On one of the last #83 busses #spéirgorm

#painting "Harold's Cross" was done on location as the sun was setting and my hands getting colder. I'd sketched in town earlier that day then cycled around Dublin 6 and its impressive houses before sitting in the tiny sliver of a park I'd always wanted to go to. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #UrbanSketching

The Global Sumud Flotilla is showing the world the effectiveness of strategic nonviolent activism in forcing a political crisis over Israel's genocide in Gaza. They are putting Israel in a corner and forcing states to get involved. These brave people deserve our full attention, solidarity & support.

The reason I'm concerned about Maria Steen being on the ballot isn't that she will win (she won't). My worry is that if she is nominated, it will mean a month of national airtime for a hate campaign against vulnerable groups, carried by a media too scared of being sued to call it what it is

Ireland: The number of people who are walking or cycling being killed on the road is now at the highest level in six years. www.thejournal.ie/four-pedestr... #spéirghorm #cycling #walking #dying

🧪A Society that listens to its membership and is prepared to act on feedback is a society that I’m proud to be a member of. Congratulations @microbiologysociety.org for taking feedback on board for future Annual conferences. 🧫

The 2024 rankings of bacterial threats

Delighted to have trekked in the Andes (& survived). Having spent the last few yrs studying the effects of hypoxia on bacteria, I inadvertently performed my own in vivo hypoxia expt by hiking to 4600m, ie only 11.5 - 12 % oxygen availability🫁. The highest altitude I’d trekked before - 900m 😅 #Peru

🚨 Job alert 🚨 I’m recruiting two postdoctoral research associates to join my lab at KCL to study how #Klebsiella pneumoniae regulates virulence factor expression during infection! #klebclub Mol Micro: tinyurl.com/mtrwtx5e Infection: tinyurl.com/2s3u8ca2 Deadline: 21st September.

Me trying to progress a backlog of several near-complete papers towards journal submission before I go on leave next month. 😅 #AcademicLife

The speakers may be amazing. But why are there only 2 women out of 15 speakers? I thought we had moved beyond that.

🧪Great talk by @mattvxwhelan.bsky.social in the @ucddublin.bsky.social Conway CLASS lecture. Amazing images of HIV / Nuclear interactions

EU citizens' initiative to ban conversion practices targeting LGBTQ+ people needs to reach: —minimum thresholds in 7 countries: ✅ —1 million total signatures: ⏳ (currently 875k) Deadline is today, Friday 17 May 2025. Sign it, share it, get it over the line: eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public

🧪 Russian-born scientist Kseniia Petrova was conducting anti-aging research at Harvard Medical School but is in detention since February. Her hearing is tomorrow. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/o...

🧪 For some lighter science news here's an intriguing story from the thawing north. I first encountered it when Leanne presented a poster with her excellent undergraduate research at a student symposium a few months ago. Now science writer Ned Rozell wrote this: www.uaf.edu/news/the-hol...

Interesting paper Genomic epidemiology and phylodynamics of Acinetobacter baumannii bloodstream isolates in China 'A. baumannii is evolving from a low-virulence, multidrug-resistant pathogen to a more virulent one' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey BlueSky, I need your help. If you're in STEM & from a lower socioeconomic background, what barriers did you face in HS, college, grad school, or faculty roles? I want your stories—& any lit you know of. Let’s talk about the real cost of doing science. #AcademicSky #SciOutreach

🧪Delighted our review on the impact of Hypoxia on Chronic infection in Cystic fibrosis is published online FEMS MicroRev @Ciaranjcarey.bsky.social, @NiamhDuggan.bsky.social & @jdrabinska.bsky.social should be proud of it 🙌 🙏 to @researchireland.bsky.social track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...

