The science literature used to be more fun

fine-looking meeting

Very excited to share an advert for a new lecturer position in Computational Cancer at UCL! Permanent position at assistant professor level- join a growing community at UCL in a cutting edge discipline. Please share widely! www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Ahhh, the glory of UK research electronic forms.

In May 2024 we had a great workshop on chemotaxis in the MPI PKS in Dresden! The social impressions are in the picture below, and the scientific discussions are summarised in Angewandte Chemie lnkd.in/d6ymRhGK What a nice way to remember!

Will shouting "STOP CHANGING MY TEXT INTO THINGS I DIDN'T MEAN" at my phone help? Asking for a friend.

We hiring! Please share this post with your talented ECRs We're looking for a postdoc interested in the formation and function of tertiary lymphoid structures - project funded by Wellcome Based at @lmcb-ucl.bsky.social at University College London Apply here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPD418/r...

This morning my ChatGPT quota was inexplicably exhausted. It took a while but I pieced it together. Voice mode somehow got activated when I went to bed. The bot then engaged in a 10 hour conversation with my snoring dog, answering questions the pup wasn’t asking and praising him for his insight.

Thanks for any data. i want Scar/WAVE complex scroll waves you see...

testing the exact 3D printer settings to retain a #makerbeam

Read this today. All of it. It will make you happy.

Ooooh coool

Yikes. Interesting paper but a terrible news report. Skin cells are chock full of mutations. It's brilliant to show that you can use skin cell nuclei to make an embryo, but you'd have to be insane to make a human out of one. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The excellent Lucija Mijanovic & I write a piece musing on electrotaxis, collective migration, and @calinacopos.bsky.social & the Mogilner lab's nice PNAS paper. Have a look! authors.elsevier.com/a/1lpaB3QW8S...

University manager confuses "quality" and "being funded". Shock horror. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Hey kids - can you spell "Nyquist"? fstoppers.com/gear/apple-l...

Cnidarian-Microbe Interactions Fully-funded postdoctoral position is available in the Gibson Lab at the Stowers Institute to investigate any aspect of cnidarian-microbe interactions. Strong background in coral symbiosis or eukaryotic microbiology preferred. Contact Matt Gibson: [email protected]

Same energy here D:NA → R:NA → Proatin 😅

Perceptions have real effects www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-insti...

SCOTUS decision "in a scientific sense...a total loss" "Years long studies will lose validity...Lifesaving medication trials will be abandoned. Countless researchers will lose their jobs.”https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02721-5

Marvellous thread

Very excited to be co-organizing this meeting next February. Fellow collective behavior enthusiasts, this one is for you!

My wife shared this with me and I’m tellin you… it’s worth the read.

one small consolation of being a 60+ year old investigator is the ability to submit to 𝘔𝘈𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘌 family journals — sure they’re low impact (for our knees) but they have an early bird special if you submit between 4:00 and 5:30 on weekdays

📢 Meet #BSICambridge25 speaker: @robinsall.bsky.social Professor Robert Insall, Professor of Computational Cell Biology @ucl.ac.uk, will be speaking on immune cells at the 2025 Cambridge Immunology Forum. 🎟️ Early bird registration still open: buff.ly/jhoEQJ0 @britsocimm.bsky.social #ImmunoSky

Oh Lordy. It's true. GPT-5 really is that bad. This is quite spectacular. PMs of the UK since the first world war. PhD level indeed. **shrug**

Incredible. Roland Reisley is 101 years old, the last original client of Frank Lloyd Wright. He still lives in the 3,200 square foot home that Wright built for him in 1952. The price? $40,000. Or a little less than half a million in today's money.

I think Altman assumes that “PhD-level expert” means someone who speaks confidently on everything as opposed to saying “it’s nuanced,” losing their keys, and getting maniacally fixated on their current topic to the point of seeing it in everything.

Dev biologists! 3-yr postdoc position at King's, collaboration with Trizzino lab @marcotrizzino.bsky.social modelling CHD3 neural crest. We are looking for postdocs with mad embryology skills @the-node.bsky.social #developmental @ccrb27.bsky.social thenode.biologists.com/jobs/postdoc...

A #MathOnco conference in beautiful St Pete Beach, FL in the Tampa Bay Area you say? in late October when the weather will be wonderful you say? organized by @sandy and the folks at @math.onco you say? https://mathematical-oncology.org/mathonco25

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

Seconded. Tom Lehrer RIP. A veritable genius.

We'd better enjoy the rain while it's here, 'cos it's all we're getting for ages...

A most interesting thread. And I agree. The lack of distinction (and the urge for distinction) in ultrarich people is shocking. And harmful.

All three kids degreed up & off for gainful employment now...

Ahh yes. We're going to save British universities with a gormless, self-important exhortation to "support digital transformation". Those eggheads! They never thought of that! Tell 'em! Depressing depressing depressing. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

If you simply justify university expansion by "graduates get higher salaries", it will immediately get used as a simplistic metric, and bean counters will soon come at you and say "course X did not increase pay so must be shut down". www.timeshighereducation.com/news/judge-u...

Cool work. Fever & lice, what's not to love?

At times like these it's important to remember the 3 branches of science

It's really simple. Pulling another few hundred million from the sector = forced redundancy for a few thousand more academics. Lots more for each Uni that goes bankrupt. If that's what the government want to do, they have a mandate. But students are future voters. Their parents & families are too.

@viviennestern.bsky.social re 6% - well done holding their feet to the fire - but please do keep doing it...

They are absolutely nuts. University sector is in a diabolical financial crisis driven overwhelmingly by government policies. Overseas student recruitment dropping steeply, and threatening to put unis out of business. So what do they propose? Make recruitment harder & pull £0.5bn from the sector.

Yay! Welcome, new neighbour!

Utterly deranged letter from US Education Secretary to Harvard. Really quite extraordinary. The US' competitors are smiling broadly watching this...

Interesting proble with fingerprint ID for computer. When I dig the garden it trashes my fingers. Can't get in to the computer after...

Good piece. Not only true for UK universities, either www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

Solo hiker on the West Highland Way passing Buchaille Etive Mor. Pic: Stuart Beattie

Oh how novel. Two different peer reviewers. Each saying a work cannot be accepted unless it covers a different important area in the field in detail. I wonder what these peer reviewers work on?

Fourteen years old. Jeepers creepers.

“The Chancellor sparked anger when she revealed that govt wants to enable young people from Europe and UK to work and travel overseas” FFS. What ‘Brexit freedom’ exactly is being betrayed here? The freedom to NOT be free to work and travel overseas? One of the stupidest front pages I’ve ever seen.