Sandra Laurentino
LightNews LightNews
banner
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
Sandra Laurentino
@sandralaurentino.bsky.social
1.4K followers 810 following 410 posts
Reproductive biologist 🇵🇹 in 🇩🇪
Institute of Reproductive Genetics, CMG, Uni-Münster
PI CRU326 "Male Germ Cells"
DNA methylation, spermatogenesis, ageing, male infertility
Hobby collector, slowest runner in the west
https://linktr.ee/SandraLaurentino
Posts Replies Media Videos
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
The opening keynote was by Melina Schuh. She showed some groundbreaking unpublished data on human oocytes that might change things for the better for older women undergoing IVF 🤯
Translational and applied science doesn't exist in a vacuum, it comes from strong basic research
#DVR2025
November 27, 2025 at 11:14 AM
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
1/3 Although the young andrologists and @dgandrologie.bsky.social session happens just before the official opening session, it's always a highlight for DVR congresses. We had the first results of last year's winner of the DGA grant, my office mate @lherrmann.bsky.social...
#DVR2025
November 27, 2025 at 10:14 AM
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
Time for #DVR2025
November 27, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
biyolokum.bsky.social
Students applying for grad school, or reaching out to professors. I have an important piece of advice for you: STOP DOING THIS 👇 (a thread) #STEM #PhD #gradschool #academictips
November 21, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
tkingfisher.com
So I’m getting into my truck at the grocery store and a voice yells “Hey! Young lady!”

I am 48 so I did not turn, but then I see wild waving out a truck window. Old man straight off Duck Dynasty, full camo, beard to his sternum. He says “Your bumper sticker! Read books, punch Nazis?”
November 21, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
reproductionms.bsky.social
Big news 🎊 @dfg.de announced today the funding of our CRC @reproductionms.bsky.social
Our dedicated mission: Unravelling the molecular pathways of male infertility and drive smarter treatment for couples.
We're ready, excited and can't wait to get started 🚀
November 21, 2025 at 4:09 PM
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
👏
November 21, 2025 at 2:08 PM
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
😵‍💫 soon the journals will require physical proof of the blot/gel/etc. Thinking about it, we might as well go back to mailing a physical copy of the typed manuscript and photos/negatives.
pedrobeltrao.bsky.social Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 6d
Finally the scary example. The image of a western blot with a time course experiment, staining a protein of interest, showing the increase of protein over time and a second staining with a control antibody that does not change over time
November 21, 2025 at 1:42 PM
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
Congratulations to @reproductionms.bsky.social 🍾🥳
dfg.de Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft @dfg.de · 7d
Die #DFG fördert zur weiteren Stärkung der #Spitzenforschung an den Hochschulen 9 neue #Sonderforschungsbereiche (SFB). Die Themen reichen von pilzbasierten Baumaterialien über Autoimmunkrankheiten bis zu molekularer Bor-Chemie. Einzelheiten 👉 www.dfg.de/de/service/p...
Die DFG richtet 9 neue Sonderforschungsbereiche ein, mit einer Förderung von 120 Mio. Euro für die erste Förderperiode. Ein neuer Verbund ist SFB/Transregio (TRR), getragen von mehreren Hochschulen. 32 Sonderforschungsbereiche, darunter 15 SFB/Transregio, werden verlängert.
November 21, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
meinel.bsky.social
November 21, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
dieworkwear.bsky.social
The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.
Excerpt from a BBC article: ""We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less." She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards. They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it. This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil. The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option. "We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents. "We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour.""
November 20, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
booksofm.com
If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
November 20, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
cihancelik.bsky.social
Die Reaktionen zeigen: Einige stört es, dass gebildete Bürger mit Migrationsgeschichte sichtbarer werden, ihre Interessen und Sensibilitäten artikulieren und Teilhabe einfordern.
Das alte Bild des anspruchslosen migrantischen Arbeiters - malochen, schweigen, Projektionsfläche sein - ist vorbei.
cihancelik.bsky.social Cihan Çelik @cihancelik.bsky.social · 8d
Das Bild einer Entfremdung: Die Stipendiaten der Deutschlandstiftung Integration verlassen bei der Rede des Bundeskanzlers den Saal.
Viele wollen es nicht verstehen oder wahr haben, aber die Äußerungen des Kanzlers haben enorme Kränkungen verursacht.
November 20, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM, YOU FLAMING SHITBIRDS.

