Imagine rewinding the tape of life. You go back past the dinosaurs, past the explosion of animal life in the Cambrian, past the first multicellular blobs, all the way back to a single, microscopic speck floating in a primordial ocean about four billion years ago. Scientists call this speck LUCA…⇩

Moltbook was peak AI theater

Worried AI means you won’t get a job when you graduate? Lukasz Swiatek of the University of New South Wales Sydney discusses what advancement in technologies might mean for future graduates

💬 A must-read article by @draehernandez.bsky.social:

“Researchers have documented dozens of recent cases where deepfakes played a central role in online fraud. In several instances, high-ranking government officials appeared on social media endorsing questionable investments—though neither their words nor gestures were genuine.”

This is the most misunderstood graph in AI

Most Preventable Cancers Are Linked to Just Two Lifestyle Habits

A new study into how different parts of memory work in the brain has shown that the same brain areas are involved in retrieving different types of information, the findings could redefine how memory is understood and studied.

Simple method can enable early detection and prevention of chronic kidney disease

· MedSky · COVID-19 still claims more than 100,000 US lives each year

· MedSky · Your genes determine how fast your DNA mutates with age, study shows

· MedSky · Ozempic and Wegovy might help people avoid colon cancer as well as promote weight loss or control diabetes, a new study says.

Murder victim discovered to have two sets of DNA due to rare condition www.newscientist.com/article/2507... #medsky #dna #chimerism

🔬 MedSky 🔬 How safe are tattoos?

The Virtual Classroom Is Wishing You A Happy New Year!

Biology-inspired brain model matches animal learning and reveals overlooked neuron activity

2025 was the year of online safety laws – but do they work?

New for @newscientist.com: Variants in at least 259 genes contribute to people's risk of developing #ChronicFatigueSyndrome, or #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). Almost half of them have also been linked to #LongCovid. https://loom.ly/_QjfGG8#ChronicFatigueSyndrome

He made beer that’s also a vaccine. Now controversy is brewing

A scientist’s unconventional project illustrates many challenges in developing new vaccines: www.sciencenews.org/article/vacc...

“The only conclusion I could arrive at is that it is an application for businesses and individuals whose job it is to produce lengthy, seemingly accurate reports that no one will actually read…It is designed to produce the appearance of research, without any actual research happening along the way.”

Pro tip: next time you invite an academic to give a talk, put them up in a nice resort hotel afterwards. The room should contain a photo of the speaker in mid-spiel. The photo should be made of fine chocolate.

· #AcademicSky · UK to rejoin Erasmus+: “an excellent early Christmas gift,” says president of @eua.eu, Josep Garrell. @sophieatrpn.bsky.social reports via @resprofnews.bsky.social

How is it December already? What happened to 2025? And how did we suddenly jump from eating Easter eggs to putting up Christmas trees?

🔬MedSky🔬 Simple Supplement Combo Could Help Fight Deadly Brain Cancer

In Praise of Experts “AI is about to flood the internet (and the scientific literature) with even more content. Some of it will be brilliant…Much of it will be mediocre. A lot of it will be confidently wrong.…The risk is that we end up…where nonsense begets more nonsense…passed off as insight.”

· #AcademicSky · “How are you learning things if something is learning it for you?”

From avatars to cinema, @jonathanmccrea.bsky.social predicts many AI returns in the new year.

#AI There is no doubt that 2025 will be remembered as the year of slop. A popular term for incorrect, weird and often downright ugly AI-generated content, slop has rotted nearly every platform on the internet. It’s rotting our minds, too.

🔬MedSky🔬 An analysis of gene variants in more than a million people diagnosed with neurodivergencies and mental health conditions — by far the largest study of its kind so far — has found that 14 conditions typically regarded as distinct actually fall into five underlying genetic groups.

This is an updated post in the series exploring AI ethics, building on the original 2023 discussion of data and "datafication". This post explores why and how GenAI relies on so much data collection... #ArtificialIntelligence #AIEducation#AIEdu#AIEdu #AIInEd #AIInEdu

More molecules and compounds vital to the origin of life have been detected in asteroid samples delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, strengthening the case that life’s building blocks originated in space. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/components...

My first feature for @sciencenews.bsky.social: The saga of the Asgard archaea: single-celled organisms found living in the seabed, which could explain the origin of all animals and plants. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cells-origin-of-life-asgard-archaea

A hormonal wake-up call?

It's about time. It now looks as if the rest of the world is finally ready to grapple with "The Machine Question" @mitpress.bsky.social. Better late than never : ) mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534635/ aeon.co/essays/if-ai...

Scientists have engineered bacteria to produce xanthommatin — the colour-changing pigment behind octopus camouflage — at dramatically higher yields, paving the way for more efficient and sustainable materials, reports @robinson-julia.bsky.social via @chemistryworld.com.

In the dim waters off the Japanese coast, scientists have stumbled upon something that shouldn’t exist. Or at least not by the rules we thought biology followed. It’s a single-celled organism with nearly everything essential for life missing. [Keep reading ⮛]

critical comparison of Australia's 2025 Higher Education AI Framework and the K-12 Schools Framework. Exploring key differences in equity, Indigenous knowledges, and regulatory backing. #ArtificialIntelligence #AIEducation#AIEdu#AIEdu #AIInEd #AIInEdu

OpenAI’s ‘code red’ moment: Rallying call by Sam Altman raises questions over the company’s priorities in the new phases of competition

The Polyglot Neuroscientist Resolving How the Brain Parses Language

#AI 62% of UK journalists see AI as a major threat (15% see it as an opportunity), yet 56% use it weekly, 27% daily and only 16% have never used it.

#AI The rapidly advancing abilities of AI have left many people worrying. But don’t fret quite yet: If you can read an analog clock correctly, you are still outperforming AI in that regard.

Experimental drug repairs DNA damage caused by common diseases medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12... #medsky #dna #dnadamage

In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is an increasingly common form of reproductive technology. However, there are still many unanswered scientific questions about the basic biology of embryos, that, if resolved, could ultimately improve IVF's success rate. www.caltech.edu/about/news/t...

The origins of complex, nucleated cellular life — everything from amoebas to humans — may date back a lot further in Earth's history than we thought.

Two groups of researchers say models’ reasoning failures can be traced back to the way they’re trained.