Steve Trutane

🌳 During #COVID19 pandemic, I planted live oak saplings along Ohlone Greenway/BART path in #AlbanyCA. They were volunteers relocated from our yard, seeded by our ‘mother’ oak.

I watered them during the drought & protected them from 🦌 & mowers.

Pics of these #CovidOaks here: x.com/trutane/stat...

Comparing cooperative geometric puzzle solving in ants versus humans www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (OA) Tabea Dreyer et al. + Ofer Feinerman ✉️

“complex brains require extensive communication to cooperate efficiently”

#CollectiveCognition #cooperation
Longhorn crazy #ants
#Myrmecology 🐜

YouTube video by Alice Ting Alice Ting Rosettacon keynote 2025

Video introduction to our new “Conformational Biasing” method for computational design of mutations that bias proteins towards desired conformational states

CB part starts at 14:55

Thanks to Peter Cavanagh and Andrew Xue – amazing graduate students who co-led this work

Nice #OpenScience contribution by @arcadiascience.com

Demo/proof of concept using #Chlamy colony analysis 👇🏼

Notes:
1️⃣ #Chlamydomonas algae here — not to be confused with #Chlamydia bacterium

2️⃣ #Raman spectroscopy — not to be confused with #ramen cuisine 🍜

Interesting study showing how genetic variation can limit antibody therapies, led by the DBM team (Lepore & Jeker) with computational structural analysis from @torstenschwede.bsky.social @biozentrum.unibas.ch

www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...

#PrecisionMedicine #Genetics #AntibodyTherapy

This silver alert has been scrubbed from the CHP Alerts feed on X where it was originally posted ystrdy. Not flagged as “Located” – just deleted. Any idea why they would do that?

Neither CHP nor Vallejo PD are on Bsky but they are on X where I tagged them about this here: x.com/trutane/stat...

Btw, I used Southwest’s feedback form to let them know about this “planet 404” website glitch, so they may eventually address it — which would be easier than re-printing the cups!

#bamboo #ecoFriendly #ecoSky
#singleUsePlastic #singleUsePlastics
#plasticPollution #plastics

Btw, I used Southwest’s feedback form to let them know about this “planet 404” website glitch, so they may eventually address it — which would be easier than re-printing the cups!

#bamboo #ecoFriendly #ecoSky
#singleUsePlastic #singleUsePlastics
#plasticPollution #plastics

Breaking the Plastic Wave 2025 Our analysis also finds that plastic is interconnected with other global challenges, and that solving the plastic pollution problem will have broad implications for improving the health of people, the...

We're drowning in plastic: Plastic pollution will more than double by 2040 without action. But Pew's new report (launched today) shows that we have the solutions to dramatically reduce it. The question is whether we'll act in time. [🧵 1/3]

Environmental Sustainability Initiatives | Southwest Airlines At Southwest Airlines, we pride ourselves in promoting a healthier Planet. Learn about the efforts we are taking to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050

The website thumbnail shown by Bsky says it’s Southwest’s “Environmental sustainability initiative“ page. Googling that, I get the correct URL: www.southwest.com/citizenship/...

Southwest’s website is failing to redirect from the “planet“ URL that’s printed on the cups. Bluesky maybe using a cache?

Environmental Sustainability Initiatives | Southwest Airlines At Southwest Airlines, we pride ourselves in promoting a healthier Planet. Learn about the efforts we are taking to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050

On a recent Southwest flight, I was served a beverage in a bamboo cup that had Southwest.com/planet printed on it.

When I tried to visit that address in a web browser, I got a 404 error on the Southwest website. However, as I’m writing this post in Bsky, it appears to be resolving successfully. 🤔

How Freaked Out Should We Be About All These Small Earthquakes? | KQED We bring together earthquake scientists to answer all your questions and tell us the latest in the science of quakes.

🎙️ON AIR:

We're joined by earthquake scientists, who will answer all your questions and tell us the latest in the science of quakes.

❓What are your earthquake questions — about our area, preparedness, warning systems?

📻 Listen:

For the M4 earthquake on the Hayward fault near the Claremont this past September (9/22), which happened at 3 AM, both me & my wife we’re awakened by the P wave, so we both experienced the S wave when it hit!
bsky.app/profile/trut...

#seismology #HaywardFault
@berkeleyseismo.bsky.social

Fact vs. Fiction:
“You should never run outside or stand in a doorway during an earthquake.”
Let’s break it down. 👇

Illustrations by Jasmina El Bouamraoui and Karabo Poppy Moletsane are licensed under CC0 1.0 creativecommons.org/publicdomain...

