Human induced climate change is an existential threat to humans living on the planet. It is also making it harder year in year to find good winter climbing conditions in Scotland. Luckily two weeks ago there was a spell of very cold weather - I climbed in Glen Coe: grade IV Raeburn route.

elifesciences.org/articles/102... I am very excited to share with you our publication building Deep3DSIM microscope using adaptive optic. It allows imaging into an intact fly brain >130 microns with high quality 3DSIM as well as remote focusing without moving the objective or specimen.

Dear friends and scientific colleagues, (especially those of you who knew David Ish-Horowicz). Feel free to share the attached PDF widely (all the speakers are happy for the talks to be shared). Many thanks Best regards Ilan www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

*URGENT* please support NIH research and the NIH employees who are standing up for science at the risk of losing their jobs! Sign *TODAY* in support of the Bethesda Declaration. The senate appropriations committee is reviewing the NIH budget Tuesday at 10 am. SHARE widely! 🧪

A typical part of the playbook for a dictator on the rise, coupled with bringing out troops to suppress democratic protests against their xenophobic policies.

Genius. Just as topical now as when made - I think when Thatcher was first elected as prime minister in the uk in 1980 or so.

#Drosophila @flybase.bsky.social requires emergency funding: "As it stands, by the end of July, 2025, there will be no future updates to #FlyBase, and in the worst case scenario access to the website will also be lost". Please help if you can!

Through its programmes and schemes, scientific #publications, #policy and #innovation, EMBO continues to promote excellence in the #LifeSciences at national, European and global level. This week, we focus on: #Denmark www.embo.org/the-embo-com... 🧪 #research #opportunities #funding

Another way to donate to save flybase from disappearing: eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

The Trump administration's chaotic changes to diversity-based funding have left trainees in limbo. My colleagues and I at @thetransmitter.bsky.social spoke to ten neuroscience trainees about what the uncertainty means for them, their research and their futures: www.thetransmitter.org/funding/a-gu...

The wold scientific base is in serious crisis. Including Flybase, the heart and soul of the Drosophila community. Read below. If you work on flies or are a fan or want to help. Please consider donation. As termination of Harvard NIH means flybase will stop after the end of July 2025.

Scientists in a race to discover why the Universe exists. 🔭 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Walking through the Glasgow botanical guardians I found d countless magical patterns on the leaves

You maybe interested in this film I made in a very remote part of Tibet while I was doing my PhD in Developmental Biology, shown on BBC2 in 1988. A pilgrimage to Mount Kailas - the centre of the universe to Tibetan Buddhism. youtu.be/ls4doaxVBkg

We are pleased to report publication of the Drosophila circadian clock connectome in @naturecomms.bsky.social. Check out the final version for additional analyses not present in the preprint. @unrcabnr.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A tour de force review of the connections between between the nervous and immune systems www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Jeff Lee et al paper from my lab is out now www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... I am very grateful to Jeff, Nile's and Tamsin for all the hard work on this tour de force paper. Jeff deserves more credit than me for masterminding it and the outstanding data analysis: 2 RBPs over 3 developmental times.

I wonder if anyone has built a continuously variable fluorescent light source using delta optical filters and dichroic mirrors with galvo mirrors and/or piezo movers? deltaopticalthinfilm.com/knowledge/te...

Interesting analysis free of political bias or opinion. However a popularist with disregard of the law and truth backed by oligarch tech billionaires with no morals may “achieve” much more than is easily predicted by rational expert analysis.

Went to Glen Coe to climb dorsal arête on stone coire nan lochen. (Triangular cliff in photo). But snow conditions were very poor so went walking instead.

Important to support the societies that manage publications at the face of the onslaught from the commercial rivals.

