George Preston

The Edward Boyle Library under construction

A student taking out a book from the library between 1985-1995

Students using computers in the Edward Boyle Library in 2005

The front of Edward Boyle Library today, with daffodils in shot.

The Edward Boyle Library celebrates its 50th birthday today 🎉

Take 50 seconds to learn 50 years of history: bit.ly/43jmnqx

The chemical bond: The biggest chemical paradigm, or the greatest chemical uncertainty? How should we define the chemical bond?

And the debate goes on! New article on the chemical bond, from the perspective of a working chemist- check it out 👇
www.jargonium.com/post/the-che...

Check out this editorial I wrote with @keribackus.bsky.social for the special @commschem.nature.com collection on covalent chemical probes - some super papers. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

🔬 #imageoftheweek: Aspergillus fumigatus is a common mould found in soil, compost & indoors. Most people breathe it in daily & for those with weakened immune systems, it can cause serious illness. Drug-resistant strains are an emerging threat.

📸 Kevin Mackenzie, Mark Stappers, Tina Bedekovic

Profiling the proteome-wide selectivity of diverse electrophiles Targeted covalent inhibitors are powerful entities in drug discovery, but their application has so far mainly been limited to addressing cysteine residues. The development of cysteine-directed covalen...

Interested in the proteome-wide selectivity of diverse electrophiles?

The proteomics data for our study on this headed by @pzanon.bsky.social are now public on @pride-ebi.bsky.social: www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/archiv...

Full story: chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

#ChemBio #ChemSky #ChemicalProteomics

Do you know the symptoms of Lyme disease? 🤔

Our blog post describes what to look for, and how to avoid tick-borne infections. 🌿

ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2024/03/21/w...

Why I didn't retract this paper when I was Editor-in-Chief at Science (THREAD 🧵)

A Protein-Centric Mass Spectrometry Approach for Species Identification within Harmful Algal Blooms Harmful algal blooms present severe environmental threats, impacting water quality, aquatic ecosystems, and human health. The frequency and intensity of these blooms are rising, largely driven by glob...

Happy to share our latest work @UoBbiosciences where we use native MS to profile blue-green algae in Lake water. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Virus Taxonomy Virus taxonomy is the classification of viruses into categories called taxa and the development and implementation of a standardized nomenclature for taxa. Whereas virus taxonomy has been a niche subs...

Interesting, though, that "[w]ithin the ICTV [= intl taxonomy committee], the current majority view is that taxa [incl. species!] are man-made categories or “concepts of the mind”, i.e., they are not physical entities."
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Decided to read up on virus taxonomy, as couldn't make sense of it.
"[A]s of now [2021]," says the Encyclopedia of Virology, "virus species naming is chaotic."
Appreciate the honesty 😅

A young boy blows out candles on a cade, with other children in the background

We have recorded 529 laboratory-confirmed #Measles cases in England since January 2025, representing a significant increase driven by declining childhood vaccination rates.

Our data dashboard provides data on the total number of cases by week of onset: ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/vaccine-prev...

One thing about measles I did not know until recently is that a possible complication is immune amnesia -- a wiping of immunological memory. According to this article, the evidence for it is strong:
asm.org/articles/201...

Measles: Child dies at Alder Hey Children's hospital as cases surge Seventeen children have been treated at the Liverpool hospital for the virus since June.

Measles in the news again. Not good.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

YouTube video by Miguel Ángel Ramos Sánchez Derek Bailey

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMGF...

This comment made me think of the search for a causative agent of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, and the concensus around prions that emerged (there may still be doubters). I suppose the difference is that for COVID-19 origins the evidence base is finite.

The donuts were intentionally poisoned at the party per health authorities.

Followup to @beaconbio.bsky.social request for information about a mass food poisoning in Madagascar which led to at least 20 deaths, with 17 individuals remaining in critical condition.
beaconbio.org/en/event/?ev...

Prof Dame Jenny Harries, UKHSA Chief Executive said, 'It is gratifying to see the Pandemic Agreement adopted. It is clear that international co-operation and collaboration must be at the very heart of our pandemic preparedness strategy if it is to be effective, and this agreement is a welcome step towards making the world a safer place from pandemic threats.'

Member States of the World Health Organization (@who.int) today formally adopted the world's first Pandemic Agreement.

#PandemicAccord

NIH insiders: Trump is ‘dismantling and destroying everything’ After just 100 days, agency scientists say U.S. health institutes are demoralized and have lost essential staff and funding

www.science.org/content/arti...

Q: Doesn't the spelling aluminum predate aluminium? A: Yes, and alumium predates both. IUPAC uses both, but prefers aluminium. Q: I still think aluminium sounds funny/odd/jarring. A: Someone from another country would say the same about aluminum.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Al...

WHO Member States conclude negotiations and make significant progress on draft pandemic agreement After more than three years of intensive negotiations, WHO Member States took a major step forward in efforts to make the world safer from pandemics, by forging a draft agreement for consideration at ...

🌍 Exciting new out of Geneva! After 3+ years of talks, @who.int
member states have reached a draft pandemic agreement to enhance global cooperation on prevention, preparedness, and response.

The proposal heads to the World Health Assembly this May.

www.who.int/news/item/16...

(Or don't skip, if you prefer to hear the less furious but also great 'Domaines'.)

Radio 3 in Concert - Boulez at 100: Total Immersion - The Second Piano Sonata - BBC Sounds Radio 3 pays tribute to the influential French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez.

Yesterday I went to London to see a performance of Boulez's Second Piano Sonata. It was unbelievable! A recording is available (skip to 19:00): www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Priority pathogens: UK draws up new disease-threat watch list Some are viruses with global pandemic potential - like Covid - others infectious illnesses with no treatments.

UK draws up new disease-threat watch list (BBC News)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

You may have seen reports of the first case of #AvianInfluenza in sheep found on a UK farm.

Read our response from Dr Meera Chand, Emerging Infection Lead at UK Health Security Agency.

Read our blog post for more on avian influenza: ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2024/12/03/w...

#BirdFlu

Humming along in an old church, the Internet Archive is more relevant than ever The Trump administration's erasure of federal data has put the Internet Archive in the spotlight. The organization, with its small but mighty team, is working to help save the world's digital history.

"We want to preserve public health data that are crucial for people's well-being," - social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger, on the value of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine

www.npr.org/2025/03/23/n...

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, Is water wet? The wetness of water seems obvious - but dive into the science and it's not so clear cut

I tried to give my take on whether water is wet for the BBC World Service - CrowdScience! The episode hosts chemists and material scientists too so this is a really nice & rounded way to approach the question. Here is the link:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

The Great Michigan Pizza Funeral was the ceremonial disposal of 29,188 frozen cheese-and-mushroom pizzas in Ossineke, Michigan, on March 5, 1973.[1][2] The manufacturer, Ilario "Mario" Fabbrini,[3] had been ordered to recall the pizzas by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after initial tests suggested the presence of botulism-causing bacteria in a batch of canned mushrooms.

Ilario Fabbrini, owner of the frozen pizza manufacturer, watches the pizza burial.

52 years ago today

On the Beach: The Day the Mighty USSR Academy of Sciences Visited a Tiny Biotech Start-Up in Wales The Soviets Mistakenly Approached GB Biotech Rather than Oxford-Based British Biotechnology, a FTSE-100 Company

medium.com/@t.rimmingto...

It’s amazing how quickly things change—just a few months ago, the world was buzzing about a mysterious disease in Congo (which turned out to be malaria), and now, hardly anyone is talking about this new one that has emerged.