🔬🪲 SPECIAL ISSUE RESEARCH 🔬🪲 Glandular trichomes function as ultra-fast biomechanical defense triggers in tomatoes, rupturing upon contact with insects and exposing them to sticky and toxic secretions - Popowski et al. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪 @jaredpopo.bsky.social

📣 Check out the Journal of Experimental Botany's newest special issue 📣 🍅 Tomato - Issue 21 of 2025 🍅 📘 Guest edited by Yves Gibon, Diane Beckles, Sonia Osorio & Hiroshi Ezura 🔗 academic.oup.com/jxb... #JXBspecialissues #PlantScience 🧪 @sebiology.bsky.social @dianemariabeckles.bsky.social

The JXB Tomato special edition is out, featuring the first publication of my PhD! We found that glandular trichome head rupture in tomato is an ultra-sensitive defense against insect predation. 🧵on plant biomechanics, fluid dynamics, and plant-insect interactions! 🧪 academic.oup.com/jxb/article/...

Roses don’t just defend themselves. Their prickles are geometrically ideal for gripping surfaces, supporting vertical growth, and, when needed, creating lacerations that deter herbivores. Students - join us to investigate how biological form and physical law work together!

I've never heard more business bullshitting than while listening to the CEO of Roblox, Dave Baszucki, trying to startup-speak his way around the problem of child predators on his platform during a planned interview on the subject

Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government go.nature.com/47hn0n5

Success rates for Europe’s leading research grants are declining as a surge in applications far outweighs the funds available go.nature.com/479Sni6

How about we don't tie fundamental research funding up with defense in the EU? The push for defense applications could take away spending in other critical areas like medicine or environmental science

Happy to share that our work on active phase separation by photophobic microalgae is now published in PRL! journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... When surrounded by multiple light sources, cells hide behind each other, leading to the quick formation of a macroscopic branching pattern.

Cool animal that I didn't know existed: this is a crab spider that I saw on a hike in Brittany, strategically positioned amidst the densest group of butterflies that I had seen on the trail

In the last couple of months I helped biodesigner Chris Bellamy in a collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen to make a bioluminescent dress for Paris Haute Couture week. And the outcome was absolutely stunning!!!! www.uva.nl/en/shared-co...

This is the future I want for all active fault zones! Let's get cheap sensors everywhere+statistical modeling to alert us to incoming earthquakes/volcanic eruptions

Join us in Amsterdam to explore the inner lives of mycorrhizal fungi using robotics, fluorescence microscopy & machine learning. Work at AMOLF w/ @thomasshimizu.bsky.social + more 📅 Application Deadline: 15 May, 2025 Advert here: amolf.nl/wp-content/u... Photo (!) @vkokkoris.bsky.social

BREAKING from @science.org: The Trump admin is seeking to kill nearly all climate research at NOAA, its climate science agency. Its near-final budget proposal would end all NOAA research labs, academic institutes, and regional climate centers. And it wants to fully end the NOAA Research division.

🧵 Watch closely the waves on the surface as a bird moves through the water! This is one of my favorite videos that I've seen recently - dense collections of fish using collective escape waves that confuse birds 🌊 Great new paper by David Bierbach et al. : royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Are you at the #APSGlobalSummit2025? I'm extremely honored to be finalist for the @apsdsoft.bsky.social Emerging Soft Matter Excellence Award! Curious? Come by on Tuesday 8-11am at the Session MAR-F65 (my talk: 10:24am) 😊 Also just message me if you wanna have a chat :) @apsphysics.bsky.social

To my friends and colleagues back in the US, my heart aches as I watch the Trump administration dismantle the scientific research that made our country so important on the world stage. It's a critical time to speak up, whether at home or abroad. ❤️ standupforscience2025.org standupforscience.fr

Soft matter physics is either: 1. Fluid does weird thing 2. Granular system does weird thing 3. Physicists playing biologist (identity crisis)

So excited for the week ahead at Les Houches!

Went to the wonderful Groote Museum yesterday! Highly recommend for those interested in biology/life sciences and happen to visit the Amsterdam area

@kpc.bsky.social wrote a nice writeup about my recent preprint about the mechanics of glandular trichome rupture, was a fun interview! www.newscientist.com/article/2463...

Yay! I won the @apsphysics.bsky.social DBIO Image contest alongside two others! My colleague @jaredpopo.bsky.social is another winner showing the beauty of plant trichomes! My picture shows the chloroplast network of the marine dinoflagellate Pyrocystis Lunula! engage.aps.org/dbio/resourc...

Proud to win the @apsphysics.bsky.social DBIO Image contest for my tomato leaf trichome photo! Trichomes break on contact with insects, defending against predation 🐛🌿🔬🧪 Congrats to my co-winners, including labmate @nicoschramma.bsky.social for his stunning chloroplast networks in Pyrocystis Lunula!

If you've never donated to Wikipedia, now's the time. Elon Musk is attacking it because it's one of the only sources of honest, curated information that he can't control. www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-ta...

The non-model organism “renaissance” has arrived Meet 10 neuroscientists bringing model diversity back @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...

Would you like to see @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social add a share to blue sky button?! I know I would! Share this post to let @richardsever.bsky.social @erictopol.bsky.social and others at bioarxiv know!

"Einstein has once again expressed himself publicly on quantum mechanics...As is well known, this is a catastrophe every time it happens" - Wolfgang Pauli to Werner Heisenberg after the now-famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper of 1935

Hot off the press A super fun collaboration and paper. All you ever wanted about the squirting cucumber but never dared to ask. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A recent microscopy image of mine showing trichomes on the surface of a tomato leaf (S. Habrochaites). These hair-like structures are powerful defense systems against insects! 🌿🐛

It's finally oliebollen season in Amsterdam!

Science isn't about making the data fit your worldview. It's about making your worldview fit the data.

Every woman in physics that I've talked to still regularly experiences gender-based discrimination and biases, and the balance of power in academic institutions is overwhelmingly male-dominated. It's time for a more supportive and welcoming system! arxiv.org/abs/2407.02612

I made a Python GUI that allows you to search through an exported WhatsApp .txt chat history github.com/jspopowski/W...