Laura Howes

I would have enjoyed world book day as a kid if I could have just been left alone to read a book all day instead of trying to find a way to make a costume from my existing clothes, then stand in a big circle while everyone failed to guess who I'd dressed up as.

FDA says it wants individualized medicines. Can we get there? The agency has announced a new framework for approving rare disease drugs, but investors are still skeptical

The FDA recently announced a new regulatory framework that would let personalized medicines with a “plausible mechanism” of action bypass randomized clinical trials.
For @cenmag.bsky.social, @rowanwalrath.bsky.social and @laureloldach.bsky.social dig into it

The inside scoop from @leighkboerner.bsky.social: "About 150 employees remained in ORD as of Feb. 13. Most got letters that day saying that they would be reassigned to other offices in March. The letters did not specify which offices."

Bahnfahren ist ein Glücksspiel

*No actual cash at risk, but making your connection is

Went for a haircut, and let me tell you: based on the chat in the chair, the mood is not good.

Germany's rotten luck strikes again. After having its spy chief stuck in Ukraine after the war started there four years ago, its EU minister ends up stuck in Cyprus after Iran strikes www.euractiv.com/news/germany...

If you want to know how the British print news industry ends (which is, de facto, amazingly still what supports most newspaper websites) it's the distribution channels getting banjaxed. When you lose "TG Jones" etc even people who want a paper can't get one. That'll be the real start of the ending.

Going to have to go and put this on RIGHT NOW

I bloody love questions like this

Just let me email the neighbors in this house about switching to Fernwärme again...

Looking down at snow trees and huts, with mountains behind them

Love to come down from a ski tour and then check the news. Going to order another beer.
It was nice up there...

A real black eye to the FIFA peace prize selection committee

Yup, here's me just sticking money in ETFs and getting pushed by my bank to buy more insurance products since 2013

UK media groups unite to tackle AI ‘scraping’ of journalism Coalition, including BBC, Sky News and FT, wants to establish shared standards and licensing frameworks for access

Interesting, but is it too much for articles to actually link to the full text of the open letter?
Luckily the press gazette story included a contact email and from that I found spurcoalition.org.
www.ft.com/content/2622...

Improving API manufacture is huge issue, yes. But, beyond the packaging/waste aspect, oral formulations also remove the cold chain issues with shipping and storage. Would be interesting to compare.

This is a really interesting look at how pre filled pens should be disposed of, but let's be honest might not be.

Could oral GLP-1s also be good from a sustainability angle?

‘Ukrainians are a strong nation – we persevere’: Four years on scientists remain resilient in face of adversity Researchers in Ukraine hold on to hope and plan for a future after the war ends

'Ukrainians are a strong nation – we persevere and continue to live and work.’ Four years on from the full scale invasion by Russia, Ukrainian scientists have hope and plan for the future.

The second line followed immediately with the duh-duh-di-duh-duh refrain

My heart bleeds for the woman now training to be a barrister who says she had to do a lot of self study to get her 2:1.
That is university love, and you're out here putting your face and name to this before your career even starts?
I have sympathy for the tough experience but my god.

A war foretold: how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans ...

Bloody hell, this is incredible reporting
www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Nobel chemistry laureate Frances Arnold: ‘Whole swaths of science are just going to die on the vine’ The Caltech professor on using AI to harness the power of enzymes — and what US funding cuts could mean for research

Lunch with the FT | Nobel chemistry laureate Frances Arnold: ‘Whole swaths of science are just going to die on the vine’ ft.trib.al/6mhoAFO #FTEdit

Not sure if #chemistswhocook is still an active hashtag, but this is certainly of interest to a subset of #chemsky

A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study.

The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.

MAHA’s next target: metals in vaccine ingredients Officials are going after metal-containing ingredients, including aluminum adjuvants. Here’s why vaccines need them

Grateful to @cenmag.bsky.social and @sarahbraner.bsky.social in particular to be able to offer my commentary about aluminum salt adjuvants here (with additional quotes from @pauloffit.bsky.social @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social):

How did chemists identify the poison that killed Alexei Navalny? Epibatidine is used in research but is not part of typical toxicology panels

The short answer to this question headline is "the intelligence community isn't revealing its sources and methods," which, I guess I might've anticipated.

But I took a look at the epibatidine's synthesis, research uses, and assays that might have helped find it:
cen.acs.org/analytical-c...

On Sun 8 March BBC Radio 4 will broadcast The Alpenpost: A Girl's Guide to Fighting Hitler and Stalin - a documentary based on my research!

It traces how I uncovered the lost archive of an anti-Nazi resistance organiser in a wind-rattled villa on the Galician coast.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Went for a bike ride before work and suddenly the world seems a little more manageable. Also, it is sunny.

Damn it.

RFK Jr. has broken a lot of promises in his first year as health secretary.

@lisamjarvis.bsky.social explains 🎥

Oh i feel this

Meanwhile, I saw bluesky light up... not sure what that says for my Britishness