Five persistent “Zombie Facts” that should be allowed to finally die | Sean Slater 'Zombie facts' are myths, ideas and factoids that continue to spread long after they have been comprehensively debunked.

🦅 What’s driving the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) across Europe? Using machine learning and wild bird ecology, a new study from @L_Brierley & colleagues reveals a shift towards year-round risk in cold, low-lying regions of NW Europe. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A study funded through a partnership with CSL Seqirus has been published in Scientific Reports. The research maps #BirdFlu risk across Europe using environmental AND wild bird data. Read more: www.thepandemicinstitute.org/news/study-u... @liambrierley.bsky.social #AvianInfluenza #H5N1

🎙️🤣 I wrote about why and how researchers should think about comedy as a way of public engagement via @uofgpe.bsky.social! There's a couple of routes to do this in Glasgow, and if you're interested to see how it works you can come see Bright Club TONIGHT at The Stand! linktr.ee/brightclubsc...

I am ridiculously excited for this next set of Glasgow scicomm comics. This coming Monday!!

Two weeks til 🎙️COMEDIC ACADEMIC🎙️time!! Feat. everything from how much you can electrically stimulate someone to the psychology of stroppy astronauts! Want to dip your own toe in or hear about scicomm-comedy training? Get on that mailing list! eepurl.com/jr69Zg 👀 also don't miss the discount code⬇️

We've a computational PhD project available AI-DRIVEN DISCOVERY OF VIRUS–HOST MOLECULAR INTERACTIONS www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl... as part of the University of Glasgow's MVLS Futures Themes PhD Programme. Deadline for applications is this Monday, 12th Jan 2026. Please apply!

"[neurodivergent] behaviors .. need not be changed for properly functioning research environments and demanding conformity of autistic scientists is actively harmful to their mental health" Many important and stunningly relatable points in this piece. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Spectra of mutation patterns across the influenza A phylogeny are informative of not just differential host adaptation, but differential tissue adaptation too!

Conservation, genomics, ecology, *and* bats all in the same PhD!

Some things, like foxes, really are upside down in Australia

What makes bird flu spill over to humans? 4y funded PhD in the genomics and molecular virology behind zoonosis of avian influenza A virus, working with @tompeacock.bsky.social and others between Liverpool, Pirbright, and Uppsala! open to applications until next week!

🚨 2 PhD opportunities under Wessex One Health to join my group & work on: 1. Integrating bat and fungal pathogen ecology to understand epidemiology 2. AI-augmented metagenomics to map British bat virome and assess zoonotic potential Deadline 26 January 2026 🦇🧪🦠🌍🌐 www.surrey.ac.uk/wessex-one-h...

The absurdity of not being able to use a .gov site as a reliable source anymore.

It's Trans Awareness Week and @rssdiversity.bsky.social and @rainbowr.org's event tomorrow! 🏳️‍⚧️ Please join me from 17.30GMT at www.youtube.com/@RSSDiversity (stream will be up on homepage) to hear from Dr Voigt and Dr Webster on data on trans identities, barriers in trans lives, and better advocacy.

My 1st first-author paper is out as a preprint! Excited to share the fascinating story of marine-feeding vampire bats 🌊🦇 We found that marine-diet bats were exposed to #H5#AvianFlu 🦠 from marine wildlife and could potentially spread it to livestock via blood feed🩸 doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.09.686930

Our lab's paper describing the North American H5N1 epizootic is out now in Nature! So thrilled to have this out, and congratulations to @lambod50.bsky.social for all the fantastic work on this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

rainbowR event: Trans Lived Experiences in Data 🏳️‍⚧️ We are partnering with the @rssdiversity.bsky.social Celebrating Diversity SIG to host an online event next week. More info below! 📅 19th Nov 17:30–18:30 (GMT) 👉 bit.ly/rsscdnov

TONIGHT! Don't miss out on Glasgow's best* science comedy evening! * within 95% confidence interval

Bright Club is back!  Join us at The Stand Glasgow for a night of laughs as our researchers and academics turn into stand-up comedians. 📅 Mon 10 November  📍 The Stand, Glasgow  Get your tickets for £4 using discount code "BRIGHTCLUB": gla.ac/4hivOMZ

🧬 Thrilled to share our latest paper in @natmicrobiol.nature.com 📄 A collaboration to give the Flaviviridae (home to Zika, Dengue & HCV) a much-needed taxonomic re-think. Our at-scale AI structure prediction gave a complementary perspective on viral evolution. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In two weeks! Live stand-up comedy from 100% real in-the-flesh researchers and scientists including me (am real last time I checked). This time we got everything from Scottish philosophy & saintspeak to astrophysics & mystery diseases! www.thestand.co.uk/performance/... 👀 discount code: BRIGHTCLUB

🚨📝 New work via @thepandemicinst.bsky.social now preprinted! We took ~19000 sequences of avian influenza virus and trained machine learning models on >40000 genomic/proteomic features - the resulting ensemble can predict zoonotic potential with AUC=0.95. More below! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Experimental infections reveal unexceptional viral tolerance in bats https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.28.672855v1

Virus researchers! Please consider participating in this project - it would be a huge help to our lab, and we think it'll lead to some really exciting synthesis. Plus, you'll get an invitation to participate in a workshop later in the project! 🦠😷

We have a job going for a bioinformatician / computational biologist at the CVR in Glasgow. www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/computat...