WE HAVE, IN FACT, NOT IGNORED YOUR NOW-DEFUNCT HYPOTHESIS. WE INVESTIGATED IT TO THE TUNE OF STUDIES WITH DATA FROM MILLIONS OF KIDS.
Vaccine Safety MENU V For Everyone NOV. 19, 2025 KEY POINTS • The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. • Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities. • HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.
November 20, 2025 at 3:08 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
lauropea.bsky.social
saturation with Tolkien spinoffs has somehow not prepared our culture for the arrival of dark lords bearing a gift that everyone becomes convinced they can wield to accomplish great things but just makes them dependent and start whispering about preciouses if you suggest just throwing it away
November 19, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
matthewcobb.bsky.social
The origin of 'pedigree'. This type of C12 figure (not a family tree but a way of calculating relatedness – the titles of various relatives have not been put in the circles) looked like a crane's foot, thought medieval folk. So 'pied de grue' and hence 'pedigree'. Source in alt.
A manuscript page showing forked diagram of white circles superimposed on a man (Christ?) against a blue background. Corpus Christi College, Parker Library MS 10, f. 300v
November 18, 2025 at 9:44 AM
sandralaurentino.bsky.social
Today I gave a lecture on sex determination/differentiation and DSD in German. I should feel very accomplished but my mind keeps coming back to mistakes I made. Damned imposter syndrome 😒
November 18, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
joanagsa.bsky.social
Sobre a fusão FCT/ANI. Há coisas com as quais concordo mais, outras menos
E há uma com a qual não concordo NADA: a dupla tutela com a economia
Se tb acham q este é um enorme erro, leiam, assinem e partilhem a carta aberta:
www.publico.pt/2025/11/15/c...

Para assinar: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Por uma ciência autónoma, ambiciosa e responsável
Reformas desta escala, quando feitas sem um claro desenho institucional, modelo de governança e plano de transição rigoroso, correm o risco de gerar incerteza, inércia e paralisia administrativa.
www.publico.pt
November 15, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
luschnig.bsky.social
Job Alert! The Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology at the Faculty of Biology @uni-muenster.de invites applications for a Full Professorship (W3) in “Systems Neuroscience” - Highly attractive research environment at the Multiscale Imaging Center. Apply by January 5th. See shorturl.at/VczFp
November 12, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
stephenturner.us
How I recovered from a collaboration gone wrong www.science.org/content/arti...
How I recovered from a collaboration gone wrong
After learning “how quickly ‘we’ can turn wicked,” this researcher reshaped his approach
www.science.org
November 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
raulpachecovega.bsky.social
"The Joy of Writing a Paper" by Sterk and Rabe is a solid contribution to the discussions we all have about why the hell am I doing this research in the first place and why should I write it and who will read it in the end?
#Free2DownloadAndRead here
www.wetenschappelijkschrijven.nl/wp-content/u...
www.wetenschappelijkschrijven.nl
November 11, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
michaelhobbes.bsky.social
I will believe that these people love Lord of the Rings when I see any evidence that they can read.
Many Tolkien fans pointed out that Musk’s post got those “hard men” wrong. They are proven time and again to be fallible and corruptible. It’s the hobbits who save the world
November 11, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Sandra Laurentino
gregpriest.bsky.social
Conrad Hal Waddington was born OTD in 1905.

His “epigenetic landscape” is a diagrammatic representation of the constraints influencing embryonic development.

On his 50th birthday, his colleagues gave him a pinball machine on the model of the epigenetic landscape.

🧪 🦫🦋 🌱🐋 #HistSTM #philsci #evobio
November 8, 2025 at 4:03 PM