Paul de Bakker

Live Midden-Oosten: Weer dode door voedseldropping boven Gazastrook

Because you needed a video of a group of cute guinea pigs eating watermelon... You're welcome #bluesky 😊

Oud-VN-gezant Kaag over Israël: 'Politieke onmacht EU-lidstaten is gekmakend'

Whole-genome sequencing of 490,640 UK Biobank participants - Nature A study reports whole-genome sequences for 490,640 participants from the UK Biobank and combines these data with phenotypic data to provide new insights into the relationship between human variation a...

In another milestone for human genetics, the world's largest set of whole-genome DNA sequences now encompasses data from nearly half a million people, described in this new @nature.com paper from @ukbiobank.bsky.social: 🧪👇

How to Prevent More Starvation Deaths in Gaza As Israel refuses to let in sufficient humanitarian aid, a leading expert on famine explains why even “flooding the zone” with food won’t be enough.

“If Netanyahu wanted every child in Gaza to be fed tomorrow, he could just give that instruction and it would happen.” One of the world’s leading experts on famine discusses the starvation in Gaza.

The Politics of Fear As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump made his world view plain: there was “us” and there was “them.” Once he was in the White House, the fear factor would prevail.

Donald Trump was, from his formative years, a spoiled bully. Since returning to the White House, he has made his world view clear: there is “us” and there is “them.” David Remnick writes about the President’s politics of fear.

Israel’s Last Chance Flooding Gaza with food is the only way out of a crisis largely created by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

"Every image of a child with protruding ribs is both a human tragedy and a propaganda victory for Hamas—and proof of how a just war badly lost the plot," Franklin Foer argues.

new video shows the ICE agent who claimed he was randomly "assaulted" by this 4'11" US citizen on her way to work is shown literally picking her up and carrying her away.

Since 1845, our covers have captured the many faces of science. In November 1973, machines were learning facial recognition. By February 2019, scientists had identified how the brain does it. #SciAm180

Celebrate 180 years of Scientific American: sciam.com/180

Een volledige bezetting van Gaza, wat denkt Netanyahu daarmee te bereiken? En waar moeten de Palestijnen dan heen? Bezetting Gaza: De Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu zou het plan hebben om de hele Gazastrook te bezetten. Welke gevolgen kan dat hebben voor de Palestijnen en de Israëlische gijzelaars?

Een volledige bezetting van Gaza, wat denkt Netanyahu daarmee te bereiken? En waar moeten de Palestijnen dan heen? buff.ly/O103VHG

Black and white art of an oral Tree on a hill over a bay looking across the mountains

Old Olive Tree, Corsica — M.C. Escher, 1934
engraving

I think air conditioning might be bad for the soul

A peacock showing off its art.

This is great news. >80% increase (though less in real terms, of course) compared to <20% increase between the previous 7 year period ("Horizon 2020" was €80B) and the current one. Exactly the right response to this moment, and now we're talking real numbers.

Scaling down protein language modeling with MSA Pairformer Recent efforts in protein language modeling have focused on scaling single-sequence models and their training data, requiring vast compute resources that limit accessibility. Although models that use ...

Excited to share work with
Zhidian Zhang, @milot.bsky.social, @martinsteinegger.bsky.social, and @sokrypton.org
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
TLDR: We introduce MSA Pairformer, a 111M parameter protein language model that challenges the scaling paradigm in self-supervised protein language modeling🧵

Opinion | The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

Opinion | Our President Is Economically Illiterate

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

Trump Fired America’s Economic Data Collector. History Shows the Perils.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

Larry Summers: "This is way beyond anything Nixon ever did ... this is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers, launching assaults on universities, launching assaults on law firms. This is really scary stuff."

Palestine is already recognised
#GazaStarving #GazaGenocide‌ #KeepTellingofGaza

Opinion | Gaza’s Hunger Is a Moral Crisis

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/o...

Opinion | How Netanyahu Played Trump for a Fool in Gaza

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/o...

Israeli rights groups accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza Israel's government rejects the allegations in the separate reports by B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Israel’s Zones of Denial A wave of triumph sweeps Israel in the aftermath of its campaign against Iran, even as Gaza’s suffering recedes from public view. Beneath the celebrations, a question nags: What is Israel becoming?

Amid national euphoria in Israel over its military triumph in Iran, a question lurks: what is the country becoming? David Remnick reports.

Woohoo, I have page proofs for my book!

Defining the genetic determinants of CD8+ T cell receptor repertoire in the context of immune checkpoint blockade Immune checkpoint blockade influences the genetically determined relationship between TCR repertoire and HLA alleles in cancer.

📣First paper from the lab is out in @science.org‬! 📣https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu3461 It’s well known that HLA shapes the TCR repertoire — but how does this change under immune checkpoint blockade (ICB)?

Large-scale genome-wide analyses of stuttering - Nature Genetics Genome-wide analyses in over one million self-reported cases and controls identify genetic variants associated with stuttering and find genetic correlations with autism, depression and impaired musica...

Exciting paper on genetic influences on speech fluency, out now in @natgenet.nature.com. In a big step forward for the field, genome scans of almost 100,000 people with self-reported stuttering, & 1 million controls, identify 57 associated loci. Great work by @piperbelow.bsky.social & her team.🗣️🧬🧪

In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/w...

More malnutrition deaths reported in Gaza, as BBC travels on aid drop flight from Jordan - follow live Aid has been delivered to Gaza over the weekend, but the UN's aid chief says it is still only a

www.bbc.com/news/live/ck...