Honestly, I did not expect that one of major aviacompanies can loose luggage without providing any information on the incident to those who are impacted, and its representative at large German airport speaks neither German nor English.

Today Ukraine marks 30 years of its Constitution.

It was a great honor for me to chair a session at the IAVS Congress on impact of military operations on vegetation and habitats. I am sincerely grateful to the organizers who supported the proposal that Sandra Saura-Mas and I submitted to organize this session, as well as to all the speaker

IAVS 2026 68th Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science "Understanding Ecosystems through Vegetation".

This is such a bummer.

I think that there is a new emerging form of discrimination at scientific events. Currently preparing to attend one meeting and organizers informed that there will be free tickets for local transport but only for those who have smartphones with possibility to generate QR codes.

One of the questions in a new Nature survey was about "importance of AI skills". Personally, I see a big problem with such a framing starting from how to define "AI skills" properly. 1) Is it about the ability to create new AI tools or use of already existing ones, or both? (1)

Out of interest tried to complete this new Nature survey. IMO, it contains a few quite serious flaws: - plant sciences are completely absent - many questions about AI without an option "I do not use AI in my work"

The key difference is that Ukraine do not target civilian infrastructure in russia although it has a technical capacity to do so. All media discussing potential response should keep in mind several examples: 1) when russia hit Okhmatdyt, Ukraine did not hit the major children hospital in russia (1)

Very often russia claims that it "values & protects orthodox christiantity". In fact, it does the opposite - attempts to destroy very significant orthodox holy places. This year Kyiv Pechersk Lavra marks 975 years since its foundation and 100 years since it became a historic reserve.

At least 5 people were killed and 35 injured as Russia fired 681 missiles and drones at Ukraine overnight Kyiv was the main target: the Lavra caught fire, the Dovzhenko Film Studio was hit, and Ukraine's top anti-corruption court sustained damage. euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/15/i...

Again about praised "russian culture": Tonight russia launched another massive attack on Ukraine. It targeted Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Mystetskiy Arsenal, Dovzhenko Film Studio, Art museum in Kharkiv and other places. Also, russia did double strike in Kharkiv aiming to kill rescue workers.

Usually general takes like "education is too expensive & not worth it anymore" are promoted by different kinds of populists & authoritarians. There are several reasons: - people with critical thinkig are less likely to be fooled - cutting funding for education system - devaluation/repressions (1)

Виявилось що російці переклали назву БПЛА Ан196 "Лютий" як "фєвраль". Не "пекельні борошна" звісно, але близько до того.

Perhaps the final thing for today regarding biosafety levels: almost all my labwork for over 10 years has been done in BSL-2 labs. And I am working exclusively on plants with absolutely no involvement of any human material or human pathogens.

As biologist & Ukrainian I am shocked by the level of incompetence in publicly released declassied information by US DNI. Besides anything else, they were not able even locate major cities correctly. P.S. I also remember very similar maps released by ru propaganda several years go.

To work with Antrax, Ebola, Marburg and alike pathogens (EDP) one needs to have BSL-4 lab. Ukraine does not have BSL-4 labs at all (which is also shown on the same slide). In contrast, russia has BSL-4 labs in moscow & novosibirsk and stores EDPs, also from the sovier era.

Ja, ich bin auch der Meinung, daß KI-Hype verursacht eine Mangel an Autenzität, Vertrauen und auch Menschlichkeit.

“Academic scientists of the Epstein class covered for his crimes, laundered his reputation, & legitimized his pseudo-intellectual pursuit of eugenics, racism and sexism” “it is no fallacy to raise an eyebrow at a decision to enable people who traffic minors for sex or dress racism up as science”

Also, we should not forget Chomsky's completely immoral position on russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Ukrainian scientists wrote even an open letter to him in response: www.e-flux.com/notes/470005...

Periodically see Profs/PIs complaining on different platforms that AI takes their jobs. IMO, it would be much better for all these people to understand why this cannot and will not be the case (at least in near future), and what is also extremely important - explain this to science administrators.

Many major science platforms like WoS, Scopus, GoogleScholar, etc. follow AI hype & almost destroyed adequate search for information. In science we usually need an option of strict reproducible search returning relatively few exact hits. All these LLM-based "smart searches" doing just the opposite.

A timely piece on scientific overload reportearth.substack.com/p/how-mega-s...

It's quite shocking to see such an extent of discrimination against women by NASA. I cannot believe they were unable to find even a single equally qualified woman astronaut for Artemis III mission.