I remixed the image by vertically stacking the originally wide horizontal banner format. My new version is still CC0.

@creativecommons.bsky.social

Why should I donate to @wikipedia.org & where does my money go? (FAQ) donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ#Why...?

I got this nice graphic in a thank you email from @wikimediafoundation.org "...helping us build a world where people everywhere have access to free & fair information"

#OpenAccess #Knowledge

Note that the one repost on X came from me, as well as one of those likes

Taking it at face value, this example suggests that Bluesky is >100x enriched over X for users interested in this topic, which covers the intersection of life science/drug development/bioinformatics/AI

#Bsky #Twitter #Xitter

Interesting X vs Bsky comparison that reflects on userbase science engagement: identical post below by @scifri.bsky.social posted at same time on both X & 🦋 had 10x more reposts & likes on @bsky.app which has about 15x fewer users (40M vs 600M).
#scicomm #sciSky #science 🧬

How Alphafold Has Changed Biology Research, 5 Years On Google's tool for predicting how proteins “fold” turns 5 this year. How is it fitting into biological research—and where is it going?

In 2020, Google’s AI lab released a tool called Alphafold that could predict how amino acids would fold into proteins under many different scenarios. Here’s where it—and its Nobel-winning team—are five years later.

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales on How to Build Trust | KQED Wikipedia, the crowdsourced encyclopedia, is one of the world’s most visited websites, with 11 billion page views each month. Its founder, Jimmy Wales, credits its success to one thing — trust —…

🎙️ON AIR:

We're talking to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about the site’s history and why right wing figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson are attacking it.

❓ Has Wikipedia earned your trust? How is it a part of your life?

📻 Listen:

Details on the demolition of the White House East wing with a bird’s eye view schematic of how the new ballroom might look, via @wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Wi...

#Eastwing #WhiteHouse 🏛️

Hurricanes feed off of warm water. Watch how quickly the eye of #Melissa collapsed as it moved onto land and over the mountainous terrain of Jamaica, and how quickly it is reforming now that it has moved back over water! I will be adding this radar loop to my earth science lectures.

TIL part 2: Wikipedia’s picture is called “Today’s featured picture“ — akin to “Today’s featured article”. Wikimedia Commons’ POTD is independent.

Odd that the @wikipedia.org app displays the Commons’ POTD instead of Wikipedia’s featured picture.🤔

Featured pic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_droi...

“This image was selected as picture of the day on Wikimedia Commons” — stated on the Commons page for the image (link in my OP).

TIL: Wikipedia’s POTD is different from @wikicommons.bsky.social‘s POTD. Unexpected, but 👌.

#art #wikipedia @wikipedia.org

Note this peacock girl is shown as the POTD on the Wikipedia mobile app. But it’s different than the POTD shown on the Wikipedia website homepage and at @wiki-potd.bsky.social — the poster for the English-language version, Falka, of the opéra bouffe “Le droit d'aînesse”.

Why the discrepancy? 🤷‍♂️

Girl performer in a peacock dance, wearing extensive make up including peacock feathers, colored skin and hair with feather designs on her chest and neck.

Wikipedia picture of the day 29 Oct 2025: portrait of a peacock dance performer w make up. The peacock dance is performed by girls dressed as peacocks during the harvest festival of Thai Pongal in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pe...
Via @wikipedia.org

A woman lies unconscious as winged demons and a green figure with a dagger surround her bed ominously. Text says: Different types of hallucinations have been linked to sleep paralysis: the belief that there is an intruder in the room, the feeling of a presence, and the sensation of floating. One common hallucination is the presence of an incubus.

Most people experience it at least once and about 5% have recurrent episodes. Though sometimes linked with narcolepsy, on its own it is usually harmless. Understanding the biology can reduce fear. Wake up to more knowledge ➡️ w.wiki/3irU (3/3)

Carl Sagan: “If we have been bamboozled long enough we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge- even to ourselves that we’ve been taken”
hpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S1...

Some deep concepts in physics & philosophy:
#Eternalism #SpaceTime #Reality
#BlockUniverse #Cosmology

On the urban benefits of more trees & greenery 🌳
bsky.app/profile/bren...

#GreenSpace
#UrbanLandscaping #UrbanLandscape
#LivableCities #CityPlanning