Brian D. Wade

Corona Discharges Glow on Trees Under Thunderstorms A new ultraviolet-sensitive instrument has enabled the first direct observations of corona discharges on trees under thunderstorms Corona discharges are transient in nature, often jumping from le...

Corona Discharges Glow on Trees Under Thunderstorms
#CoolScience

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

RedDots: Multiplanet system around M dwarf GJ 887 in the solar neighborhood
#astronomy #exoplanets

www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

🚨 UPDATE: fireball over Europe – 8 March 2026

At 18:55 CET on Sunday, 8 March, a very bright fireball streaked across the skies of Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, glowing for around six seconds before fragmenting. 🧪🔭

🎥 Allsky7

Growth of microorganisms in a Martian regolith simulant at reduced water activity - Scientific Reports Water activity (aw) quantifies the free water available for microbial growth. At the cellular level, liquid water is paramount for replication and proliferation. Research on Earth-like life suggests t...

Growth of microorganisms in a Martian regolith simulant at reduced water activity
#Mars #astrobiology

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

Amplified cooling of Snowball Earth from a salt–albedo feedback Abstract. It is believed that the atmospheric circulation on Snowball Earth produced a net ablation zone exposing bare sea ice. Under sufficiently low temperatures, salt begins to precipitate out of s...

Amplified cooling of Snowball Earth from a salt–albedo feedback
#SnowballEarth #paleoclimatology

egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...

Exo–IPM Scattering as a Hidden Gatekeeper of Narrowband Technosignatures Exo–IPM Scattering as a Hidden Gatekeeper of Narrowband Technosignatures, Gajjar, Vishal, Brown, Grayce C.

Space weather might be drowning out possible ET radio signals.
#SETI

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

‘No one quite like her’: meet the female colleagues who inspire these award-winning women in science To mark International Women’s Day, Nature asked winners of its awards programmes to nominate a colleague who brings out the best in them.

To mark International Women’s Day, Nature asked winners of its awards programmes to nominate a colleague who brings out the best in them.

go.nature.com/46EZq32

Giant multicellular magnetotactic prokaryotes in marine sediments
#microbiology #prokaryotes #MicroSky
@isme-microbes.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Illustrated graphic featuring diverse silhouettes of people against a cambridge blue background. Text reads "International Women's Day."

A diverse group of illustrated people gathered together on the right, with the words "Explore our curated collection" on the left against a cambridge blue background.

🙌 This #InternationalWomensDay, we’re celebrating the women driving research forward.

Explore our curated collection celebrating the achievements of women in research and advancing knowledge on gender equality.

#IWD2026 #GiveToGain

🔗 https://cup.org/47o5pt5

A detailed digital composite image based on the 1947 historical photograph of geneticist Barbara McClintock. McClintock, with her characteristic short hair and round glasses, is seated at a microscope, using tweezers in a Petri dish. While based on the original photo distributed for her AAUW award, this image presents a significantly expanded and fictionalized laboratory environment. The simple wooden workbench is now densely populated with a vast, colorized collection of complex glassware, numerous amber-colored reagent bottles, intricate distillation columns, and botanical specimens relevant to maize cytogenetics, creating a rich, illustrative narrative of her "jumping gene" research context that was not present in the original photo. The expanded background shows complex vintage laboratory cabinetry. This image explicitly states it is a composite: a digital recreation where Seriously Scientific has taken the historical figure and placed them into an augmented, complex fictionalized environment. Based on original source from Smithsonian Institution Archives. Digital composite by Seriously Scientific.

Remembering Barbara McClintock on International Women's Day!
She discovered that genes aren't static, they can actually "jump" around on a chromosome.

Her discovery of transposons ("jumping genes") fundamentally changed how we understand evolution and the complexity of DNA! 🧬🌽

#WomenInScience

The oldest Milky Way stars: New constraints on the age of the Universe and the Hubble constant
#astronomy

www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

Celebrate women in research and the networks that sustain them On International Women’s Day, we celebrate technology pioneers and recognize the mentorship that is necessary to inspire the current generation and those of the future.

Celebrate women in research and the networks that sustain them
#InternationalWomensDay #WomenInScience #scienceSky

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

Bioremediation of lunar regolith simulant through mycorrhizal fungi and plant symbioses enables chickpea to seed - Scientific Reports Food sustainability is a significant challenge for long-term space travel. Plants can provide fresh nutrition, reducing reliance on packaged foods. Using Lunar regolith simulant (LRS), we tested a met...

Bioremediation of #lunar regolith simulant through mycorrhizal fungi and plant symbioses enables chickpea to seed
#Moon #SpaceExploration

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

Analysing Darwin specimens without opening 200-year-old jars Scientists have successfully analysed Charles Darwin's original specimens from his HMS Beagle voyage (1831 to 1836) to the Galapagos Islands.

Analysing #Darwin specimens without opening 200-year-old jars

#scienceSky #evoSky

www.ukri.org/news/analysi...

Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard archaea using structural modelling - Nature Microbiology A structural catalogue of the Asgard archaeal pangenome reveals hundreds of eukaryotic-like proteins that suggest a higher degree of cellular complexity in the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes.

