If you think chatbots can have feelings and can be sentient, let us take you through the work of a Microsoft AI researcher who used the real time strategy game Age of Empires II to build a basic neural network using digital goats to prove that "we anthropomorphise too readily."

Many animals are thought to use the Earth’s magnetic field as an internal compass. The question of how pigeons do this is contested – it could be light sensitive proteins in the eye, or iron in their beaks. In this new theory, it’s more of a gut feeling.

This is fucking insanity www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

‘Science needs to be right for us to move on & progress and so there’s not really another way to do it, other than to publish diverging opinions where they exist,’ chemist Ryan Julian tells @adamcvean.bsky.social www.chemistryworld.com/news/study-p...

What stage of capitalism is selling your past and present likeness to AI?

Striped cuckoo (Tapera naevia) chicks utilize specialized, cryptic plumage that mimics the texture and color of pinecones for camouflage. #birds

A hailstorm of these proportions is 'unusual' but not unheard of in the state at this time of year, one expert says

When you drug test for cannabis, that typically means (at first) a urine test test that detects carboxy-THC, one of THC's major metabolites. You may, logically, expect that higher consumers of cannabis would have higher carboxy-THC values in their pee. That's not true. 🍀🥬🚭🚬

The 70-90% desistance numbers myth has always been bullshit but it's nice to see research confirming that it is. phys.org/news/2026-04...

Meanwhile, over on Twitter...

Found a spell? message? washed up on the shores of Georgian Bay today

Sci-Hub, a pirate website that illegally hosts tens of millions of scientific papers, has launched an artificial intelligence–based chatbot that mines the database and answers questions based on what it retrieves. Read more: cen.acs.org/policy/publi... #chemsky 🧪

Why do some athletes consume cannabis? And how long does it take for cannabis to leave the system before a big competition? @adamcvean.bsky.social wrote an excellent article on this. Highly recommended! fansided.com/the-sports-w...

In 1998, Ross Rebagliati won the first Olympic medal for snowboarding. 3 days later he was medal-less and in police custody. His urine had tested positive for cannabis. The IOC knew then that weed wasn't performance enhancing. So why, 28 years later, are athletes still facing cannabis prohibition?

Maya Angelou on the joys of being edited

Bathwater could be an untapped source of forensic DNA, according to experiments using samples from both tests and real forensic investigations. #chemsky 🧪

‘Getting something that is highly chemical resistant often costs more money,’ says Merck’s Eric Margelefsky who helped develop a strategy to evaluate material compatibility. @adamcvean.bsky.social www.chemistryworld.com/news/how-to-...

The new membrane shows better selectivity & permeability than state-of-the-art materials, with a smaller environmental impact. @adamcvean.bsky.social www.chemistryworld.com/news/water-b...

I covered new work that may stop useful forensic DNA evidence from going down the drain for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/analytical-c...

New way to compliment the journalists in your life just dropped

Material compatibility concerns aren't exclusive to industrial chemistry, and neither are effective testing methods. ‘We have microscopes, we have the electrochemical things, but anybody could get some metal coupons and do some simple studies.‘ @chemistryworld.com

A Japanese team’s discovery of lab equipment impacting nickel catalysts adds to a growing list of supposedly inert equipment playing unexpected roles in chemical reactions. www.chemistryworld.com/news/expect-...

Meet the science sleuths: researchers who volunteer to examine research articles for signs of fraud, manipulation and fabrication. www.chemistryworld.com/careers/how-...

When scaling up a reaction, how do you choose compatible materials? Especially when working with novel chemistry? On industrial scales, mistakes can be deadly and $$$. Material compatibility tests are the name of the game. I wrote about how Merck & Co does them for @chemistryworld.com!

Choosing a reactor made from the wrong materials can be a costly and potentially dangerous mistake. @adamcvean.bsky.social speaks to the Merck & Co team to understand simple testing strategies and criteria for decision-making. www.chemistryworld.com/news/how-to-...

