The Algeria-Kansas alliance only grows stronger and more wholesome 💚 This is the World Cup we love 🇩🇿

Yaaaay. I just came across a British pun joke and experienced their sense of humour! I wish I would see more of these on my timeline!

A PhD's success depends more on the fit between the student, the advisor, and the lab than on the specific topic being studied (it barely matters at all). Similarly, a lab's success depends more on how excited (or miserable) its researchers are than on the precise project they are working on (it could be virtually anything). This information isn't in papers or in grant proposals, you have to ask the researchers.

Attending an applied environmental microbiology session. From the rhizosphere to pollinators: Studying Agricultural Microbiomes Across Biological Scales. First interesting talk is on hatched chick's/ eggshell microbiome by Mary Anne Amalaradjou from @UConnAHS #ASMicrobe

Back in Washington DC for #ASMicrobe 2026

Cardinal News is signing off from X. The platform has decided to discontinue automatic posts from websites like ours and we do not have the capacity on our team to manually add from our wealth of stories. 🧵⬇️

Most experiments fail, and negative results rarely get published. This means LLMs are unaware of the outcomes of most experiments.

I was definitely surprised when I visited Italy. Here in the USA, I have been to 2 AirBnB accomodations that had bidets, one in Greensboro, NC and other in Geneva, NY. Both adopted bidets during toilet paper shortage of 2020. Usage in Egypt is definitely more than Italy though.

Many of us cardiologists and cardiac surgeons in Egypt chose our specialty because of one person, Sir Magdi Yacoub, and he didn’t disappoint, he returned to Egypt,modernized cardiology and cardiac surgery, he is our national idol. @pcronline #EuroPCR

The invasive Myna pictured in Mahalla (Central Delta of North Egypt). I have never seen or heard of it in Egypt. Apparently, it has recently spread there and is well established there now! I even was under the impression it was a native bird in the West coast of Saudi Arabia!

This is the second or third time in two months I see a post about the Myna in Egypt. I noticed it during my internship at @KAUST_News in Saudi Arabia! It was interestingly mimicking sirens and car horns. I did not know it is an invasive bird to the region!

Drought is hitting bad here in Southwest Virginia and in Blacksburg. Boxwoods are the main honeybee attractors in my backyard. Not only there are no flowers, it is brown and drying out badly. Due to sloping/run off, the other two are doing just ok with watering.

Back in the early 90s, before the Internet, we had "Defrag and Chill". You'd start Disk Defragmenter on your 540MB hard drive, dim the lights, crack open a Surge, and just vibe while the little blue bars crawled across the screen like they were solving world peace. Forty-five minutes of pure, unfiltered anticipation. No notifications. No algorithms. Just the two of you, the gentle grinding of the hard drive, and the sacred promise that your Solitaire games were about to feel 3% snappier. This is MS_DOS 6.22, which I worked on, but I honestly have no idea who wrote defrag. Iconic utility though!

One of the most recurrent tours I have is of old Cairo, and with each tour I go to previously unvisited places. Of the most intriguing is the Mamluk period. A group of (incohesive?) rulers originating from Eurasia who had a distinct remarkable impact on architecture of Egypt!

Follow up culturing, 16S rRNA isolate sequencing and whole genome sequencing have revealed 3 species of Pseudomonas can reside the nodule, including 2 novel species. Results are in my dissertation's 3rd chapter.

I am not usually excited by how most review articles cite my work, usually for the methodology. So I am really happy this 2025 review from the @MarinLab_ lab has properly looked at the results and summarised them in their manuscript cell.com/trends/plant-scienc… #Pseudomonas #Soybean

This is a really interesting paper- 1 in 300 citations are now fabricated with a 12- fold increase in past 2-3 years, probably reflecting use of AI. Via @ArielRoguin ( his sons paper) Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers - The Lancet thelancet.com/journals/lance…

I'm endlessly proud of Egypt. Allowing your currency to fall when bad shocks hit isn't easy, but it's better than trying to defend what isn't sustainable. Egypt learned the right lessons from the past and for that it deserves huge praise. A game changer... robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/…

Windows 11 is my least favourite since Windows Vista.

I would like sometime to write down family stories concerning historical events and people; not their accounts, but actual encounters (an impartial neutral retelling/chronicle?). Life is not black and white, and there is a large gray area in between. May be when I retire..?