Steven Robbins

are all the wannabe dictators on some kind of signal group chat or something

Under which circumstances do genomic neural networks learn motifs and their interactions? The use of neural networks to model genomic data in sequence-to-function scenarios has soared over the last decade. There remains much debate about whether these models are interpretable, either inher...

Under which circumstances do genomic neural networks learn motifs and their interactions?https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.25.666754v1

Stop the War Now! Statement from the Faculty of the Department of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev We, the faculty of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, issue this statement to unequivocally call for an immediate end to Israel's war crimes in Gaza. We say this as researchers of Middle East studies, whose work, among other topics, includes Palestinian studies, Israeli-Arab relations, the region's social and political conditions, its history and religious movements, but above all, as Israeli citizens living in this country. Israel's policies in Gaza and the nature of the warfare there have exceeded all human and legal standards. Israeli policy has rendered Gaza uninhabitable, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, starvation of the civilian population, destruction of civic infrastructure, health, welfare, schools, universities, and residential buildings, attacks on medical and rescue teams, and the prevention of entry by the foreign press. According to human rights organizations, the mortality rate in the Gaza Strip has created the largest orphan crisis in modern history. This mortality is partly a direct result of the policy of starvation and attacks on those seeking to obtain food for their families at aid distribution sites. This destruction is accompanied by the articulation of plans to conquer the Strip and establish a military regime there, while expelling the Palestinian population. This policy is entirely contrary to basic morality, as well as the laws of war. A consensus is emerging in the international research community that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

إيقاف الحرب الآن / بيان رأي صادرعن قسم دراسات الشرق الأوسط ق جامعة بن غوريون ق النقب نحن، أعضاء فسحم دراسات الشرق الأوسط في جامعة بن غوربون في النقب، نصدر هذا البيان مناشدين بأوضح ما يمكن: يجب أن تتوقف جرانم الحرمب الي ترذكبها إسرانيل في غزة. نقول ذلك بصغتنا باحثات وباحثين في مجال دراسات الشرق الأوسط، وأيضا بصغتنا باحثات وباحثس في الدراسات الفلسطينية، العلاقات الإسرائيلية العربية، في الوضع الاجتماي والسياسي في المنطقة، تاريخها وتاريخ ح^تها الدينية، وبالأساس كمواطنات ومواطنش نعيش في هذه البلاد. تتجاوز سياسة إسرافيل في غزة ونوع الحرب هناك كل معيار إنساني، قانوني وأخلافي. السياسة الأسراشيلية تحؤل غزة إلى مكان غير صالح للحياة، فقد أنت إلى مقتل عثرات الآلاف من الأبرياء، تجوبع السع ن المدنيش، تدمير البئ التحتية؛ مؤتسات الصحة، الرفا٥، الرمية والتعليم، التدمير المنهبي للمباني السكنية، الاعتداء عإى طوافم الأنقاذ والطواقم الطبية، وكذلك منع دخول الصحافة الأجنبية إلى غزة. حب منظمات حقوق الأنسان، فإن الوفيات في قطاع غؤة خلغت أزمة الأيتام الكبرى في التاريخ الحديث. هذ٥ الوفيات هبى نتيجة مباشرة لسياسة التجوبع والاعتداء عإى من يحاولون تاءمش الغذاء لعانعدتهم في مواقع توزيع المساعدات. كل ذلك يرافق هع خطط لاحتلال فطاع غزة ولإقامة نظام عسكري فيه يشمل تهجير السع ن الفلسطينيش منه. هذ٥ السياسة تناقض ٠كليا الأخلاق الأساسية وكذلك قوانين الحرب. في أوساط المجتمع البحي الدوني يتبلورإجماع عإى أن إسراثيل مسؤولة عن ارتع ب إبادة جماعية.

The Ben Gurion University Middle Eastern Studies department statement - now in English and in Arabic.

Israel's policies in Gaza and the nature of the warfare there have exceeded all human and legal standards.

تتجاوز سياسة إسرائيل في غزة ونوع الحرب هناك كل معيار إنساني، قانوني وأخلافي

Quantitative metagenomics for marine prokaryotes and photosynthetic eukaryotes Abstract. High-throughput sequencing has provided unprecedented insights into microbial biodiversity in marine and other ecosystems. However, most sequenci

Quantitative metagenomics for marine prokaryotes and photosynthetic eukaryotes #USC_MEB #jcampubs 🌊 academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

BREAKING: Keir Starmer has bowed to pressure and committed to recognising the state of Palestine in September

The UK Government said they would not do so if Israel agreed to a two-state solution

Which as an aside, I don’t think there are a majority of Israelis that wouldn’t agree that Netanyahu is corrupt, and same for Americans and Trump. So why would Americans trust in the Israeli government if Israelis don’t?