Breaking Canadian news: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

tell me you used ai to write your house listing without telling me you used ai to write your house listing

By incorporating liquid metals into sensors, researchers have created a fire detection and warning system that is ultrafast, flame-retardant & reusable. @adamcvean.bsky.social www.chemistryworld.com/news/liquid-...

I guess boycotting Harry Potter feels pretty trivial to me, because I'm an adult. if someone told me I shouldn't eat Gerber's baby food, I'd be like, that is no problem. I'm way ahead of you

Transphobia cooks your brain. You spend years screaming "everyone fits neatly into two sexes!" and then reality hands you Khelif or Caster Semenya and you can't adjust. You can't say "this is more complicated than I thought." You just call her a man, because the framework demands it. Fundamentalism.

17 radiologists were given X-ray scans to look at. Unbeknownst to them, half were real, half AI generated. Only 41% raised the concern that some may be AI. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NEW: Wikipedia has banned AI-generated content.

The IOC has announced a trans and intersex athlete ban requiring an invasive SRY genetic test for female athletes. In the 20+ years trans women were eligible, only one ever competed and none ever medaled. This is solving for a problem that doesn't exist. www.nbcnews.com/sports/olymp...

146 workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on this day in 1911. The bosses responsible were never held accountable for the awful working conditions that sparked the blaze. Remember this today as politicians and their corporate backers attack workplace safety.

My first story for @science.org covers microscopic spikes on ball python scales that can inhibit bacterial biofilm formation. Antibacterial microstructured surfaces could be a lifeboat in an ocean of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but only if we understand how they work!

What do you get if you combine MXene and cellulose and gallium–indium alloy nanoparticles coated in polydopamine? Very possibly the next generation of fire detectors! (And origami) Check out my latest for CW #ChemSky #ScienceSky

Combining MXenes with liquid metal nanoparticles enables the creation of extremely fast fire detectors, an international team of researchers has found. @adamcvean.bsky.social www.chemistryworld.com/news/liquid-...

You can leave the country, but not the tv licensing sphere of influence

@inaturalist.bsky.social has support for Seek been discontinued? On multiple devices the camera will no longer focus when zoomed in, and my uploads have been pending for months.

My first story for @science.org covers microscopic spikes on ball python scales that can inhibit bacterial biofilm formation. Antibacterial microstructured surfaces could be a lifeboat in an ocean of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but only if we understand how they work!

DW guys, life is worth living today

Instead of cancelling, have you considered paying us more?

Here's why you'll never pry me away from my nonbinary siblings, and it's nothing to do with being a squshy softy who doesn't want to reckon with hard truths, it's this: Empirically, nonbinary people exist.

A new trick in skeletal editing's toolbox allows ortho and para substituents to be turned into the trickier to synthesise meta ones. Something drugmakers are likely to appreciate.

Analysis of 85 pieces of Mesolithic pottery from hunter-gatherer-fisher communities in northeastern Europe shows the value of combining analytical techniques to improve the understanding of ancient diets and cooking methods. #chemsky 🧪

It seems the paleo diet wasn't as paleo as once thought! A new analysis of carbonized foodcrusts from ancient pottery reveals a previously overlooked pattern of diverse and selective plant use by ancient humans across northern and eastern Europe. My latest for @cenmag.bsky.social: #ChemSky

If you woke up a bit tired this morning thanks to daylight savings, you have a few options for who to blame: - George Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist, who suggested to the Wellington Philosophical Society, and wrote a 1898 paper in support of changing the clocks get more daylight bug hunting time

The best/worst part is that I wasn't even in that episode.

I waited 18 months for a library copy of Three Bags Full by Leonnie Swann after someone told me it was a bit like my favourite book, Watership Down. 18 months. I started it, loved it, got very busy with work. The hold ended, I was only half done. So now I start looking to buy a copy...

Have you written the acknowledgments section of your thesis yet? I had no idea what I was doing when I did. That's probably why it contains poetry. What is yours like? What guided how you wrote it? Did anyone fun get a shoutout in yours? Tell me about it!