Palli Thordarson

Once again: The publication system needs to be taken behind the shed, shot and buried. Will CAS be the one that pull the trigger?

Today's RNA collaborative seminar, sponsored by the @rnasociety.bsky.social , will feature A/Prof. Kelly Clemens from the UNSW RNA Institute @unswrna.bsky.social #RNA

I will warn you: it is slow... and 2 hours. Hence also the Solaris reference. The guy made this movie on a wafer thin $2M budget but it has already made nearly $50M.

Iron Lung: Unsure when I eent with my teenage children to watch this movie. The producer/main actor is Markiplier, a popular YouTuber. This Gen Z horror movie is actually not bad. There is literally an ocean of blood in it! I feel like the producer has been heavily influenced by Das Boot & Solaris.

David MacMillan ( @princeton.edu Princeton) & 2021 Chemistry @nobelprize.org Laureate is here at @unswchemistry.bsky.social with another brilliant seminar #ozchem

Fantastic seminar here at @unswchemistry.bsky.social from Maartje Bastings @icepfl.bsky.social on programmable biomaterials. #ozchem

Raven-Flóki & Eric the Red have a lot to answer regarding naming Iceland and Greenland, respectively. However, I don't they could have counted on the Chief of Vineland (Leif Eriksson's name for America) to mix them repeatedly up even if not drunk.

And as someone pointed out, when you view it this way, you also see more clearly that Greenland is actually closer Denmark (not to mention Iceland and Norway) than the US. Greenland's natural allies are Canada and the Nordic countries. Most of the locals think too and we should respect that.

Inspired by Mark Carney's historic speech, this from an Icelandic commentator: Expand the Nordic alliance to include Ireland, Scotland (goodbye Farage!) and Canada! An alliance of 83 Million ppl, 5% world GDP, like-minded countries. I say add Australia+New Zealand for extra power to this alliance.

Fascinating! In my days as porphyrin chemistry I tried to make bilirubin, a "open" tetrapyrrole (porphyrin is closed). I just made black þar. Some algea use tetrapyrrole for light harvesting in proteins and some of those proteins show "quantum coherence" at room temperature. Maybe garlic does too!

Of course not! They are useless;-)

The title of this paper is "Specificity of the stabilizing interaction between intrinsically disordered protein sequences and G-quadruplexes in RNA". We show a minimal RGG-rich peptide selectively (compared to other G-quads) stabilizes the structure of the human telomeric TERRA RNA G-quadruplex.

A short peptide that selectively folds RNA quadruplex after forming a 2:1 peptide-to-RNA complex with the TERRA RNA quadruplex.

Beyond proud of our @narjournal.bsky.social Nucleic Acids Research paper. It has everything to like: RNA, peptides, binding studies (2:1 equilib.!), biological relevance (Telomerases) AND great collaborators (@felixrizzuto.bsky.social Felix Rizzuto & John Mattick). academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams with an ElevenLabs Voice AI Agent It all started with cold calling. In our new "AI/ML Product Management" class (co-taught with Konstantinos Rizakos ), the "pre-case" submi...

These people successfully used AI to run AND mark oral exams! This is quite interesting IMO. Probably a sign of what is coming. As educators our job will be to set up and oversee this sort of assessment tasks but AI will do the hard yakka. #ozchem www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2025/12/figh...

Congratulations!

We had a surprise Christmas visitor in our backyard - a very curious echidna! After roaming around for a bit, it went on its merry way to the neighbours and then up the next road back towards the bush.

Richard Robson always had very small research groups and limited, sporadic funding. This has never been better illustrated than by the acknowledgement slides to the Nobel lectures of Robson, Kitagawa, and Yaghi (only 1 of 4 slides shown below). We punched above our weight! #ozchem #NobelPrize

La Perouse

Te Korowai-o-Te-Tonga/ South Head Peninsula

Goodbye Australia, Sydney (La Perouse), hello New Zealand (Te Korowai-o-Te-Tonga / South Head Peninsula), as I approach Auckland for the NZ RNA platform symposia. Looking forward to catch up again with our wonderful Kiwi #RNA #mRNA friends. #ozchem

We are very fortunate to have Dame Juliet Gerrard U. Aucklandhere at UNSW School of Chemistry to give a seminar about her journey through science, business and government. #ozchem

Indeed! Great day for Aussie chemistry. Richard Robson's work is finally being properly recognised. Congratulations also to Kitagawa and Yaghi. #ozchem

This is a fantastic day for Australian chemistry. First Australian chemistry Nobel prize since John Cornforth in 1975, but Richard Robson's work is at least as impactful. #ozchem

Beyond proud to be the 2025 recipient of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) Leighton Memorial Medal, in recognition of eminent service to chemistry in Australia. Big thanks to all my former and current students, staff amd collaborators for making this happen. #RACI #ozchem #chemistry

Hahahaha! I still think of my favourite student survey feedback: "Great accent, sounds like a 1930's Chicago ganster" Maybe Sydney Uni should also look into the benefits of foreign accents;-) See www.news.com.au/lifestyle/pa...

It started ok when asked re isobutanol vs 1-butanol but then it butchered the iso-butanol structure. Yeah... so like a middling undergraduate not PhD.

A nice round number on Google Scholar, so I couldn't resist snapping a screenshot.

P.s. the main reason the lecture is not already dead is that both admin and many academics refuse to face the issue. For admin it is particularly hard because once we ditch lectures we MUST lower student to staff ratio as we shift to more active learning methods. Admin hates that! + some academics.

Exactly. Let's stop passive lectures and turn our contact hours into active learning. It is the only way. Students enjoy learning by doing. They don't like lecturing, they prefer to watch videos in their own time.

Microscopically yes, some might. Long term/macroscopically the lecture is still dead. You should hear also what kids like mine at high schools say about these old fashion passive methods of teaching. The next generation is going to be even more brutal. Let focus on labs, discussion groups and such.

That is like when teachers tried to ban calculators. Let's face it, this battle is lost. The lecture is dead. Frankly it isn't bad. We should focus on teaching by doing, not 18th century style preaching from the altar.

Yep... I don't know why we have done that already. We did this of course during covid but then some people wanted to turn back the clock after covid and bring back conventional in person lectures. It is a lost cause. Let's focus on hands on DOING stuff, not "preaching".