L. Felipe Benites

Stoked to see that @DebashB and me became comic book characters in the new issue of @NASAAstrobio graphic novel! You will see a lot more familiar faces in this inspiring story about "How to become an Astrobiologist" issue 9 here: astrobiology.nasa.gov/resources/grap…

Public perception of H. R. Giger's art focuses extensively on his dark "alien" and "biomechanical" paintings - but the master created a WIDE range of weird and liminal work - including many colourful or just whimsical pieces...

AI companies destroying an entire planet looking for use cases lol

@NVIDIAGeForce How it feels trying to avoid getting shoved AI down your throat in 2026.

Vermis. A dark fantasy Book, for a non existant RPG game. With Dungeon Synth soundtrack. Nerd shit but super cool.

I currently have three papers in review at "high impact" journals. One of them has been sitting there for two years. In that time my daughter was born and learned how to walk, but apparently publishing a PDF was still not possible for me. For another one, after four months in review the editor told me they cannot find a second reviewer and asked me to suggest more reviewers. A third one sent me a message in 2026 saying the PDF I uploaded was larger than 10 MB and that I should please reupload everything to make the file smaller. All of this just to eventually pay between 7,000 and 12,000 USD per paper so someone can officially approve that the science we do is "legitimate". Reminder: not a single reviewer will be compensated here. I still don't understand how we as scientists can collectively be so smart when doing science and still tolerate a system like this when it comes to sharing our findings. We should move to preprints plus open review, whether human or AI, asap. So frustrated about it. I'd suggest sharing your work on bioRxiv or medRxiv, reading and reviewing preprints when you can, and highlighting good research, especially if it is still a preprint. Try platforms like ResearchHub (that pay for peer review) and experiment with AI based reviewers for faster feedback. Instead I read this as a proposed "revolutionary" measure:

This video of Volvox algae moving around a droplet of water in the middle of a Japanese 50 yen coin was shot at 50x magnification. Explore more microscopic storytelling from Nikon's 2025 Small World in Motion competition: on.natgeo.com/4r9QVEO

Saturday Soundtrack (recent discovery): youtube.com/watch?v=uAVPpZ…

✨New preprint from the lab on firefly synchronization, led by (freshly!) Dr. Owen Martin, with Nataliya Nechyporenko and Kaushik Jayaram. Field firefly-LED interactions reveal excitatory and inhibitory timing rules that facilitate population synchrony✨ doi.org/10.64898/2026.…

Today is the last day to submit an abstract to #AbSciCon2026! Check it out our proposed session for the conference! Let’s bring more bio to astrobiology!

It was great to chat with Dr. Rebecca Roberts from The Scientist magazine about giant viruses in the ocean! the-scientist.com/what-are-giant…

our collaborative work is now published in its final version! As we kick off the new year with fresh energy, it feels great to celebrate this milestone with you all. Huge thanks to everyone involved! 🙏 Environmental Microbiome article — open access: link.springer.com/article/10.118…

6-These results highlight host traits+ cross-kingdom microbial interac as key drivers of colony-level microbiome assembly, beautifully illustrated by Julie (Life Science Studios) in the final fig. Hope this guides discussions in microbiome research to bee eco-evo and conservation

Our ms on the microbiome of a stingless bee hive is out!🦠🐝 Exciting! Here’s a short thread with some findings, going from the assembly of a consistent multi-kingdom microbiome to discussions on host traits that contribute to it. Take a look and share : ) rdcu.be/eVNFJ

Fantastic fictional fish from the one and only T. K. Sivgin! Read more about them on rylmadolisland.blogspot.com/2025/12/neothe…

BREAKING: Sugars essential for life have been found in pristine asteroid Bennu samples collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Combined with previous detections of amino acids and nucleobases, we see that life’s ingredients were widespread throughout the solar system: go.nasa.gov/48MTu9i More on the study led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of @TohokuUniPR⤵️

Pythagoras, Greek philosopher and mathematician

A 60-year old man in Germany became the seventh person with HIV to be announced free of the virus after receiving a stem-cell transplant go.nature.com/4iqekPl

Eyvind Earle (1916 ~ 2000) concept illustrations for Disney's 'Lady and the Tramp',

Astrobiology, Aliens, and the Origin of Life youtu.be/h52qWMncEUE?si…

Join us tonight for Thinking Beyond with Louie Slocombe! Register at links.asu.edu/ThinkingBeyond