This is a pretty stark message about America. Amid "troubling attacks on human rights", Amnesty claims the "starkest threat" to visitors to the World Cup may be "the machine of abusive, discriminatory and deadly immigration enforcement and mass detention in the USA". www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

Hollywood has gone too far this time.

So lovely to see this story I wrote for the Guardian doing well. 🧪 It amazed me that the clitoris didn't make it into standard anatomy textbooks until the 20th century. And in the 38th edition of Gray’s Anatomy in 1995 it was introduced as "a small version of the penis". bsky.app/profile/theg...

If Paul Marshall of GB News says the planet "is currently in a gradual warming cycle" and thinks whether or not climate heating is being caused by human action is “still subject to debate”, he is ignoring decades of hard climate science. 🧪 www.theguardian.com/media/2026/m...

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

Ahh yes, nothing says “let kids be kids” like “using fancy calligraphy to sign checks.” Why, I remember when I signed my first check at the age of 8, using a fountain pen made of whale femur and ink from a Humboldt squid

Showed my kids the new Harry Potter trailer. I thought they'd be keen. My 8-year-old, who is a massive fan of the books and films and keeps asking for her own owl, was not impressed. "It's the worst ever!" she howled. To her, the films aren't decades old. They are now. youtu.be/RIu4sFKGi6E?...

The oldest known dog has been identified from remains found in Turkey and it dates back 15,800 years! Perhaps even more fascinatingly, dog remains from Somerset, UK, dating back about 14,300 years, hint that people may have eaten their faithful companions. 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2520...

There's something amazing about being able to go for a run through the countryside near your house and see peacocks. #nature #birds #photography 🐦 🧪 🦚

One of the many scary effects of the Trump administration's near-total fuel blockade on Cuba: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Every so often I come across research and just go wow. My latest for @newscientist.com is one of these: A living, synthetic "zombie" cell has been made by transplanting a genome into a dead bacterium, bringing it back to life. #science #microbiology #genomics 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2520...

look at this baby beaver and feel better briefly (@ wildheartrescue on TT)

Pheasants really are beautiful. This one wandered into the garden today #birds #nature #photography

What does sci-fi taste like? Metallic, according to this fun research by Tianyi Zhang and Charles Spence at the University of Oxford. The taste is associated with the sound of the theremin, often used in early sci-fi music. #sci-fi #music #science #film 🧪 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I love this: bird boxes made from mushrooms! 🧪 🍄 #fungi #MushroomMonday #FungiFriends It's a champignon of an idea... #puns

This is an awesome discovery: A single-celled organism with no brain called Stentor seems capable of Pavlovian learning. Yes, it can actually learn to associate two things despite having no neurons. My latest for @newscientist.com. 🧪 #science #memory #learning www.newscientist.com/article/2519...

Excited to see entry is now open to the next @nycmidnight.bsky.social Flash Fiction Challenge, which begins on 1 May. I do love the challenge of crafting a 1,000-word story in an unfamiliar genre from scratch in just 48 hours. nycmidnight.com/ffc #writing #fiction #competitions

I'm a big fan of bioRxiv, so it was fascinating to dig into the stats behind the rise of this preprint server from its first 13 or so years for Nature News @nature.com 🧪 @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social #preprints www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Parkinson's disease is associated with loss of the ability to smell. Now there's a hint that, actually, the world smells different to people with the condition. And this may help diagnosis. 🧪 #parkinsons #neuroscience My latest for @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/2518...

And so one of the first proofreading marks was born. #editing #proofing #subediting

This London Review of Books piece by Andrew O’Hagan is a wonderful read. I love this line: "Such pressure on a single mother was not to be sniffed at – and she had a plane to Verbier to catch." @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The tadpoles are coming! 🧪 🐸 #frogs #amphibians #nature Just been to check the frog spawn in the pond and some of the developing embryos are getting very tadpole like, and it looks like some others have already hatched if the empty eggs are anything to go by.

....And this gives me an excuse to post one of my favourite poems about the importance of books: "Library" by Alvy Carragher. She's a Dublin-based Irish poet, but her poem perfectly describes my troubled, library-loving young mother in New Jersey/Pennsylvania too.

This is an interesting survey aimed at understanding how humans view different forests and which people would prefer to preserve. It made me wonder what I value - is arboreal perfection for me to do with the mix of species, their age or the amount of sunlight that filters through the canopy? 🧪 🌳 🌲

Spotted some pine processionary moth caterpillars (Thaumetopoea pityocampa) moving in classic single file in Lisbon, Portugal, today. They look cool, but can cause huge damage to pine and cedar trees and contact with the caterpillars' hairs can cause bad rashes and eye irritation. 🧪 🐛🦋

This is a great way to start your day (if you happen to be starting now) 🧪 🐤

My take, for @livescience.com, on orcas potentially eating other orcas. But is it cannibalism if you probably don't think the animal you are eating is of the same species as you, because it has an entirely different way of living? 🧪 🐬 🐳 🦑 www.livescience.com/animals/orca...

