Agustin Zsögön

Plant physiologist

[Agustin Zsögön @shogur]

@bauerbrun Dónde encontraste esa joya?

[Mushtaq Bilal, PhD @MushtaqBilalPhD]

Researchers paid $1.06 billion to five academic publishers from 2015-2018 to publish their papers.

Academic publishers sold the same papers back to researchers for $2 billion.

[United Nations Geneva @UNGeneva]

❗️New alarming data from the Global Report on Food Crises:

🔺Extreme hunger has DOUBLED worldwide over the past decade.
🔺Funding has fallen back to 2016 levels.
🔺9x more people now face the most severe form of food insecurity.

https://t.co/4iNTzYFGkg
@fightfoodcrises @WFP

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

In 1982, conceptual artist Agnes Denes planted and harvested a two-acre field of wheat on a rubble-strewn landfill in Lower Manhattan, located just a few blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, for her incredible project Wheatfield.

This project was titled Wheatfield – A Confrontation.

The site was covered in debris but valued at billions of dollars. Denes cleared it, planted wheat, and maintained the crop for months, ultimately harvesting nearly 1,000 pounds of grain. The project was not symbolic in a loose sense, it was literal agriculture in one of the most financially concentrated places on earth. It forced a direct comparison between land value and land use, between global finance and basic sustenance.

After harvest, the wheat was distributed to over two dozen cities worldwide as part of an exhibition addressing hunger and resource distribution.

Today, the land where the wheat once grew is now part of Battery Park City, real estate that ranks among the most expensive residential property in the United States.

© History Pictures

#archaeohistories

[Bright Scholarship @BrightSship]

DAAD Procope Scholarship Program 2026 in Germany (Funded)

Duration: 2 years
Eligible nationality: All Nationalities
Award country: Germany
Last date: 1 July 2026

Apply Link: https://t.co/k2Em4NtJ98

#BrightScholarship #FullyFunded #Scholarship #Germany #Students

[Scholarships Corner @scholar_corner]

Humboldt Research Fellowship 2027 in Germany | Research Opportunity

🔗 Visit: https://t.co/jP8ofqsrX6

Applications are now open for the Humboldt Research Fellowship 2027. This is a great opportunity for international researchers to conduct research in Germany with full financial support and access to top institutions.

Benefits include: Monthly stipend (€3,000–€3,600), travel allowance, health insurance support, free German language course, family allowances, and strong academic support.

📍 Duration: 6–24 months
🌍 Open to applicants from all countries

This fellowship allows you to work with leading researchers and gain international experience in your field.

Credit: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
📌 Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only. Scholarships Corner does not own or manage this opportunity. Please verify details on the official website before applying.

#ScholarshipsCorner #fellowship #ResearchFellowship #studyingermany #scholarship

[Scholarships Corner @scholar_corner]

Humboldt Research Fellowship 2027 in Germany | Fully Funded

Applications are now open for the Humboldt Research Fellowship 2027. This is a great opportunity for international researchers to conduct research in Germany with full financial support and access to top institutions.

Benefits include: Monthly stipend (€3,000–€3,600), travel allowance, health insurance support, free German language course, family allowances, and strong academic support.

📍 Duration: 6–24 months
🌍 Open to applicants from all countries

This fellowship allows you to work with leading researchers and gain international experience in your field.

🔗 Visit: https://t.co/jP8ofqsrX6

Credit: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
📌 Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only. Scholarships Corner does not own or manage this opportunity. Please verify details on the official website before applying.

#ScholarshipsCorner #fellowship #ResearchFellowship #studyingermany #scholarship

[dra fermdo @fernandamdo]

Hoy voy a contarles de las verdaderas razones del envejecimiento cerebral acelerado, es este paper que salió en abril de 2026 y que todo el mundo está citando pero casi nadie lo está explicando.

[Savage Lab @SavageCatsOnly]

Can CRISPR edits enable precise tuning of plant gene expression? We think: yes.

In our newest manuscript, we measured the effects of >30,000 CRISPR-like promoter mutations in sorghum protoplasts.

[News from Science @NewsfromScience]

In a challenge to open-access publishers, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world’s largest research institution, has told its researchers it plans to stop paying to publish their papers in dozens of international free-to-read journals it regards as too expensive. https://t.co/xCq5Ps4Bp6

[John B. Holbein @JohnHolbein1]

The U.S. is losing its competitive advantage in scientific research.

This new working paper uses 44 million publications and shows a massive global shift:

-Since 1980, the U.S. share of scientific output has fallen from ~40% to 15%.

-In that time period, China has risen from near 0 to ~32% overall.

-This is also true in top-journal papers.

-This isn’t just more scientists; it's higher per-researcher productivity.

The U.S. still leads in biomedical science.

China now dominates engineering & physical sciences.