Prediction of eukaryotic cellular complexity in Asgard #archaea using structural modelling

#microSky #evoSky #mevoSky

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

Diversity, ecology, cell biology and evolution of the Asgard archaea - Nature Reviews Microbiology The Asgard archaea have become a cornerstone of archaeal research, particularly for studies aiming to unravel the origin and early evolution of eukaryotes. This Review outlines the current state of th...

Diversity, #ecology, cell biology and #evolution of the Asgard #archaea

#microSky #evoSky #mevoSky

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

NASA, OPM Launch NASA Force to Recruit Top Talent for US Space Program - NASA The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and NASA announced NASA Force on Wednesday, a dedicated talent track within the US Tech Force initiative

WTF is this and why didn't they want all the top talent they've been firing from NASA centers for the last couple of years www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Epistasis and co-adaptation in bacterial genome evolution - Nature Reviews Genetics Bacterial genome evolution is shaped by epistasis, which can constrain or promote specific evolutionary paths. The authors review how integrating the effects of epistatic interactions into population-...

#Epistasis and co-adaptation in bacterial genome #evolution

#evoSky #mevoSky #microSky

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

Genome modelling and design across all domains of life with Evo 2 - Nature Evo 2 is an artificial intelligence-based biological foundation model trained on 9 trillion DNA base pairs spanning all domains of life that predicts functional properties from genomic sequences and p...

Genome modelling and design across all domains of life with Evo 2
#scienceSky #AI

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

Two images of a planetary nebula in space. The image to the left, labelled “Euclid & Hubble”, shows the whole nebula and its surroundings. A star in the very centre is surrounded by white bubbles and loops of gas, all shining with a powerful blue light. Farther away a broken ring of red and blue gas clouds surrounds the nebula. The background shows many stars and distant galaxies. A white box indicates the centre of the nebula and this region is the image to the right, labelled “Hubble”. It shows the multi-layered bubbles, pointed jets and circular shells of gas that make up the nebula, as well as the central star, in greater detail.

📸 This new NASA/ESA #Hubble Space Telescope image features the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543).

Hubble’s sharp vision meets Euclid’s wide view to uncover this spectacular portrait of a dying star.

esahubble.org/images/potm2...

@science.esa.int @stsci.edu

Habitat heterogeneity drives microbial community assembly and functional specialization in extremely arid ecosystems | Applied and Environmental Microbiology Understanding microbial adaptation in hyperarid environments is crucial for predicting ecosystem responses to extreme stressors. This study provides an integrative framework linking environmental heterogeneity to microbial community assembly and metabolic specialization across diverse habitats in one of Earth’s driest basins. Our findings demonstrate that deterministic environmental filtering dominates community assembly in deserts and moderately saline lakes, whereas stochastic processes prevail in wastelands and hypersaline systems. Habitat‑specific metabolic specialization is evident, with nitrogen cycling being key in terrestrial soils and sulfur metabolism central to saline lakes. By significantly improving the recovery of uncultured diversity through targeted strategies, this study bridges a major gap between molecular surveys and cultivable microorganisms. These findings advance ecological theory on community assembly and offer a model for studying microbial resilience and functional evolution under extreme aridity.

Habitat heterogeneity drives microbial community assembly and functional specialization in extremely arid ecosystems
#microSky #scienceSky

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Liquid–liquid phase separation as a driver of #abiogenesis and #evolution

#OriginsOfLife

www.academia.edu/3064-9765/3/...

Articles of Significant Interest in This Issue | Applied and Environmental Microbiology Liu et al. (e01971-25) describe the evolutionary history of laccase isozymes in white-rot fungi and demonstrate links to the ancestral emergence of their lignin substate in plants.

‼️The February issue of ASM Journals #AppEnvMicro #AEM is out and, with it, the articles I picked for the Spotlight.

A 🧵 in the comments 👇

doi.org/10.1128/aem....

Clonal-aggregative #multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate
#evoSky #scienceSky

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

The nebula appears to have distinct regions that capture different phases of its evolution: an outer shell of gas that was blown off first and consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure that contains a mix of different gases. Both Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) show a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the middle of the nebula that defines its brain-like look of left and right hemispheres. Webb’s resolution shows that this lane could be related to an outburst or outflow from the central star, which typically occurs as twin jets burst out in opposite directions. Evidence for this is particularly notable at the top of the nebula in Webb’s image, where it looks like the inner gas is being ejected outward.

🆕 These new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope images show the Cranium Nebula using two instruments that reveal enhanced details of its brain‑like appearance. 🧠🧪🔭

🔗 esawebb.org/news/weic2605/

@science.esa.int @stsci.edu

A symbiotic origin of the ribosome? Abstract. The origin of life is one of the great mysteries of science. Of the multiple unsolved problems, the origin of the translation system (the means b

A symbiotic origin of the ribosome?
#OriginsOfLife #scienceSky

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

New preprint from my lab‼️
We describe how cations in the media remodel the Geobacter envelope for reciprocal control of cytochrome-loaded vesicles and conductive pili.

Important phenomenon to understand discrepancies in the literature about the true nature of nanowires.

doi.org/10.21203/rs....

Here's to another 38 trips around the sun!

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE!
#BOTD in 1988.
Keep on evolving!

#science #evolution #microbiology