James Catterson

BBC warns Russia is taking over World Service radio frequencies Russian propaganda is filling the void where the BBC has closed World Service radio services due to cuts

BBC's Arabic radio service in Lebanon closed after 85 years as part of a £28.5m savings drive. 'Just months later, in October 2023, the Russian state-owned Sputnik news agency took over the frequency. Its news bulletin opened with “This is Moscow”, replacing the previous “This is London” intro.' 🙄

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!

"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Group of Ansell's mole-rats huddling

Do subterranean mammals have hyper-elastic skin thanks to super-sized hyaluronan (HA) polymers?

We challenge this popular idea in a new preprint, presenting the first skin elasticity measurements of burrowing rodents & HA size profiles for Ansell’s mole-rat (1/8) 🧪

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

One on left is a black dog and above it the words “Reality”. Below it is “I chased a squirrel” One the right is a black dog and above it says “LinkedIn”. Below it says, Proud to announce that I effectively executed a rapid-response squirrel displacement strategy to mitigate potential yard intrusions. Humbled by the unwavering support of my family and local stakeholders. This experience reinforced the importance of vigilance, ownership, and continuous improvement. Looking forward to scaling this impact in future engagements.

😂

Something compelled me to make this

This is the stranger’s case,
And this your mountainish inhumanity

BREAKING: McSweeney’s think tank paid PR firm to investigate journalists Labour Together put private investigators onto journalists writing about its funding. Starmer's right-hand man knew.

🔴 BREAKING: Labour Together paid controversial PR firm £30k to investigate journalists who were digging into how its undeclared funding

Reporters from Sunday Times, Guardian and other outlets targetted

*And* Morgan McSweeney knew about it

Full story:
democracyforsale.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

A line plot with the numbers of NSF awards for fiscal years 2021-2026. The curve for fiscal year 2026 is quite a bit lower than those for 2021-2025 while the curve for fiscal year 2026 (in red) is much lower than all through the same date.

But, as they say, there is no time like the present

[OK, maybe the 1930s if you want to nitpick]

But, with some data wrangling, my first NSF Funding Curves!

2/3

Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.

I was a White House ethics lawyer.

I used to advise people not to even accept a free cup of coffee from someone who had interests before them. And staff followed those rules.

I can’t even find the words to describe the scale of Trump’s corruption here.

What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won’t end For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are calling for a more harmonious approach.

'"We definitely screwed up" says King...she wishes she'd posted the study as a preprint so that the errors could have been caught sooner'

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI-generated data contamination erodes pathological variability and diagnostic reliability Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly populating medical records with synthetic content, creating a feedback loop where future models are increasingly at risk of training on uncurated AI ...

"AI is rapidly populating medical records with synthetic content, creating a feedback loop [that] drives a rapid erosion of pathological variability and diagnostic reliability...this renders AI generated documentation clinically useless after just two generations" www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

It's rare to see how lobbyists operate. But the Epstein-Mandelson correspondence shows us what happens all the time: plutocrats and government ministers conspiring against the public interest. This is why all lobbying should be in the public domain, but despite Labour and Con promises, it's not. 🧵

Text reads, 'Fruit fly research could help solve neurodegenerative disorders', background is an image of a fruit fly

A study using fruit flies as a model can explain aspects of neurodegenerative diseases that have baffled scientists for decades.

@poppi62.bsky.social's research focuses on axons - which allow brains to control behaviour and movement.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Header image with the paper title: "Improved in vivo gene knockout with high specificity using multiplexed Cas12a sgRNAs"

Make your gene knockouts more efficient with multiplexed Cas12a sgRNAs. Our new paper is out now, with tools available from @addgene.bsky.social , www.plasmids.eu and @vdrc-flies.bsky.social.

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

#CRISPR #geneediting #Drosophila 🧪🧬✂️🔬🪰

Summary 🧵 below.

TDP43 filaments in synapses

Some initial reactions to the 'published on a Sunday afternoon' letter from the CEO of UKRI. 🧵

www.ukri.org/news/open-le...

and no I haven't put the Mandelson-Epstein-Reinaldo scoop on twitter

we journalists *can* make Bluesky the place to break news

Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason Protein structure is conserved beyond sequence, making multiple structural alignment (MSTA) essential for analyzing distantly related proteins. Computational prediction methods have vastly extended ou...

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social.
📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason
💾 github.com/steineggerla...

We could have 4 JWST’s or a science mission at every planet. The NIH could be funded for two years. Or 1.5 years or so of USAID funding, if it still existed.

This is how they’re spending our tax dollars. This is our money.

Anyone else having trouble getting through to the Abstract portal? We're having issues.

a black and white photo of a man sitting in front of a tv that says tvland classic ALT: a black and white photo of a man sitting in front of a tv that says tvland classic

Working on two paper rejections/major revisions whilst teaching and fighting for your job with only five months left on your contract is....draining...
#academia 🧪

Peripheral cancer attenuates amyloid pathology in Alzheimer’s disease via cystatin-c activation of TREM2 Peripheral cancer inhibits amyloid pathology and rescues cognition of Alzheimer’s disease through secretion of cystatin-c (Cyst-C), which binds amyloid oligomers and activates TREM2 in microglia and enables microglia to degrade pre-existing plaques.

Now online! Peripheral cancer attenuates amyloid pathology in Alzheimer’s disease via cystatin-c activation of TREM2

Usually agree with you on Edinburgh Live, but this one seems like a reach. It’s a junior reporter, it’s about a real crisis, and it’s miles better than the usual clickbait. Feels like one to let slide.

What are we doing here

Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless
economist.com/united-state...
from The Economist

Absolutely cracking work here from Jim's team. I defend the BBC a lot, but when a small team is doing really solid work like this while BBC London is doing puff pieces about the Wicked films, it really does make you wonder what's gone wrong with the big news outlets.

AI nudification: the latest weapon of violence against women and girls In Julie Burchill’s recent article in the Spectator, Does it really matter if Grok undresses us all?, she makes the argument that those who, like me, have repeatedly had their clothes removed by socia...

This week, an X user created an AI video of me being chloroformed and prepared for rape.

Victims are told it's not real and they're getting offended for no reason.

But nudification tools are weapons of sexual assault, and the harm they cause is real 👇

jessasato.substack.com/p/ai-nudific...

How Loss and Gain of Motor Protein Function Causes Neurodegeneration Researchers have identified a mechanism which can explain aspects of neurodegeneration which have baffled scientists for decades.

www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience...