A four-year postdoc focusing on "plant growth-promoting bacteriophages" available in my group. Skills in metaviromics and metagenomics essential. Application deadline: 2.2.2026. For more info, see the link.

Academia has this way of making you feel utterly unsuccessful even when by any reasonable standard you are doing just fine.

Had a great time at #MicroEvo25 soaking up some inspiring science from lots of amazing people. Even networked! Very well organised by @microbiologysociety.org. Next time hopefully more of the work presented is published in society journals! If we don't use it we will lose it!

Two fully-funded PhD openings in my research group at the University of York. If you’re excited about viromes, phage biology, Nanopore sequencing, soils and the odd bit of alpine or agricultural field sampling, we’d love to hear from you! 🌱🦠🏔️ tiny.cc/c4pv001 tiny.cc/e4pv001

A lot has happened since our first announcement of #ExE2026, an evolutionary ecology conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall from June 29 to July 3 2026. Have a look at our new website to see our confirmed plenary speakers, the mid-conference excursions, and more. 👉 evoxeco.uk 👈

1) 🇩🇪 Some really good news! Germany plans to invest half a billion euros in research on diseases such as ME/CFS and Long Covid. They are calling it "The National Decade Against Post-Infectious Diseases"

The link between the gut #microbiome and autism is not backed by science, researchers say. Read the full opinion piece in @cp-neuron.bsky.social: spkl.io/63322AbxpA#microbiome @wiringthebrain.bsky.social, @statsepi.bsky.social, & @deevybee.bsky.social

PhD opportunity with me at University of Edinburgh linked with Forest Research, funded by E5 DTP. On the microbial mechanisms of soil carbon cycling in tree-planted upland soils. Apply before 14th Dec. Please share with your network. Pic: one of our Scottish sites. e5-dtp.ed.ac.uk/project?item...

A glitch in the matrix? No! I have another PhD available on temperature and AMR, this time with @swbiodtp.bsky.social. Join a friendly group (padpadpadpad.netlify.app/about) in Cornwall to do evolutionary ecology, experimental evolution, and combine phenotyping and sequencing. 🧪🦠 #microsky

When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)

@franwin.co.uk drove a massive rework of rTPC this year, making package maintenance much easier. rTPC now supports 49 different model formulations, vignettes are updated, & you can parallelise model fitting using new purrr & mirai, which is DOPE. #rstats 🧪 padpadpadpad.github.io/rTPC/article...

Three Bicentenary research fellowships on offer at @officialuom.bsky.social @fbmh-uom.bsky.social for exceptional ECRs with <3y postdoc experience 3yrs salary + £30k pa research expenses Do you have a great idea & want to join @mermanchester.bsky.social? www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/research/sup...

Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre. Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!

I have an MRC-funded PhD project available (www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...) on how warming will change the problem of AMR. Join a small and friendly group (padpadpadpad.netlify.app/about) in (sometimes) sunny Cornwall. 🧪🦠 #microsky Please share the ad below with anyone who may be interested.

what postdocs actually want: - to not have their grants canceled - reasonable chances at getting an academic position - job security - a thriving private sector so the entire research system can flourish <3 higher ed institutions in 2025: - best i can do is an origami night

@raviranjan.bsky.social & I are teaching a free online workshop with on experimental design for environmental scientists on the 23rd. We'll focus on using simulations to evaluate how well different experimental designs help achieve your goals. Please sign up & share! forms.gle/MZTxeQs4UpMr...

Today in the AI hellscape we are building for ourselves, people are easily creating "official looking" websites of popular bioinformatics software that are not at all linked to the developers.

Time for my annual repost of this banger by Australian artist Denis Lushch. Ever-more relevant with each new horrible year.

This is a great cartoon of the illogical narratives I hear refuting climate warming. As I have said many times, it's not "either/or" when it comes to natural variability and human contributions, it's "both/and." Grass grows naturally and it grows differently when you fertilize the lawn....

Wildlife science is a big one for this too. Paying for work experience and working for free or for a small weekly stipend is distressingly common. Many entry level paid jobs are barely living wage

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

Think I might regret asking this, but do we have a handle on whether the wider environment actively selects for AMR that moves into livestock and humans, or whether it mainly acts as a sink for resistance that arises in those areas with higher selection pressures? Papers looking at this appreciated!

On this Severe ME Awareness Day, I present to you my newest exhibition: “In the Absence of Light”. 1/3 www.aquietstorm.me/in-the-absen... #MECFS #SevereME #SevereMEday #pwME #Photography

Feels surreal to say but: I'm hiring! If you are or know anyone interested in looking at the evolution of phage resistance using A. baumannii and natural transformation, then this might be for you www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

(1/2) Key genetic differences found in people with ME/CFS > Swipe to find out more. These findings reflect the lived experience of thousands of #pwME. Thanks to all our participants & supporters who made this possible! Read a summary of our results: shorturl.at/pgsjk

It’s really important for EDI that ECRs and PIs can have open, empathetic discussions about feedback and behaviour, without intimidation. Respect from lab members comes from being able to challenge negative behaviour, and being listened to without discussions becoming a competition.

There's this trope that you have to be so into your PhD topic that you live and breathe it and can't possibly stop thinking about it, so here's your regular reminder that passion is good, but burnout isn't. It's okay and recommended to take breaks, enjoy the weekend, and treat a PhD like a job.

I have irrationally strong hatred of papers that have Results and Discussion before the Methods. It promotes us not reading what people actually did. Without this the Results are basically meaningless! I would ban the practice. If you want to ignore the Methods, at least scroll past them.

There is a new report out estimating that AMR could cause $2tn a year by 2050, a number which will no doubt end up in grant applications and paper introductions. Having scanned the methods of the report, there is no open code and no statistical analysis section. www.cgdev.org/publication/...

Hello! We're now on #Bluesky! PhULMaR is a PhD lab group for those around the British and Irish Isles studying birds that use the #marine #environment. Currently headed by @bardseyben.bsky.social @dianepavat.bsky.social, we meet online on the last Friday of each month. Get in touch to join!

The Company of Biologists Workshop: Why Are Cells the Size They Are? Thank you to Workshop organisers Dustin Marshall and Craig White. #Workshop #Biology #CellBiology #Cells #Community #Collaboration #Research #Researchers #Academia #Academics

The Why Are Cells The Size They Are workshop by @biologists.bsky.social was superb. The attendee list was exceptional and whole thing was inspiring. Chose a special conference to be my first for nearly three years.

One week left to submit your abstract to @microbiologysociety.org meeting on “Understanding and Predicting Microbial Evolutionary Dynamics” at Liverpool 26-27 November Lots of spaces for ECR talks and posters! microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...

Hiring/Seeking a *permanent* programmer in ecological modelling at my lab @unibonn.bsky.social. We mechanistically model plant communities, island biogeography, species range dynamics, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, diversity gradients, tropical forests, vascular epiphytes. Pls rt! shorturl.at/Bzzdt

Trying to better document my code and things I do, mainly so future me does not have to go back through bits of old blog posts and ChatGPT to get a solution. If you want to enable non-admin users on a Synology to have ssh access, here is how I did it: padpadpadpad.netlify.app/posts/2025-0...

🚨New blog post 🚨 A short post about some of the questions you might want to ask yourself before you decide which IDE to use! Link: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/how-cho... #RStats #Python #VSCode

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

New Independent Fellowship position in Microbiology to launch your lab in our department @johninnescentre.bsky.social (UK). We are conducting a broad search in the area of plant-associated microbial interactions. Message me if you have any questions. Apply here: www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/in...

Writing a quarto help document and want to allow people to easy collaborate on it, what would be the best method. Is it still GitHub pushing and pulling? Is there a smoother, more interactive way @michelnivard.bsky.social @andrew.heiss.phd?

Bioinformatic hive mind: Has anyone got a paper/primer that describes how to go about choosing sequencing depth/amount of sequencing for metagenomics? E.g. things to think about, pros and cons of fewer, more in depth samples vs more, shallower sequencing. Maybe @blekhman.bsky.social knows of one?

Hi @bioinformer.bsky.social I am putting together my own genome assembly pipeline based on your teams ATCC protocol, is it better to have less coverage but all high quality short reads or more coverage but some lower quality? Any other advice? Thinking of trying auto- and unicycler to compare.

In about a week we (Biological Sciences @ Monash Uni in Melbourne, Australia) will be opening a search for 3 (!!!) permanent academic positions (40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service) at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. 1 Genomics, 2 Ecology. Please share, email me, DM, follow, send carrier pigeons…

👇 genuinely don’t understand why people are unable to comprehend “don’t get AI to do something for you if you can’t understand whether it has produced the wrong answer”.

Lil intro to our early-stage rayyanR R package, from the first day of #ESMARConf2025 (youtu.be/dmcTZ-0eC18?...). Please beta test it and find its inevitable bugs/missing features so I can fix them/incorporate them (you can help us if you like!) 🙏 @ecehh.org @eshackathon.bsky.social #medlibs

So I've really got to ask Sam Altman: where is this singularity? Is exponential intelligence in the room with us now? Because everything is still looking very linear to me

So happy to be part of @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social 's ongoing Disability in Ecology and Evolution series! It's great to see serious conversation around our experiences & how we can make the field better for us all www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

I never, ever want to hear again that women are too emotional to be leaders.

I talked to 15 teachers/professors about how AI and ChatGPT is ruining their lives: www.404media.co/teachers-are...