Zoe Vance

Measles cases have soared by 20% worldwide in the past year, with 742 cases in the UK alone. In August, shortly after a 10-year-old girl in Liverpool died from the disease, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health stated that the UK’s child vaccination rates have not met the World Health Organisation’s target of 95% since 2021. This rather undersells the situation. Sky News reports that “the England-wide rate for the final quarter of 2024/25 for MMR was 88.8%, down from 92.7% 10 years ago” and that “uptake in some local authorities is as low as 60%”. Far be it from me to weigh in on an issue that has become so politicised, as merely a parent who wants my children and those of others to stay alive, but I have a sinking feeling. A feeling exacerbated by a single red box on a perfunctory form and the idle chatter of concerned parents who no longer get their vaccine sceptic news from insane websites and specialist cults, but from prime-time appearances by the country’s most prominent politicians and journalists. A feeling that our children might wonder how we all lived through a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime global virus that killed millions, was effectively cured by the single most rapid and successful vaccination programme in history and which, immediately afterwards, gave way to anti-science posturing that drove vaccination rates to historic lows.

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Regardless of one's views of the wider conflict, it is astounding that there are talking heads - including former TDs - that are claiming that the arrest of Irish citizens, including elected politicians, by a foreign military is simply not worthy of discussion

What is Micheál Martin for exactly?

Non-Irish people should be told that Ireland is creased with national hilarity because the Catholic conservative candidate who failed to get enough support did a presser to talk about how Ireland had been cheated out of having a real 'people's candidate' while holding a €20K+ Hermes handbag.

Phenomenal. In my 10 year update of A Brief History, I make the point that in the first edition, not one disease had been successfully treated using gene therapy. Today that number is at least 7.

Maybe a good time to announce that I've just started a new job 🥳 Just when I thought I was out, the polyploids have pulled me back in 🐟🧍‍♂️🌱🧪

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade

Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’

Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

I will simply end this thread by saying that we need to reckon with the enormity of what Britain has done over the past two years. This is worse even than the invasion of Iraq. Do we want to live in a country, or a world, where there aren't consequences for this sort of behaviour?

It’s very curious to compare and contrast the likes of Bob Vylan and Kneecap and the media and politics reaction vs Linehan, it’s weird how free speech works isn’t it

If Bertie Ahern has zero haters then it is because I'm dead and the rest of them emigrated to Australia in 2009.

Dear Fly Community, In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled. The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC). Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options. To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum). To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu…

https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase Our immediate goals are: 1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online 2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance). Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data. At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise. Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028. We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide. Sincerely, The FlyBase Team

The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

Starting to wonder if I missed the bit in the 2024 Labour manifesto where they committed to an all-out war against Irish artists.

Evolution of Dosage-Sensitive Genes by Tissue-Restricted Expression Changes Abstract. Dosage-sensitive genes have characteristic patterns of evolution that include being refractory to small-scale duplication, depleted on human beni

So glad this work is published🥳

Highlight article written by @evopaa.bsky.social: Dosage-Sensitive Genes “Thread the Needle” of Selection doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

Evolution of Dosage-Sensitive Genes by Tissue-Restricted Expression Changes @genomebiolevol.bsky.social academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

there is simply no possible case for continued support for Israel and there has not been for quite some time

a genocidal regime behaving with utter impunity, unconstrained by even the pretense of international law

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

Israel is storing recordings of Palestinians daily phone calls - millions of them - that they analyse to plan airstrikes / kill people - in Irish data centres

Sweet Jesus

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

things tend to be difficult to prevent when you actively choose not to prevent them every day for ten years straight yes

Bombing Iran: appropriate.
Singing about Northern Ireland in a disobliging manner: inappropriate.

The former human rights lawyer has spoken.

this is really scrambling

trying to blame renewables for making electricity TOO CHEAP, not blaming the gas/coal/nuclear plants who didn't fulfill the grid balancing obligations *that they're paid for*

Seems like most people on here are anti-evil. That's the kind of insular groupthink that loses elections :/

NIH funding supporting the HMMER and Infernal software projects has been terminated. NIH states that our work, as well as all other federally funded research at Harvard, is of no benefit to the US.

“Growing recognition that women’s pain should be treated”

Jeeeesus 😖

Just deranged. This was a *solved* problem.

There is also the newly emerging “jaded and bitter early career scientist” category

PM has said Supreme Court decision on woman definition brings ‘real clarity’ - so how come all I’ve seen in my feed the past week is ppl asking about whether it refers to genitals, chromosomes or hormones, whose going to check this & if male police can now strip search anyone they suspect is trans?

'Biological reality': What genetics has taught us about race As US President Donald Trump takes aim at the Smithsonian Institution for "anti-American ideology", Adam Rutherford examines what the science of genetics has taught us about race.

Race IS a social construct, but what does that actually mean?
In the wake of Trump’s scientifically illiterate statements on race, I have written a handy explainer.

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

This is shocking. Before anyone says it's the biggest failure ever seen in science communication, it's not (all) our fault! It's politically driven disinformation

I just attended a conference in the US. We had one speaker detained and two others turned away at the border.

literally they could have spent 5 mins checking his twitter