Liam Drew

Royal Albert Hall for a WiP?

Yes, mind over matter fantasy nonsense. The efforts my relative made to keep waking and moving were desperate… .

I have a loved one with CBD too - it’s been savage. I can imagine someone having odd neurological symptoms and CBD being mooted as a *possible* cause. But my relative was way, way past the point of walking around Cornwall by the time the diagnosis was confidently made. It all stinks.

TBF, early on, CBD has much diagnostic uncertainty, without a definitive signature it’ll typically be one of several possibilities. Maybe the guy had some issues and it was cited as a possible cause but it’s very hard to see a neurologist saying someone capable of walking around Cornwall had CBD.

if I’d known CBD was at the heart of the SP, I would have read it, and I would’ve had a lot of questions. If I’d known the sequel reports that a bracing walk can reverse neurodegenerative, I’d have demanded to see those two alleged brain scans.

As a relative of someone with CBD, this pair can go fuck themselves.

#abswss25 #SummerSchool #hybrid
🔗 zurl.co/tUAAn

💻Panel 1 - 5 things we wish we'd known when we began our feature-writing careers

🎯Producer: Aisling Irwin

📢Speakers:
Rachel Brazil @rachelbrazil.bsky.social
@liamdrew.bsky.social
Clare Wilson @theipaper.com
Shaoni Bhattacharya

🧵 Several people have raised questions about what I meant by "deservedly so" when referring to the decline of institutional trust. It's a fair question, so I want to explain that, because it sits at the heart of my work on how democracies collapse when their epistemic foundations rot.

This paper is wild.

Cancer more deadly when tumours lack Y chromosomes — and the loss could be contagious Losing the Y chromosome seems to make cancer cells more aggressive in men and the phenomenon may even spread between cells.

A new paper in @nature.com suggests that cancer cells that have lost their Y chromosomes can induce this same mutation in nearby immune cells! And when both cell types have this mutation there's cancers are way more aggressive. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Or both…

Sorry, we left an implant in your brain Unexplainable · Episode

OA link open.spotify.com/episode/5zA6...

Sorry, we left an implant in your brain Unexplainable · Episode

Open access link to podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/5zA6...

Abandoned: the human cost of neurotechnology failure When the makers of electronic implants abandon their projects, people who rely on the devices have everything to lose.

The article that inspired the podcast: www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Sorry, we left an implant in your brain What happens if you get a life-changing device implanted…and the company that maintains it goes bankrupt?

I spoke to Vox's Unexplainable podcast -- alongside the brilliant Jennifer French -- about the problem of people having neural implants then losing support for those devices. www.vox.com/unexplainabl...

How vanishing Y chromosomes could help explain men's ill health The enigmatic Y chromosome has a tendency to disappear from cells with age. Now, research is revealing the long-term impacts this can have on disease risk and life expectancy

If you have a Y chromosome and are approaching middle age, chances are a good chunk of your immune cells are beginning to lose this chromosome - and that's likely bad for your health. It might help explain why men die earlier than women... My latest www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

Cartoon of a man wearing a T shirt which says “IF I HAD A TIME-MACHINE I WOULD GO BACK AND CORRECT THE SPELLING MISTAKE ON THIS T-SHIRT” (There is no spelling mistake).

Time Machine.

I can draw this for you as a cartoon

www.worldofmoose.com/products/tim...

And it's also available as a T shirt!

www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Ti...

Vote for the best of the internet I just voted in The Webby People's Voice Awards and checked my voter registration.

Whoop - I’m part of a @nature.com team nominated for a Webby Award for our short video on cancer busting vaccines! Any votes would be hugely appreciated :) vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting...

Thrilled for my friend @helenscales.bsky.social

It really seems like a major test of what the “new normal” is - because this is definitely not normal…

This is wild. People happy with an 80% survival rate among their measles infected kids….

‘My career is over’: Columbia University scientists hit hard by Trump team’s cuts The US government has begun slashing US$400 million in research grants at Columbia University over pro-Palestinian campus protests.

"At this point I believe my academic career is effectively over"--a postdoc studying schizophrenia at Columbia, in the wake of the government's $400 million funding cut. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Does education help build a cognitive reserve to ward off dementia? Spending more time at school could keep you sharp into old age, but there are other factors that might explain the effect

As the teens directly affected by the UK raising the minimum school leavers age from 15 to 16 pass through their 60s, it’s created a natural experiment for people interested in whether education decreases dementia risk… and it looks like it might www.newscientist.com/article/2471...

Great stuff -- and good point about the loss of cones! Those colourful primates being trichromatic...

It’s curious to me that aside from a few primate exceptions such as mandrills and vervet monkeys, mammals have never embraced being colourful…

From the “free speech” party…

Restoring vision with optogenetics Trials of therapies that enhance the light-sensitivity of cells in the retina are returning surprisingly positive results in people with retinitis pigmentosa.

Might optogenetics be on the cusp of becoming a transformative therapy for blindness? My latest looks at the latest advances in using this technology for treating retinitis pigmentosa, with an ongoing clinical trial yielding remarkable results. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Restoring vision with optogenetics Trials of therapies that enhance the light-sensitivity of cells in the retina are returning surprisingly positive results in people with retinitis pigmentosa.

Might optogenetics be on the cusp of becoming a transformative therapy for blindness? My latest looks at the latest advances in using this technology for treating retinitis pigmentosa, with an ongoing clinical trial yielding remarkable results. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Would love to talk to any and all academics about this for a story. DMs are open, Signal's in my bio ✌️

DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big Twitter Ad The source code for the new Department for Government Efficiency’s “official US government website” points to X as its primary source of authority while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com.

The source code for the new Department for Government Efficiency’s “official US government website” points to X as its primary source of authority while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com.