I am obsessed with these fungi. LOOK AT HOW WEIRD AND WONDERFUL THEY ARE. I imagine that's what moa thought, too... that story and more of the best from @science.org and science in this edition of #ScienceAdviser: www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪 🍄

Using this method, we determined that the eruption at Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai released ~61 Mt, slightly higher in magnitude than the yield of the Tsar Bomba. The paper is open access (link.springer.com/article/10.1...). #PhysOrg wrote a nice article about our work 🧪⚛️[5/n] phys.org/news/2022-08...

Went winter climbing last Sunday in magnificent conditions in the Cairngorms. Arrived a bit late so the popular climbs were in log jam. Had to do a shorter “off piste” sideline to the right to avoid the crowds

View of Central London from Ken Wood, across Hampstead Heath two days before Xmas eve.

Boxing Day tour of street art scene in Bristol uk.

🌍🌎🧪🌎🌱🌾🌴🌳🌼🌻🌺🍄‍🟫🍄Lovely new plants and fungi from around the world. Found in biodiversity hot spots like Indonesia but also intensively recorded places like UK. Seen this year, maybe not again, as land use is changed. So sad. #BUC2025 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Been on holiday in Italy. Is there any other language that uses hand gestures so extensively and comprehensively in parallel with spoken language? Inspiring to watch people in conversation on trains or in cafes. Interesting to know if AI image analysis can interpret Italian without sound.

Happy #FluorescenceFriday!

Capri at sunset yesterday.

That is really cool. I guess (x,y,z) = (sin2t, sin3t,sin4t). ?

Naturally ornate RNA-only complexes revealed by cryo-EM https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.08.627333v1

Answer to my visual riddle below. Two different pictures out of the window of the airplane focusing on the glass or on the view.

The trend is interesting

Ever wondered why walking around museums is weirdly tiring? At normal speed our legs act like pendulums, swinging forward from the hip & saving us a huge amount of energy. In "museum shuffle" our muscles must do ALL the work of constant readjustment. So cake in the cafe is scientifically justified 🥳

Can you guess how these two pictures are related?

I am delighted that our long standing close collaboration with AlfredoCastello lab has led to yet another very exciting publication in Mol Cell: thanks so much to Wael and Alfredo for taking the lead. www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Ugh...🤦 "Mark McAfee, a California raw milk producer whose products have been recalled several times recently due to bird flu contamination (and cried "politics") said he has been approached by (RFK Jr’s) team to guide the upcoming admin. on raw milk policy." 🛟🧪 medsky sociology idsky

How big does an asteroid have to be to make it to the ground?

#PhD Advert: Please share! Are you looking for a PhD studentship in comparative- or population-genomics, using 300+ species of #Drosophila and 1000+ genomes of #melanogaster? #Entomology #Genomics #PopGen #Phylogenetics

Postdoc position available in the Röper lab at the University of Cambridge @PDN_Cambridge! Join us and discover the role that control of cytoskeletal dynamics, crosstalk and cell adhesion play in the formation of the nephron tube in human renal organoids! jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/48947/

The statistics of global food industry are incredible: www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/... Revenue in the Food market amounts to US$9.09tn in 2024. Expected to grow annually by 6.48% (CAGR 2024-2029). The market's largest segment is the segment Meat with a market volume of US$1.46tn in 2024.

Leave me alone it's #Fluorescencefriday !➡️ two axonal growth cones growing together until one got fed up of the other... #neuroscience #microscopy #liveimaging

May commissural axons find their way in here 🙏 #Microscopy #LiveImaging #AxonGuidance #Neuroscience

Let's unleash the axonal growth cones for this #Fluorescencefriday ! #neuroscience #Liveimaging #microscopy #Axonguidance

The problem with "open A.I. systems" is that they're not open. www.nature.com/articles/s41... "We reveal a map of open AI which shows that.... [it] is highly dependent on the resources of a few large corporate actors, who effectively control the AI industry and the research ecology beyond."

Mix two motors of opposite polarity with microtubules and they will partition space ! Microtubules will get organized in polar and active barriers, sorting the two motors in separated domains, leading to the emergence of a new type of patterns. #morphogenesis doi.org/10.1073/pnas... (1/n)

Amazing