Ana Viñuela

Reaffirming the value of model organisms in training scientific minds - Nature Cell Biology As biomedical research prioritizes human models and translational promise, classic model organisms are increasingly dismissed. Here we argue that they have a lasting value, both in enabling discovery and in cultivating scientific thinking, by training researchers in systems reasoning, integrative thinking and independent inquiry.

PREACH!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Funny story, though, we found this gene in NCBI databases, but it was annotated in Streptococcus pneumoniae! This is surely human contamination in a bacterial strep sample that was not properly filtered. Lesson: use CHM13, or better yet a pangenome, when filtering for human contamination...

Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.

'Universities have collectively announced more than 12,000 job cuts in the last year, new analysis from the University and College Union (UCU) suggests.'

Para Israel un cese el fuego significa asesinar a palestinos por decenas y no por centenares. Es lo mismo que lleva meses haciendo en Líbano.

Headline from an article in Nature this week that states "Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery. The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality."

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

When women researchers publish, media attention doesn’t always follow Men-led papers receive more media coverage than women’s, new study finds

In an analysis of 1.2 million news stories about scholarly research, men-led papers were found to receive more attention overall and were heavily overrepresented in the top 5% of most covered studies. https://scim.ag/4o7l5a5

Efficient and accurate search in petabase-scale sequence repositories - Nature MetaGraph enables scalable indexing of large sets of DNA, RNA or protein sequences using annotated de Bruijn graphs.

The Metagraph paper is out in Nature; it showed up in my feeds today! Congratulations to Mikhail Karasikov, @gxxxr.bsky.social, @akkah21.bsky.social and all of the other authors (whom I'd love to follow on Bluesky if I can find you ;P) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This sounds like a bit but I’m being serious: kids using chat gpt for their homework are denying themselves the invaluable experience of learning how to bullshit their way through a problem. You drink some caffeine the night before and figure it the fuck out. That’s a skill. You need it in life.

They were TERRIBLE

🔔 Excited to share our preprint from the largest ever exome-wide association study for T2D in South Asians. We make important discoveries implicating the genes HNF4A, GP2, RNF19A in the aetiology of diabetes and metabolic traits in south Asians. 👉 Read it here:

Effective Business leaders: "It takes several months for new employees to become fully productive members of the team..."

Universities: EXCITING 6 MONTH POSITION REPLACING THE LAST PERSON WHO WAS HERE 6 MONTHS.

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

Los 18.457 niños en la lista de asesinados en el genocidio de Gaza. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Scientific Community Manager EMBL is Europe’s flagship research laboratory for the life sciences – an intergovernmental organisation with more than 110 independent research groups and teams performing scientific research in disci...

The Data Science team at EMBL is hiring for two open positions! First, for a Scientific Community Manager, focusing on community aspects and training on data science. embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

UK universities are stopping researchers from applying to charity grants because they don't pay overheads. The usual rich institutions allowing it have now even more options to get funding, while people like me have less.

How long until only a few privileged can do research in the UK? 🧪🖥️🧬

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Love this story about one of today's Nobel winners, Mary Brunkow.

(She and colleague Fred Ramsdell, working at Celltech (RIP), uncovered the role of Foxp3 in the development of Tregs.)

Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:

This whole section really.

🧬💥 Do the genetics that make you develop a disease also help you survive it? Not much.

Our new study in Nature Genetics including 9 disease and 7 biobanks shows:

• Susceptibility variants ≠ survival
• PRSs for onset weak at predicting progression
• Lifespan PRS predicts survival better

"the quickest way to get a collaborator to return edits on your manuscript is to write down their affiliation wrong" (ancient academic proverb)

Fire extinguisher next to a statue of Joan of Arc

Hell of a thing to put next to a statue of Joan of Arc. (h/t David Pilling)

Reading through the headlines these days can be a bit depressing. Having had dozens of students and staff from all over the world, there are indeed oceans of insight within Sofia Vergara's immortal words "Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?"

Peacehaven: Fire at East Sussex mosque probed as 'hate crime' Video appears to show two people in balaclavas at the mosque before a large blaze spreads.

Men in balaclavas set fire to a mosque in East Sussex last night. It's only appearing on the BBC's local coverage, rather than its main national headlines, despite coming just a week after the (also under-reported) firebombing of an asylum hotel in London last week
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

About 125,000 transgender people are assaulted in the restroom every year.

No transgender woman has ever been convicted of assaulting a woman in a public restroom.

🔊Calling #Dundee! Mills, the UK's 1st public observatory, is about to turn 90! This time last year looming budget cuts threatened its closure forever, but overwhelming public support saved it🥳. Do join us for the 90th🎂birthday celebrations on the 27th Oct! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🔭

🎟️: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/professor-...

Statue of a grasshopper done in a stylized kind of condensed form looks great

Grasshopper — Babylonia, c. 1750 BCE
Hematite

Israel accused of detaining Greta Thunberg in infested cell and making her hold flags Activist tells Swedish officials she has been subjected to harsh treatment, including insufficient food and water

““They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,” the Turkish activist ErsinÇelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.”+

Half Male-Half Female Spider Discovered In Thailand Is New To Science Not only is this species new to science, but this remarkable individual is the first record of a rare biological phenomenon in this previously unknown species.

Half Male-Half Female Spider Discovered In Thailand Is New To Science

#SciComm🧪 by @grrlscientist.bsky.social

#Biodiversity #Spider🕷️ #NewToScience #NewSpecies #Thailand🇹🇭 #Gynandromorph #Wildlife #Halloween🏮 #SpookySeason😵‍💫 www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...