Doctors warn that children in Gaza have suffered irreversible damage from starvation Prolonged and severe malnutrition is permanently damaging the health of children across Gaza. Doctors warn even if Israel lets in more food now, the damage to children's bodies can be irreversible.

I don't enjoy posting these articles, but Israel claims to represent the Jews, Trump administration says they're fighting anti-semitism. So as a Jew, I feel the need to say again that both are morally corrupt and don't represent us. Don't give them that power.

www.npr.org/2025/07/27/n...

I finished some contracts so I’m officially back on the market!

If anyone needs a writer that’s written *gestures at alarmingly big pile of video games, comedy, and advertising* my DMs are open

Public media has been defunded. Your support keeps journalists on the ground, lifts unheard voices, and connects communities.

Help us plan for what’s next. Make a monthly gift today. Stand with public media: n.pr/458sOhq

When you call to thank them, also tell them to continue taking a stand by ensuring science funding isn’t further cut - demand a CLEAN CR w/ protections against rescission in September, and to SHUT IT DOWN, if necessary

Not your normal metagenomics programming, but out of 3k followers, I must know a talented guitarist, right?

Do I know anyone that plays guitar well enough to tell me the tuning/chords for this song?

Seems like might be dropped D if not a more atypical tuning? And you can kind of see her fingers to get the fingerings but im not getting them to sound right.

youtu.be/TdZlXaWZP7klgs

Having lived through COVID times is one of the main reasons I’m not a fan of treating preprints as more than a blog post.

Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.

Google's AI summaries are
- killing traffic to legitimate sites
- producing summaries that can be wrong
- in the long run probably making you a dumbass

www.404media.co/googles-ai-i...

If the goal is maximum MAG recovery, Long Reads are the way to go.

For samples with low GC microbes of interest, Nanopore is definitely the way to go.

If maximum MAG recovery isn’t the goal, which it often isn’t, Illumina is cheap and good.

Happy to see this out! Once again, Nanopore sequencing shown to provide huge benefits for MAG recovery, here from soils and sediments.

Very Matthew McLuhan/Neil Postman. Writing does force a structured way of thinking that’s really valuable.

Tangent: this is also why you get a different sort of politician when their messages are conveyed via writing/speech vs social media short videos. Detailed/structure vs aesthetic/soundbitey.

🧬Viromics🧬 = using (meta-)genomics to study uncultivated viruses has yielded unprecedented insights into the diversity and global distribution of viruses

@jgi.doe.gov's @simrouxvirus.bsky.social and Clement Coclet review the state of the field, available tools, and remaining challenges

Are any of my followers aware of microbes that code for aerobic metabolism but can not grow aerobically?

That is are there physiologically obligate anaerobes that contain genetic machinery for oxidative metabolism?

#microsky

Hi folks, is anyone doing combined DNA and RNA shotgun sequencing? With Illumina using barcoding, or Nanopore, or something else? #stamps2025

PBS News is not going anywhere.

We will continue our work without fear or favor, as we have for nearly five decades on the air.

We are profoundly grateful to Viewers Like You for your loyalty and unwavering support.

Sen. Murkowski Discovers Trump Will Lie and Betray Her Fool me once...

"Senator Murkowski could have saved many millions of Americans from losing their health care and food assistance and local hospitals, but she pushed in all her chips on a deal that was reneged by Trump almost immediately after the vote was finalized."

Wow, this is something. Interested to read this to see where time is lost (fixing AI errors, hallucinations, repetitions, and slop?). This is why we need hard data, because human brains perceive a lot of things that aren’t actually true.

“a court order can’t reinstate months of lost treatment for a cancer patient… It’s hard to put a price on the value of research that might be years away from a new drug or treatment...It’s even harder for those who have been kicked out of clinical trials…where the stakes are clearly life or death”

Would be great for that! Especially since animal microbiomes often come with euk contamination that makes read mapping a bad proxy of MAG recovery, for example, because you don’t know what fraction of reads are prok or euk.

I also don’t usually like to lean on a racial lens to explain everything, but in this case, with this administration, the musk/thiel/Miller/Noem crowd, the race and class lenses clearly apply.

Most western counties have VISA waivers and won’t have to pay this, but man, for academic conferences, this would effect lots of attendees, and mostly from poorer countries.

And of course that’s what they want—if you’re poor or brown, don’t come here, this country is for rich white people.

NEW:

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rising graduate unemployment.

I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged:

Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay.

www.ft.com/content/a9ea...

Targeted genomic analysis of a predominant uncultured marine pelagiphage-host model via microfluidics and semipermeable capsule technology academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs

SingleM is BYO genome, you can add your MAGs to the refDB to get profiles which include both known species and your novel MAGs. wwood.github.io/singlem/tool...