-surface glycans. Nat. Nanotechnol. 20, 1457–1463 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-01966-5 Abstract: Glycobiology is rooted in the study of monosaccharides, ångström-sized molecules that are the building blocks of glycosylation. Glycosylated biomolecules form the glycocalyx, a dense coat encasing every human cell with central relevance—among others—in immunology, oncology and virology. To understand glycosylation function, visualizing its molecular structure is fundamental. However, the ability to visualize the molecular architecture of the glycocalyx has remained challenging. Techniques such as mass spectrometry, electron microscopy and fluorescence microscopy lack the necessary cellular context, specificity and resolution. Here we combine resolution enhancement by sequential imaging with metabolic labelling, enabling the visualization of individual sugars within glycans on the cell surface, thus obtaining images of the glycocalyx with a spatial resolution down to 9 Å in an optical microscope.

Now online: October 2025 Issue.

- Focus Issue on #biosensing,
- DNA moiré superlattices,
- Sugars at Ångström-resolution,
- Solid-state #nanopores,
- Non-aqueous Li #batteries, -
- Neuromorphic vision,
- Peptide #hydrogels,
- Deep learning for #LNPs and more...

www.nature.com/nnano/volume...

Manim (www.manim.community) is such a neat tool for generating videos that describe microscopy theory. It’s possible to animate a fluorophore behaving as a Lorentzian with a single line of code—amazing! Code (I’m so sorry about the variable names) here: github.com/zacsimile/ra...

Data sharing helps avoid “smoking gun” claims of topological milestones Manipulating the topology of electronic bands can realize new states of matter, with possible implications for information technology. A central question is how to tell whether a topological regime ha...

The rarest of sights - a big glossy journal publishing negative replications! Yes, we had to bundle 4 replications into one article AND we had to wait 2 (!!) years in peer review, but here we are:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Wow! This is so cool and way more fun than boring BioRender! Plus, developing fine motor skills through hand drawing and creativity without limitations in shapes or form! Try it out yourself here chat.figurelabs.ai/invitation/i...

Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it.
PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!

Toegeven dat de kwaliteit achteruit gaat is iets waarvoor bestuurders allergisch zijn. Zelfs het online onderwijs tijdens corona werd destijds minstens zo goed gevonden als wat we in de collegezalen en laboratoria doen…

Monday blues no more with these online events by @comeincell.bsky.social (coordination: @dimovalab.bsky.social)

· 8 Dec, 2pm CET: “Drugging #Condensates & Drug Discovery” Dewpoint workshop

· 15 Dec 2pm CET: “Life in #Biotech” Dewpoint workshop

tinyurl.com/39rpaf84
#CellBiology #Biophysics

Goedkope Chinese producten overspoelen de wereld. Hoe moeten Europa en de VS daarop reageren? De Chinese exportmachine is een wake-upcall voor economische beleidsmakers in de hele wereld. Importbarrières vormen niet het juiste antwoord. Wat dan wel?

Goedkope Chinese producten overspoelen de wereld. Hoe moeten Europa en de VS daarop reageren? www.groene.nl/artikel/onev...

What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

The “canonical” story how Rosalind Franklin got wronged by Watson and Crick inadvertently makes her look far less scientifically competent than she was (“She did not realize the significance of her own data!”). This article offers a much more nuanced account of what happened.

Coherence in optics is a really tricky topic for people. I feel like the language around it could be better/cleaner

Jetten 'wint' de verkiezingen en 'claimt' de zege na een 'spannende' 'race'. De 'exitpoll' was 'too close to call'. We zijn mentaal gekoloniseerd door de Amerikanen

Tracing fluorescence tracking’s past, present, and future Artificial intelligence and parallel computing could refine studies of the movement of single molecules inside cells.

Tracking has always been at the ❤️ of the scientific method, from planetary motion to single particles.

Weiqing’s thesis intro on tracking was so beautiful we turned it into a perspective in JCP who then selected it as a #Scilight.

Take a look! 😊

www.aip.org/scilights/tr...

New review on experimental datasets that can be used to benchmark protein force fields. And if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, the data can also be used to benchmark machine learning models for biomolecular structure and dynamics.

Klimaatverandering komt op verkiezingsdag toch nog in het nieuws vanuit Jamaica.

Melissa staat in de top 10 sterkste orkanen ooit gemeten. Windkracht 13 (als dat bestond) in combinatie met tot wel 1 meter regen kan vanaf vannacht de westelijke helft van het eiland verwoesten, wordt gevreesd.

ls there a list of publishers who do this?

Dit zou een stemwijzer moeten zijn:

Of een gat in de markt.

An advertisement for Open Science Workshop titled Detecting errors and misconduct in science. The sheet includes photos of the organisers and logos of the funders.

📢 Open Science Workshop on Detecting Errors and Misconduct in Science will be held in Nijmegen from October 20 to 23.

Full workshop program will be available soon.

🔗 Register here (limited spots are available!): lnkd.in/eRKekCkh

Lipid droplets: Open questions and conceptual advances around a unique organelle. New review from Mike Henne (@hennelab.bsky.social), Emma Reynolds, and William: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#Biochemistry #CellMetabolism #LipidDroplets

Check out this community comment in Nature Communications on biomolecular condensates! 🧪🔬 💧

The piece shows how condensates fundamentally change the study of biology, offering insights into cellular processes.
A great resource for anyone in the field, especially newcomers.

rdcu.be/eBqB3

Out today in @nature.com: Together with the Honigmann, Shevchenko, Drobot and Hof labs, we present a general workflow for imaging the localization and transport of individual lipids in cells and mapping their metabolism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 Molecular Biology of the Cell – Pasteur Course 🧬

This 4-week course explores the molecular mechanisms of cellular life — from vesicular trafficking and cell division to autophagy, host-pathogen interactions, and tumor invasion.

🕰️Application deadline: Sept 15,2025

👉 Apply: bit.ly/47celmj

Tools have long propelled discoveries:

"𝑁𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑙𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡"

Sir Humphry Davy
Elements of Chemical Philosophy (1812)