If I had a nickel for every consecutive year we've had janky 3D-rendered big cats, I'd only have two nickels but it's weird it's happened twice.

I'm only able to join ViBioM virtually (thank you @evbc.bsky.social for making this available!!) but some fantastic talks from the @systemsvirology.bsky.social lab who are innovately retraining protein language models to infer virus evolution, antigenicity, and epi! おめでとうございます

So much #scicomm in Glasgow in the next month! Talks in a pub? ✔️ - @pintofscience.uk: pintofscience.co.uk/events/glasgow Family activities? - ✔️ Glasgow Science Festival: www.gla.ac.uk/events/scien... and my (biased) fave - Science comedy??? - ✔️ Bright Club: www.thestand.co.uk/performance/...

Last day for abstract submission to present your work at the 𝗚𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗴𝗼𝘄 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 and connect with researchers across all directions of virology! We would love to have more representation and contributions from ECRs and students! Abstracts info in link below!

🎓Big Congratulations to Dr Hollie French for passing her Viva yesterday! 🎉 📄Thesis: ‘Genomic Surveillance and Biogeography of Vampire Bat Rabies in Central America and Mexico.’ 🦇🦠and thank you to her supervisor: @danielstreicker.bsky.social

The UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer has confirmed a case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in a single sheep in Yorkshire following repeat positive milk testing. To my knowledge, this is the first time the virus has been detected in sheep. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Come do a PhD with me using LLMs and comparative methods to understand the emergence of companion animal viruses! 🧠☠️🕸️🐕🐈🖥️ Fully funded 3.5 year PhD based at @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk and @cvrinfo.bsky.social supervised by myself, Margaret Hosie, and Willie Weir www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

We love to hear about about the amazing work of our William Guy Lecturers in bringing stats to young people! Want to inspire the next generation with a talk about stats and AI? There's still time to apply for our 2025/26 lectureship 👉 rss.org.uk/news-publica...

Don't forget this is tonight! Last tickets available below!

yes yes yes yes yes yes!! Get them tickets if you want some dazzling academics tickling your funny bones with tales of asexuality, booze, saints, sensory stimulation, and more! www.thestand.co.uk/performance/...

🎺 PhD studentship available at @lshtm.bsky.social and RVC! @influenzal.bsky.social and I are advertising for a project to investigate the unexpected phenomenon that mutagenic antiviral drugs can give rise to viruses with hundreds of mutations which are still viable. 🧵 www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

🚨👨🏽‍🔬👩🏿‍🔬𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁! Work with us to develop supervised learning and graph analysis of the evolutionary and genomic links between viruses, the tissues they can infect, and the hosts that can be infected. 3y role based at @cvrinfo.bsky.social, apply by 18 Mar: vibelab.co.uk/blog/25-02-1...

And we're all good for the new date of *this Sunday*, 1.30pm! Venue and registration @ www.meetup.com/glasgow-huma... !

Unfortunately Pestilence took this personally and got to me today, so we're looking at rescheduling for another Sunday this month! Sorry for inconvenience, but watch this space..

Glasgow's calendar is full of hosting some fantastic virology meetings this year! Register below for.... 📅 UK Pandemic Sciences Network conference (23 Apr): ukpsn.org/ukpsn-confer... Bringing together experts in the field to discuss key challenges and research developments in pandemic threats!

Things like the "Banned Word Scrub" can feel Orwellian, but distant. Today I am reviewing abstracts for an upcoming conference, & realising some may be withdrawn due to this. This is a conference about human viruses & health - not politics. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02... 1/2

44,000 #biological #interactions extracted from 84,000 publications—in just a few hours using GPT4o Preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... by @francoiskeck.bsky.social et al #ecology🌍🌐🐟🌳🦋🪰🌿🪲 #predation #parasitism #mutualism 🚀 Potential applications seem endless & will change how we do #ecology

What's going on with bird flu in the UK at the moment? I wrote a piece for @uk.theconversation.com explaining what we know at the moment, and why it's not yet time to worry theconversation.com/bird-flu-cas...

Scicomm update #2! Bright Club Glasgow is looking for performers for our scientifically-hilarious comedy show in March! Great way to develop new outreach skills and rethink how you talk research! Get in touch: www.facebook.com/brightclubgl...

Scicomm update #1! 🛡️ Why did the military protect against dangers they never saw? 🔍 Can you trust evidence that seems to solve the murder trial? 🥪 And how risky is a bacon sandwich?? Find out in my free #stats-comm show in a week via Glasgow Humanists, Sun 9th Feb! www.meetup.com/glasgow-huma...

Kind of wild that we're basically at tier 5 of the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri tech tree already

Just as there is "no such thing as a fish", there is no such thing as a "human pathogen" if you set put your evolutionary timescale goggles on. Supplementary Note 1 does a nice job of articulating and framing the ancient history of virus host jumps! static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10...