Siobhán McClean

Landscape format in ink line, watercolours and other water media on mixed media paper. View of terrace of single-storey cottages from inside a park showing grass lawn in foreground and a scots pine tree at both the left and right edges, rendered in dark greens, blues and purples, and a little brown, with sparse dark green foliage. Between them is a small baby leafless brown tree and behind the trees we see through black railings to the houses. Each cottage has a Georgian door with a fanlight above and a single narrow window to its side. From left to right the doors are red, black, grey, lilac, and blue, and each of them is up a set of stairs so we can see the top of a basement below. Their slate roofs are rendered in blue with cream chimneys that have orange pots. Sky is left blank white. A white car and a black car are parked in the right half of the picture on the road in front of the houses facing right. Signed bottom right in black ink, Liam Daly

#painting "Harold's Cross" was done on location as the sun was setting and my hands getting colder. I'd sketched in town earlier that day then cycled around Dublin 6 and its impressive houses before sitting in the tiny sliver of a park I'd always wanted to go to. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #UrbanSketching

The Global Sumud Flotilla is showing the world the effectiveness of strategic nonviolent activism in forcing a political crisis over Israel's genocide in Gaza. They are putting Israel in a corner and forcing states to get involved. These brave people deserve our full attention, solidarity & support.

The reason I'm concerned about Maria Steen being on the ballot isn't that she will win (she won't).

My worry is that if she is nominated, it will mean a month of national airtime for a hate campaign against vulnerable groups, carried by a media too scared of being sued to call it what it is

Road deaths are going down - but more cyclists and pedestrians are being killed. Why? The number of pedestrian and cyclist deaths is now at the highest level in six years.

Ireland: The number of people who are walking or cycling being killed on the road is now at the highest level in six years.

www.thejournal.ie/four-pedestr... #spéirghorm #cycling #walking #dying

Message from the Treasurer and Chair and Chair-elect of the Scientific Conferences Panel: Annual Conference 2026 Ever since our founding members set out to bring groups of microbiologists together for knowledge exchange and to forge new collaborations, our conferences have been essential to the Microbiology Society’s role. Every year, we celebrate our thriving microbiology community through our Annual Conference, which provides opportunities to amplify our members’ voices and advance the understanding of microbiology and the ways it can have an impact and influence in the world. We will shortly open registrations for Annual Conference 2026 in Belfast. At the Society, we know that the scientific landscape is changing and that our members face growing challenges and pressures at all career stages.

We understand that attending events is a choice as well as a financial commitment, and that there are many meetings and conferences available to you. We believe that Annual Conference is a fantastic opportunity to meet with your community and benefit from the science, networking and professional development activities on offer. We want to make it the best it can possibly be. We have listened to your feedback following Annual Conference 2025, and in 2026, we will: Reinstate the two-day Conference rate Revise and enhance the catering with additional options on offer (we will continue to make provision for all dietary requirements) Increase the time allocated for poster sessions from two hour-long sessions to two 75-minute sessions (per poster) Introduce new content across the programme Deliver more cross-divisional symposia Offer pre-Conference workshops for training and networking We will continue to provide: Grants to attend Conference A free crèche for the duration of Conference Dedicated spaces across the venue, including quiet rooms, prayer rooms and nursing rooms Networking and social opportunities, including a session for anyone new to Conference

🧪A Society that listens to its membership and is prepared to act on feedback is a society that I’m proud to be a member of.
Congratulations @microbiologysociety.org for taking feedback on board for future Annual conferences. 🧫

The 2024 rankings of bacterial threats

Photo shows 3 people (myself and my 2 daughters) smiling in front of a sign which reads “Abra Salkantay - Alt 4600 msnm”

Delighted to have trekked in the Andes (& survived). Having spent the last few yrs studying the effects of hypoxia on bacteria, I inadvertently performed my own in vivo hypoxia expt by hiking to 4600m, ie only 11.5 - 12 % oxygen availability🫁. The highest altitude I’d trekked before - 900m 😅
#Peru

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Molecular Microbiology

🚨 Job alert 🚨

I’m recruiting two postdoctoral research associates to join my lab at KCL to study how #Klebsiella pneumoniae regulates virulence factor expression during infection! #klebclub

Mol Micro: tinyurl.com/mtrwtx5e

Infection: tinyurl.com/2s3u8ca2

Deadline: 21st September.

a man is juggling soccer balls in front of a sign that says " ортой жизни " on it Alt: Man juggling soccer balls while moving on a hoverboard

Me trying to progress a backlog of several near-complete papers towards journal submission before I go on leave next month. 😅 #AcademicLife

The speakers may be amazing. But why are there only 2 women out of 15 speakers?
I thought we had moved beyond that.

Title Slide reads “Visualising how HIV-1 signalling remodels nuclear pores to license infection” with an image of a CD4+ T cell Nuclear pore behind.

🧪Great talk by @mattvxwhelan.bsky.social in the @ucddublin.bsky.social Conway CLASS lecture.
Amazing images of HIV / Nuclear interactions

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

EU citizens' initiative to ban conversion practices targeting LGBTQ+ people needs to reach:
—minimum thresholds in 7 countries: ✅
—1 million total signatures: ⏳ (currently 875k)

Deadline is today, Friday 17 May 2025. Sign it, share it, get it over the line:

eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public

Opinion | I Came to Study Aging. Now I’m Trapped in ICE Detention.

🧪 Russian-born scientist Kseniia Petrova was conducting anti-aging research at Harvard Medical School but is in detention since February.
Her hearing is tomorrow.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/o...

The ‘Hole-in-the-Ground Girl’ Leanne Bulger recently found a new hole in the forest floor on the west end of Fairbanks. Into it, she poked a long plastic pipe.

