Laura Stefan

Quality of scientific papers questioned as academics ‘overwhelmed’ by the millions published Mainstream mockery of AI-generated rat with giant penis in one paper brings problem to public attention It was, at first glance, just another scientific paper, one of the millions published every year, and destined to receive little to no attention outside the arcane field of biological signalling in stem cells destined to become sperm. But soon after the paper was published online, in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, it found a global audience. Not all of the readers came for the science. Continue reading...

Quality of scientific papers questioned as academics ‘overwhelmed’ by the millions published

Guest post: How climate change is fuelling record-breaking extreme weather - Carbon Brief Recent years have seen a rapid succession of climate-related records broken.

Viermal mehr Hitzerekorde als ohne Klimawandel

Eigentlich gilt: Je länger die Messreihen, desto seltener neue Rekorde.

Doch das Gegenteil ist der Fall – wie wir in unserem Reviewartikel in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment zeigen.

Blog: www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-h...

Paper: rdcu.be/et273

Time series of average daily high temperatures in Western Europe during June to August from 1850 to 2024.

Western Europe summer high temperatures have increased ~2.6 °C (4.7 °F) during just the last 50 years.

That's in a world with only 1.4 °C of global warming.

L’eau en 2050 : graves tensions sur les écosystèmes et les usages | Haut-commissariat à la Stratégie et au Plan Sauf transformation radicale des usages, les prélèvements en eau et plus encore les consommations – soit la part évapotranspirée du prélèvement –, devraient fortement croître entre 2020 et 2050. Due p...

L’eau en 2050 : graves tensions sur les écosystèmes et les usages - note d'analyse du Haut Commissariat à la Stratégie et au Plan

www.strategie-plan.gouv.fr/publications...

Evolution de la température maximale à la station Météo France de Paris Montsouris chaque 21 juin depuis 1953 et prévision du 21 juin 2025 à 34°C. Données disponibles sur : https://meteo.data.gouv.fr

Une fête de la musique 🎶 de + en + chaude 🌡️

Seven-person Mexican stand-off. Banner reads "You need to change first!". Participants are labelled cement production, data centres, forestry, peat mining, transport, livestock numbers and domestic energy.

Why climate action fails.

Industry study sponsorship and conflicts of interest on the effect of unprocessed red meat on cardiovascular disease risk: a systematic review of clinical trials - PubMed This trial for systematic reviews or meta-analyses was registered at PROSPERO as CRD42024525197 (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=525197).

Is red meat bad for you? New meta study of 44 studies finds it depends on the sponsor.

If the sponsor was impartial, most studies find it's bad for you.

If the sponsor was the red meat industry, most studies are structured to find no problems.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40379522/

Agroecological genomics and participatory science: optimizing crop mixtures for agricultural diversification Crops based on mixtures of species or genotypes support yield stability by providing multiple ecosystem services. However, the genetic, molecular, and evolutionary dynamics underlying co-adaptation within such mixtures must be understood to optimize beneficial plant–plant interactions. We therefore propose agroecological genomics as an integrated quantitative and population genetics approach that can be combined with cutting-edge omics methods and participatory science. This strategy embraces the heterogeneity of agroecosystems derived from interactions between biotic and physical environmental components such as climate, crop management, and socio-cultural factors by exploiting decentralized research. The integration of such results will reveal the whole-genome patterns of co-adaptation in crop mixtures, leading to greater knowledge of the key traits that drive adaptation as well as to the development of innovative tools for mixed-crop breeding.

Agroecological genomics and participatory science: optimizing crop mixtures for agricultural diversification #plantscience

Fachtagung Dialog Grün: Nachhaltiger Pflanzenschutz.

10. Juni, ETH Zürich. Teilnahme ist kostenlos, Anmeldung nötig. Postersubmission bis 20.05 www.plantsciences.uzh.ch/de/Wissensch...

Ich freue mich auf ein Referat zu 'Wege zu nachhaltigem Pflanzenschutz: Perspektiven für Politik und Industrie'

Overall, snow measurements on glaciers indicate another dry year with significant repercussions on melting in the coming summer.
@vaw-glaciology.bsky.social @wslresearch.bsky.social @scnat.ch

We are seeing multiple instances of reviewers doing manuscript reviews via use of AI/LLM.

If you don't want to do a review the old-fashioned way, better to decline the request.

Giving someone else's manuscript to AI is a violation of intellectual property rights/laws; the manuscript isn't yours...

What does it take to increase birth rates? Experts say there’s no 'magic' solution As the Trump administration floats potential incentives to bring up the U.S. birth rate, experts tell PBS News that increasing a country’s birth rate is a heavy lift — if it’s possible at all.

Here's an idea. Give the younger generation hope that the older generations aren't going to totally f*** up their future.

www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...

Is most harm in academia done unintentionally? Proposing the idea that many lab working environments are not toxic because of inherently mean-spirited PIs, but because of doing harm unintentionally due to a lack of self-reflection

Is most harm in academia done unintentionally?

Please let me know what you think -- very curious about other people's impressions and opinions.

open.substack.com/pub/matthias...

High-income groups disproportionately contribute to climate extremes worldwide - Nature Climate Change While climate injustice is widely recognized, a quantification of how emissions inequality translates into unequal accountability is still lacking. Here researchers examine how affluent groups disprop...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science.

This has included terminating more than 1,000 grants in areas such as climate change, cancer, and HIV prevention.

Will US science survive Trump 2.0?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Could not imagine a better place for a post-doc! Exciting projects with a fantastic PI! Check it out 👇

We have a postdoc position on "Fungal population genomics" focused on domestication and co-invasion processes in diverse fungi.

You find the full ad here: pathogen-genomics.org/jobs/

Happy to answer any question!

Please spread the word to anyone who might be interested.

We have a postdoc position on "Deep learning for evolutionary genomics" with a focus on genome structure evolution, introgression detection and more.

You find the full ad here: pathogen-genomics.org/jobs/

Happy to answer any question!

Please spread the word to anyone who might be interested.

Liz truss meeting the queen just before she died.

Jd Vance meeting the pope hours before his death

I’m not saying anything but I’ll let you connect the dots. #PopeFrancis

Just your regular reminder of where global CO2 emissions are tracking compared to scenarios that keep warming to below 1.5C in 2100, with "no or low overshoot" (maximum temperature around 1.6C).

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

C1/

The SNSF urges against cuts In its statement on "Relief Package 27", the SNSF speaks out against the proposed annual cuts of 10 percent.

❗Serious consequences for the Swiss economy and society – the SNSF urges the abandonment of the proposed cuts to research funding in "Relief Package 27," as they threaten the country's innovative capacity and competitiveness.

➡️

▶️𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐚: 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐃𝐢𝐯 𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞◀️

Concrete action points to improve gender equity

Led by my @idiv-research.bsky.social (incl three #sDiv synthesis postdocs 😍e.g. @danielahoss.bsky.social)

▶️Read
▶️Discuss
▶️Implement

A mental-health crisis plagues PhDs — these evidence-led initiatives offer help Communities of researchers worldwide are taking on the toxic research cultures that drive poor psychological health among academics.

Studies of researchers globally suggest there is a mental-health crisis in academia

https://go.nature.com/3RNAbmZ

Could drought and poor soil undermine the performance of intercropping ?

Our study in semi-arid Zimbabwe found that the benefits of intercropping are maintained even with water and N stress.

doi.org/10.1016/j.fc...

Congrats Illiana Kwenda - A nice combination of field experiments and modelling

Identifying seed families with high mixture performance in a subtropical forest biodiversity experiment Afforestation projects using species mixtures are expected to better support ecosystem services than monoculture plantations. While grassland studies have shown natural selection favoring high-perfo...

Our findings suggest that the growth and associated ecosystem services of species-rich mixtures in afforestation projects can be optimized by artificially selecting seed families with high mixture performance in biodiversity experiments.
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Two penguins, one a black and white and yellow adult, one a floofy brown youngster, stand facing each other on a rocky beach

“I hear Trump’s imposed tariffs on us.”
“Fuck off, Ralph. We’re penguins.”

Pure evil. War crimes within war crimes, and with total impunity.

Logo of the 2025 Annual Meeting of the GfÖ in Würzburg, Germany.

Fellow Ecologists,
The #gfoe2025 @gfoesoc.bsky.social call for papers has just been published. Please submit your abstracts for exciting talks and engaging posters to present in Würzburg in September!
gfoe-conference.de/index.php?ca...
@uni-wuerzburg.de @globalchangeeco.bsky.social

Trump and Musk have ushered in a terrible era of cataclysm capitalism. But I have a plan to counter it | Julia Steinberger The speed with which US democracy is being dismantled is dizzying, but if we organise resistance now we can stop this, says Julia Steinberger of the University of Lausanne

@jksteinberger.bsky.social on 'cataclysm capitalism' and what to do about it: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...