10,000 tons of insects migrate across Switzerland per year, according to this cool preprint by @birgenhaest.bsky.social and his colleagues. 🧪 🪰 🦟 That's 21 billion insects, weighing the equivalent of 50–65 blue whales, flying overhead. 🤯 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I do like the rare ant with every individual being a clone queen. 🧪 🐜 However, many articles on it missed a key point: one change (not needing female workers) ultimately shifts the balance between sexual and asexual reproduction, making males pointless. 😱 www.livescience.com/animals/inse...

Yesterday we hiked out of the forest after five days totally off-grid. Hard to believe what’s happened in the world in the last five days! I’m quite glad we were out of signal range and able to focus on just excellent frogs and reptiles. 🧪🐸🦎🐍🇲🇬

Say hello to one the 7th known triple double radio galaxy! Its three distinct pairs of lobes likely trace three distinct periods of activity from the central black hole. Very cool stuff 🔭🧪☄️

This is a great article by @astrolisa.bsky.social. It beautifully balances the potential inspiration of space flight with the gritty reality of "why should we care given what's going on right now?". 🧪 🔭

I watched Wuthering Heights last night. In classic brain association, now the theme tune to the cartoon Heathcliff in lodged in my head. Does anyone else remember it? youtu.be/9LLb8EBU9nQ?...

The by-election win by Hannah Spencer of the Green Party has reignited a tiny spark of hope in me when it comes to politics. I have to admit to becoming pretty disillusioned with it all. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

This is very cool. I'd never even heard of sundew bugs before, but species in the Setocoris genus seem to steal their food from carnivorous sundew plants, in what is known as kleptobiosis - a form of kleptoparasitism in which one organism steals resources collected by another. 🧪 🐛 🪴 #science

Women and children may have been deliberately targeted in one of the largest prehistoric mass killings discovered in Europe. Buried together more than 2,800 years ago, most of the 77 victims suffered violent deaths. 🧪 #archaeology @newscientist.com #history www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

What makes all this coverage mildly frustrating is... look, if I drove to my job five times a week, I would be paying between $20 and $30 in gas. That's between $1000 and $1500 a year. If I keep my car ten years, that's $10k to $15k. You make up the cost on the back end!

Football journalism can often be obvious pub chat, but @guillem-balague.bsky.social is always at least a cut above this. This article on the racism suffered by Vinicius Jr is superb. #racism #football #sport @bbcsportbot.bsky.social #BBCNews #BBC

There are sex differences in brain connectivity and some of them become more pronounced with age. A particular spike happens during puberty, for example. It was fascinating to dig into this for @nature.com 🧪 🧵 1/11 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Crazy retraction note: The corresponding author wasn't involved in submission, didn't sign the agreement and didn't approve the final version. Plus, evidence of duplication of images and figures. Yet, the conclusions are "otherwise unaffected". 🧪 bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Nothing like planting some vegetable seeds to make you see the positive side of life and reassure you that spring is coming 🧪 🍅 🍆 🌱. Cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and kale in this batch.

In this currently crazy world, it's very reassuring to see that the rule of law and good sense still has a place, as the High Court tells the UK government that its bizarre declaration that Palestine Action is a terrorist group was unlawful. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

China's Yangtze River is showing signs of recovery following the introduction of a 10-year ban on commercial fishing in 2021. The ban involved "strong political decisions" that have had "significant socio-economic consequences", but it is working. 🧪 🐟 🐬 www.livescience.com/planet-earth...

This carved rock may have been a board game, according to a study in which AIs played out thousands of games with slightly different rules against each other to reproduce which moves might have led to the wear and tear seen on the board. 🧪 🤖 🎲 www.newscientist.com/article/2514...

A mysterious group of bacteria - known as CAG-170 - seems to thrive in the gut microbiomes of people without illness, hinting that they may be crucial to good health. 🧪 They could be used as an indicator of health, or maybe (one day) for better probiotics. www.newscientist.com/article/2514...

The spotted lanternfly has spread across the United States with unrelenting speed — and now we have a clue as to why: living in cities seems to have helped these invasive insects evolve to be more resistant to stresses. 🧪 www.livescience.com/animals/inse...

What is the meaning of life? 🧪 Some will say "There is none!" But the question has niggled people at least since the The Epic of Gilgamesh, written more than 4000 years ago. It seems having a positive impact on others is key to feeling your life has meaning. www.newscientist.com/article/2513...

I think you're going to go viral @shawnbraley.bsky.social

We have long known that early humans and Neanderthals interbred, but where did it happen and over what kind of time period? My latest for @newscientist.com reports on a new paper that finds it may have happened over a massive area 🧪 www.newscientist.com/article/2513...

Is this drawing of me (by one of my children) meant to be complimentary or not?