Jacco

Job opportunities at Retraction Watch Here are our current open positions: Editor, Medical Evidence Project Staff reporter, Retraction Watch Assistant researcher, Retraction Watch Database Learn more about the Center for Scientific Int…

The Center For Scientific Integrity, our parent nonprofit, is hiring! Two new positions:

-- Editor, Medical Evidence Project
-- Staff reporter, Retraction Watch

and we're still recruiting for:

-- Assistant researcher, Retraction Watch Database

Wide-field spectroscopic imaging of optical activity - Nature Photonics A wide-field microscope capable of simultaneously measuring circular dichroism and circular birefringence signals over wide fields of view of the order of hundreds of micrometres is demonstrated, addr...

Can polarization-sensitive digital holography contribute to wide-field spectroscopic imaging of chiral samples? We answer this question in this new article! Big congrats to Rebecca Büchner, PhD student leading the project!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Horizon Europe 2028 - 2034: twice bigger, simpler, faster and more impactful Research and innovation news alert: As part of the next long-term EU budget 2028-2034, the Commission is proposing to double the budget of the research and innovation framework programme to €175 billi...

Very promising news on the next seven-year EU budget, with a proposed substantial increase for Horizon Europe including the ERC.

We are analysing the other parts of this proposal in more detail.

@Vonderleyen @EZaharievaEU

research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-res...

Introducing FASER, an #OpenSource Python software package designed to simulate optical microscope PSF using fully vectorial calculations: www.spiedigitallibra...

#Neurophotonics

No such thing as a standard career path - the Node Introducing a new careers interview series, featuring developmental biologists who have had vastly different career trajectories.

Have you read the interviews in our 'No such thing as a standard career path' series?

We hope these stories from #DevBio scientists show that many valid career paths exist 🛣️🎢

If you want to share your story, get in touch! #AcademicSky #SciSky

📣Book alert📣

Finally out with Cambridge University Press: the book by Udo Seifert on "Stochastic thermodynamics". It comprehensively covers many topics, from an introduction to statistical physics to many special subjects such as reaction networks and active particles. Highly recommended 👍👍👍

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

You can spend a life time on a boat - and still be looking at new things every single day! Here is a quick glimpse of what’s just under our feet/boat!!

YouTube video by Build-a-Cell Build-a-Cell seminar James Saenz: Harnessing minimal cells to understand the living membranes

How do lipids shape life? I explore this question in my recent talk for the Build-a-Cell 🦠 seminar series. Thanks to @kateadamala.bsky.social for hosting! Watch it here: youtu.be/JnF7hPCiSbI?...

To add to my reviewing process: search the text for instructions to LLMs. If found immediately suggest rejection. If the other reviewer(s) seem to have used LLMs for their review, tell the editor to investigate.

On balance LLMs waste more time than they save.

Exclusive: Famed protein structure competition nears end as NIH grant money runs out Agency silent on funding renewal for contest that inspired creation of AIs that predicted how proteins would fold

Speak up to prevent a major loss for the field. CASP, which helped shaping structural biology including AlphaFold is on the verge of shutting down. NIH funding has lapsed, UC Davis support ends and the core team is being let go. Painfully shortsighted.

When science advances:

"... 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘺𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘯𝘻𝘺𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯."

-- Eddy Fischer
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1992

An Editors' Pick via #OPG_OPTCON: Polarization-independent arrayed waveguide grating spectrometer on the silicon-nitride platform opg.optica.org/optcon/fullt... #Spectrometer #ConstructiveInterference @univofmaryland.bsky.social

Brain implantation of soft bioelectronics via embryonic development - Nature A soft mesh microelectrode array can seamlessly integrate in developing brains, enabling long-term, stable mapping of how single-neuron activity and population dynamics emerge and evolve during brain ...

This is WILD! 😲 Brain implantation of soft bioelectronics via embryonic development www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Frequency doubling

Every machine in a Hospital that diagnoses your body without cutting you open is based on a principle of Physics, discovered by a Physicist who had no interest in Medicine.

If you think the world doesn’t need Basic Science, or that somehow Science has failed you, think again.

Interesting for those willing to learn how to build microscopes 🧪🔬
#Microscopy #Optics

mScarlet3-H (aka mYongHong) is on the cover of Nature Methods! All plasmids are available for free from WeKwikGene wekwikgene.wllsb.edu.cn/publications...

The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes…

There's a lot of big news today/this week, but Apple just dropped a nuke of a paper about LLMs & LRMs, specially around "high-complexity tasks where both models experience complete collapse." This is the biggest sign yet that if AI ever lives up the hype, it won't be via those approaches:

Manu Prakash, a bearded man in plaid and a bioengineer, leans against a wall outside

Manu Prakash, a bearded man, holds a paper-made microscope

"Once, many people feel that they don’t have a voice, and the Foldscope community is a way that you can use creativity to distinguish yourself — not your status, who you know or where you published your paper." www.quantamagazine.org/how-paradoxi...

#PhysicsFactlet
A Shack-Hartmann sensor is a simple and widely used device to measure the phase profile of a wavefront (aka "where the light is coming from").

A mini 🧵
1/
#Optics #Physics

Accepting 'sunk cost' can be painful and necessary.

-> Here's the little known 'fast light-sheet' microscope I designed and built in 2017. It was ~95% complete when I dismantled it in favor of the superior Snouty light-sheet microscope I co-invented. It was one of the best decisions of my career.

This looks awesome! A new open source optical design software! 😱

Has anyone used it? Is it good? 😁

optiland.readthedocs.io/en/latest/in...

I would be such a cool billionaire, I wouldn't fund awful bullshit like mass surveillance tech for ICE or dipshit AI startups, I would instead buy the DnD brand and release all the manuals under Creative Commons.

🚀 Product Launch Alert ⭐
#AiroBox – our Stage-Top Incubator, launching at #ELMI2025 in Heidelberg!

🧊🔥 10–45°C temp control
🌬️ CO₂ & O₂ regulation
💧 >90% RH humidity
Vibration-free & compact
Compatible with dishes, plates, #VaHeat & #QuScite

🔗 interherence.com/airobox/

Excited to announce this new paper from the Kirchhausen and Hatzakis labs on DeepSPT, a deep learning framework for single-particle/vesicle tracking. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Celebrating the international day of light May 16 marks UNESCO’s International Day of Light, celebrating the anniversary of the development of the first laser, created from a ruby red crystal on this ...

Apparently May 16th was the international day of light! And Nature Reviews Methods Primers put together this nice collection of their Primers! www.nature.com/collections/...

Single-molecule visualization of ATP-induced dynamics of the subunit composition of an ECF transporter complex under turnover conditions Nature Communications - The association and dissociation dynamics of the ECF transporter complex for vitamin B12 are visualized by single-molecule FRET, highlighting the original transport...

Solène’s 4.5 years of postdoctoral work in our lab (she started just before the corona pandemic) has now been published. A heroic effort that revealed -at the single molecule level- that ATP drives the dissociation of an ECF transporter complex under turnover conditions. See rdcu.be/elTKc

My grandpa used to say that the first six months after we die is just catching up on sleep.

📢 SAVE THE DATE: Sept 29 - Oct 1, 2025
and come to Berlin to the

BIOMEMBRANE DAYS

Excellent line of speakers and slots for contributed talks.
Registration will open in Spring.

biomembrane-days-2025.mpikg.mpg.de

Organized by Helge@ewerslab.bsky.social Thomas Weikl and myself
@mpici.bsky.social