🧪 For some lighter science news here's an intriguing story from the thawing north. I first encountered it when Leanne presented a poster with her excellent undergraduate research at a student symposium a few months ago. Now science writer Ned Rozell wrote this: www.uaf.edu/news/the-hol...

Genomic epidemiology and phylodynamics of Acinetobacter baumannii bloodstream isolates in China - Nature Communications The genomic epidemiology of Acinetobacter baumannii, which is rising in virulence and multidrug resistance, was explored. This study examined bloodstream infection isolates from Chinese patients in 20...

Interesting paper

Genomic epidemiology and phylodynamics of Acinetobacter baumannii bloodstream isolates in China

'A. baumannii is evolving from a low-virulence, multidrug-resistant pathogen to a more virulent one'

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

Hey BlueSky, I need your help. If you're in STEM & from a lower socioeconomic background, what barriers did you face in HS, college, grad school, or faculty roles? I want your stories—& any lit you know of. Let’s talk about the real cost of doing science. #AcademicSky #SciOutreach

reviewers for their thorough and insightful reviews.
This review has been in writing for a while and it’s great to finally share the accepted publication
@ucd-sbbs.bsky.social
@ucddublin.bsky.social

also happen in response to hypoxia. We highlight how exposure of these bugs to hypoxia in the environment can predispose them to colonisation of hypoxic niches, arming them with mechanisms than enable their evasion of the immune system and establish chronic infections. We’re very grateful to the …

We discuss 3 species that colonise the lungs of people with CF: P.aeruginosa, B.cepacia complex & M.abscessus and draw parallels btw their 3 oxygen-sensing two-component systems: BfiSR, FixLJ, and DosRS. Many adaptations that these bugs undergo during chronic infection- AbxR, protease & motility …

🧪Delighted our review on the impact of Hypoxia on Chronic infection in Cystic fibrosis is published online FEMS MicroRev @Ciaranjcarey.bsky.social, @NiamhDuggan.bsky.social & @jdrabinska.bsky.social should be proud of it 🙌
🙏 to @researchireland.bsky.social

track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...

This is the kind of stuff you see in antivaxx Facebook groups: “can anyone share data showing that vaccines are bad?” Except now it’s coming from atop the entire US health and biomedical science apparatus. There is more data for vaccines than almost anything ever and it doesn’t show vaccines are bad

Talk title Three novel effective vaccine antigens against Klebsiella pneumoniae infection

Great talk by Yueran Hou in our lab @ucd-sbbs.bsky.social on her #klebsiella pneumoniae vaccine candidates at the #Microbiology Society conference in Liverpool
@ucddublin.bsky.social 🧪

Speaker on podium with title slide

Lovely talk @aaroncurtismicro.bsky.social at Microbiology Society annual meeting on your ex Vivo aspergillus fumigatus infection model. Very interesting proteomics analysis
@maynoothuniversity.ie 🧪🧪

Image description: A woman with pink and purple hair with green and blue eyeliner holds a copy of the book THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: HOW THE GLOW OF RADIUM LIT A PATH FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE by Dava Sobel.

Image description: A woman with pink and purple hair with green and blue eyeliner holds a copy of the book THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: HOW THE GLOW OF RADIUM LIT A PATH FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE by Dava Sobel.

A #booklewk for THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: HOW THE GLOW OF RADIUM LIT A PATH FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE by Dava Sobel

CW: Sexism, Medical content, WWI, death from cancer, exposure to radium, anemia.

This book is a must-read especially for my #chemsky #booksky friends!

Here are my thoughts (thread 🧵):

Rainfall radar of Ireland showing rain everywhere except a very smooth, semi circle showing a rain free region all around the Dublin area.

Unusual rainfall radar map for Dublin with a very smooth contour around the city. Is this a real atmospheric effect or a digital artefact? #MetEireann

Monosaccharide-Based Synthetic TLR4 Agonist Enhances Vaccine Efficacy against Pseudomonas aeruginosa Challenge Vaccine adjuvants are critical to improve the immunogenicity, efficacy, and durability of vaccines; however, their development has lagged behind that of vaccine antigens. Monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA)...

New paper #BactiVax ITN. Maite Sainz & others in our lab show TLR4 agonists (F.peri lab) are effective adjuvants in a P.aeruginosa vaccine, enhancing protection in a pneumonia model
New vaccines are badly needed to prevent P aeruginosa infection 🧪
@ucd-sbbs.bsky.social
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Orange County Couple Deported to Colombia After 35 Years in U.S. Laguna Niguel residents with no criminal record were detained during routine immigration check-in

"The deportation left three adult daughters—Jessica, Stephanie, and 23-year-old Gabby—plus a young grandson behind in the United States."

This is all beyond sickening.

Terrible.

Measles is so easily prevented with a the vaccine
😢

Repurposing BCG for Bladder Cancer: How the TB Vaccine Changed the Face of Cancer Treatments | Medical News Bulletin The BCG vaccine, used to treat tuberculosis, has been repurposed for cancer, and we're here to explain how.

RFK jr wants you to think vaccines are dangerous. It's not clear why. But what
is clear is that Vaccines save lives. Some vaccines do more than just stave off
infections, this one moonlights as a cancer treatment- 🤯
buff.ly/4dEdvz1 #TB #vaccines #cancer #lovescience 🧪

Sadly this increase in in measles cases was inevitable with the anti-vax narrative being pushed by RFK and his ilk.
Children experience life-long complications from measles and some will die.
In 2025, kids will die from a vaccine preventable illness as a result of people’s arrogance and ignorance