Bottom line: Global science is democratizing. U.S. scientific dominance is no longer guaranteed.

[Sabine Hossenfelder @skdh]

Two business school professors from the University of Technology in Sydney have sounded the alarm on the declining quality of academic literature in a new publication titled “The junkification of research”.

Drawing parallels to the “enshittification” of online platforms, they argue that similar forces are now overwhelming scholarly publishing. The key drivers are threefold: 1) relentless “publish or perish” pressures in academia, 2) scientific publisher’s incentive to publish more to make more money, and 3) AI making paper production faster and easier. Taken together, they say, these drivers are a recipe for disaster. The authors call for a shift to not-for-profit models of scientific publishing and better evaluation systems.

I strongly doubt either is going to happen.

The problem is of course not new, and you all know that I have been drawing attention to this trend for more than a decade. It is interesting to see, however, that the awareness for the issue is increasing.

Paper: Rhodes, C., & Linnenluecke, M. K., “The junkification of research” Organization (2025).

[elEconomista.es @elEconomistaes]

Lo más leído | 🇪🇸 JP Morgan ve a España como la mejor economía de Europa y da una razón que nadie vio venir: "La fácil integración de los latinos"

🌎 "España está logrando con esto algo que no sucede en Alemania ni Francia", apuntan los economistas.
https://t.co/s7gMFIEAYU

[Nature Biotechnology @NatureBiotech]

The import of biological research material is a silent barrier to biotechnology in the Global South https://t.co/87wG1nZFg8

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

Carlsberg, the beer company, was founded in 1847. In 1875, they founded one of the first industrial research labs. Even today, the impact of this laboratory is highly underrated.

Some quick notes on discoveries made by Carlsberg:

1. For most of the 19th century, beer often made people sick because it contained a mixture of yeasts (and, often, bacteria). In 1883, Emil Chr. Hansen (at Carlsberg) isolated “a single cell of good yeast,” according to the Carlsberg website, which he then grew up as a pure culture. This strain of yeast, named Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis, was given away for free to other brewers, who used it to brew much purer beers that didn't make people sick. This yeast is the ancestor to many modern Lager yeasts.

2. In 1909, S.P.L. Sørensen invented the pH scale at the Carlsberg laboratory.

3. Christian Anfinsen, who kickstarted the protein-folding problem (I wrote about him a few days ago), spent a year or two at the Carlsberg Laboratory developing “new methods for analyzing the chemical structure of complex proteins,” according to his Wikipedia page. He went on to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972.

4. In 1935, Øjvind Winge discovered that microorganisms — including yeast — can reproduce sexually. This was a big deal for developing genetic engineering tools, and it happened at Carlsberg.

5. Subtilisin, the same enzyme used in many detergents to wash clothes, was discovered at Carlsberg.

6. Morten Meldal invented Click Chemistry (for which he shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) while leading the Chemistry group at Carlsberg.

7. More recently, Carlsberg has been doing a lot of research into accelerating crop breeding to develop better barley and hops.

I'd be down to sponsor a long-form article about Carlsberg's research division, provided it includes in-person reporting (and, one imagines, beer tastings.) Please get in touch if you have reporting experience, live in Europe (ideally) and would be interested in doing this.

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

Fascinating paper just published in Science.

The authors analyze the career trajectories of top performers across multiple domains, including Nobel laureates, elite chess players, Olympic gold medalists, and more.

Their central finding challenges a common belief.

Intensive, single-discipline training at a young age does confer an early advantage, but this advantage fades over time.

By contrast, individuals exposed to multidisciplinary practice early in life tend to start more slowly. Yet, over the long run, they are more likely to reach world-class performance, eventually overtaking early specialists, who often plateau just below the very top.

An important reminder that breadth early on can be a powerful investment in long-term excellence.

Link to the paper in the first reply.

[CAPES @CAPES_Oficial]

Está disponível no site da CAPES/MEC a lista de oferta de vagas do Edital nº 12/2025, do Programa de Estudantes-Convênio de Pós-Graduação (PEC-PG). No total, são 14.662 vagas: 6.040 para doutorado e 8.622 para mestrado. Saiba mais em:https://t.co/tZK5sHPeFm

[Retraction Watch @RetractionWatch]

Genomics pioneer George Church earns first retraction for anti-aging gene therapy paper
https://t.co/1sWBMSIBUO

[JXB @jxbotany.bsky.social @JXBot]

Our X account is inactive. We'll continue posting on Bluesky, Instagram etc - links here: https://t.co/IUJOB9loQu 🌱🌾🌿🍀🍃💚

In the meantime, consider attending our 75th Anniversary Conference - a special one-off #plantscience meeting https://t.co/2aIjSTMrIe 🎉🥳🍾🎂

[Progress Bar 2026 @ProgressBar202_]

2025 is 50% complete.