IMO, this is extremely bad decision [to put it politely & softly] with potentially a whole range of immense consequences. The main question is whether Visa customers can opt-out or not.

Terrible. And there is also russian influence behind, via musk & co.

Das Traurigste ist [mMn], dass obwohl Universitäten als sichere Orte betrachtet wurden, kann dort selbst für Professoren keine wirkliche Sicherheit garantiert werden. Und was passiert, wenn ein Student ohne Status und Macht eine ähnliche Drohung bekommt?

Am Samstag halte ich an der TU Berlin einen Vortrag zum Faschismus von Björn Höcke. Oder auch nicht. Ein Anwalt hat der TU gedroht. Diese überlegt, während des SDS Kongresses einige Vorträge so nicht zuzulassen. Vor allem die nicht, die sich mit Faschismus befassen, unter anderem auch meinen Vortrag

The original oil painting "Siege of Sevastopol" by Franz Roubaud was damaged beyond repair in 1942. What was exibited in Sevastopol - reproduction made by a group of russian/soviet painters in 1954. This is widely mentioned in many russian sources, but now russia proceeds with disinfo attempts.

Paradox: it seems that the most of people, who claimed they want return to USSR, do not like shortages, repressions, stamps, long lines, etc. But repressions, absence of freedom, and shortages of all essential goods are the very essence of USSR.

More information: www.iaptglobal.org/iabms

📄 OrthoFinder: improved phylogenetic orthology inference with enhanced accuracy and scalability 🧬🖥️ ⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fight against cancer is very important, and it is very good that the EU president has such an attitude. Providing an access to high-quality healthcare for everyone regardless of place/age/income/status/origin/etc. is absolutely essential.

Das [mMn] erinnert stark an die UdSSR der 1930er, insb. an Lysenkoismus.

Three years ago today, Russia destroyed Kakhovka Dam. At least 34 people were killed, but real toll is still unknown because Russia controls the most devastated areas 80 settlements were flooded. Losses exceeded $11 billion euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/t...

Щиро не розумію, чого вимагають скасування нмт з математики і називають його заскладним. Заради цікавості спробував вирішить тестові завдання, набрав 150 за 15 хв. P.S.: особиста думка: цілеспрямована відміна чи урізання напрямів STEM в Україні зараз практично є самогубством.

Щоб оті всі діячі так переймалися за дійсно непоправні втрати - всіх, кого вбила, закатувала, зруйнувала життя росія (і продовжує все це робити прямо зараз), як вони переймаються якимось шматком бронзи.

In der Ukraine gab es Zwischen Kherson und Mykolaiv gab es eine Tankstelle, an der wir immer die Westen und Helme ausgezogen und Hotdogs geholt haben. Ab da war es sicher. Die Tankstelle gibt es nicht mehr.

Dell PC lost service tag during the last update. Dell support: sorry but we have to charge you before we going any further because there is no warranty. The main thing is that service tag is not supposed to dissapear at all.

Well, this outcome was 100% predictable at the beginning. And I still wonder about the reason of writing an open letter to war criminal putin.

Meanwhile, there are reports claiming that on day 0 of SPIEF [besides many other outrageous things] russia served a cocktail named "long epstein island". That is how so-called "social proximity" between world criminals looks like.

От і нащо взагалі той відкритий лист? Щоб що?

4th of June is Day of Remembrance of Children who died due to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. According to the official data (which are incomplete), in the period from the beginning of full-scale war in 2022 russia killed 707 Ukrainian children.

I do not think that Ukraine repeating this mistake. At least not now. Because even today it targeted only oil terminal and military ship near SPb, although was/is very likely capable of targeting virtually anything in SPb including SPIEF.

Offensichtlich hat die Wissenschaft in Deutschland eine ganze Reihe von Problemen. Doch falls die AfD an die Macht kommt, wird alles noch sehr viel schlimmer.

Observation: we got to the point when APCs of some journals from nature group are much lower (ca. 2x) in comparison to some journals published by predatory mdpi.

Was mich an den Regeln in der Wissenschaft stört: 1. Diese Regeln werden meist von jenen gestellt, die ihre Auswirkungen nie selbst erlebt haben. 2. Allgemeine Empfehlung - sich an die Regeln anzupassen, anstatt zu versuchen, sie zu ändern. Doch genau dies verschlimmert die Situation zusehends.

I'm reposting this because I want to make a correction. In the thread below I mention using the -mset flag for testing site profile mixture models. But in fact you should use -madd flag. I'm sorry for this mistake.

This is how the on-purpose destruction of science looks like.