This is the kind of stuff you see in antivaxx Facebook groups: “can anyone share data showing that vaccines are bad?” Except now it’s coming from atop the entire US health and biomedical science apparatus. There is more data for vaccines than almost anything ever and it doesn’t show vaccines are bad

Great talk by Yueran Hou in our lab @ucd-sbbs.bsky.social on her #klebsiella pneumoniae vaccine candidates at the #Microbiology Society conference in Liverpool @ucddublin.bsky.social 🧪

Lovely talk @aaroncurtismicro.bsky.social at Microbiology Society annual meeting on your ex Vivo aspergillus fumigatus infection model. Very interesting proteomics analysis @maynoothuniversity.ie 🧪🧪

A #booklewk for THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: HOW THE GLOW OF RADIUM LIT A PATH FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE by Dava Sobel CW: Sexism, Medical content, WWI, death from cancer, exposure to radium, anemia. This book is a must-read especially for my #chemsky #booksky friends! Here are my thoughts (thread 🧵):

Unusual rainfall radar map for Dublin with a very smooth contour around the city. Is this a real atmospheric effect or a digital artefact? #MetEireann

New paper #BactiVax ITN. Maite Sainz & others in our lab show TLR4 agonists (F.peri lab) are effective adjuvants in a P.aeruginosa vaccine, enhancing protection in a pneumonia model New vaccines are badly needed to prevent P aeruginosa infection 🧪 @ucd-sbbs.bsky.social pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

"The deportation left three adult daughters—Jessica, Stephanie, and 23-year-old Gabby—plus a young grandson behind in the United States." This is all beyond sickening.

Terrible. Measles is so easily prevented with a the vaccine 😢

RFK jr wants you to think vaccines are dangerous. It's not clear why. But what is clear is that Vaccines save lives. Some vaccines do more than just stave off infections, this one moonlights as a cancer treatment- 🤯 buff.ly/4dEdvz1 #TB #vaccines #cancer #lovescience 🧪

Sadly this increase in in measles cases was inevitable with the anti-vax narrative being pushed by RFK and his ilk. Children experience life-long complications from measles and some will die. In 2025, kids will die from a vaccine preventable illness as a result of people’s arrogance and ignorance

🧪

How was this “pioneering ocular gene therapy” developed if not through research and innovation and dedication of 1000s of people who work in research.. Yet, this in not valued in Ireland.. for example, we have this; www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ...

The global antibiotic resistance crisis was already very grim, but wars are further exacerbating the issue We need better treatments and #vaccines to prevent antibiotic resistant bacterial infections and we need them now. www.irishtimes.com/science/2025...

I’ve had the wonderful privilege of visiting Petra in Jordan today in advance of the Women in STEM events tomorrow commemorating St Brigid’s day. We almost had the place to ourselves. Incredible place. It’s such a pity that Jordanian tourism has reduced to only 10% of what it was in recent years.

🧪

We’d a great meeting of our @HEA-funded #NSRP @AIVRT All-island Vaccine Research &Training network @ucddublin.bsky.social Conway Institute Lots of progress made and we’ve planned some exciting collaborative studies 4 nxt 2 years @annemoore.bsky.social @valvanom.bsky.social @nouranrezk.bsky.social

We’d a great meeting of our @HEA-funded #NSRP @AIVRT All-island Vaccine Research &Training network @ucddublin.bsky.social Conway Institute Lots of progress made and we’ve planned some exciting collaborative studies 4 nxt 2 years @annemoore.bsky.social @valvanom.bsky.social @nouranrezk.bsky.social

AIVRT has gathered again @UCDconway for an intensive day of research. AIVRT Lead @siobhanmcclean.bsky.social started us off with a welcome and research work overview. Busy day ahead! Great to have all here! #HEA #NSRP @hea_irl

Ten species comprise half of the bacteriology literature, leaving most species unstudied https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.04.631297v1

Just found this book and already touched by the first page. For those saying ‘why are they all men?’ here’s a simple explanation👇 #Syria #Refugees

This is, or should be, a big deal -- Ann Telnaes, an absolute legend, quitting WaPo due to censorship of a cartoon criticizing billionaires anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

Exam grading procrastination skircle! Skircle.me

Sobering read: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe... “All of this is why pilots are unhappy with proposals being examined by the European Aviation Authority to abolish co-pilots in favour of single-pilot planes, a move welcomed by many cash-strapped airlines.” I’d happily pay more to have a co-pilot 😬

Thank you for what you do. I think folks forget these microorganisms are living creatures with powerful adaptive capabilities.💜♾️

🧪Check out post-doc @jdrabinska.bsky.social cool article on @BioRxiv-microbiol.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We show hypoxia has a role in driving several changes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that are associated with its adaptation to chronic infection.

The absolute recklessness of this petition cannot be underestimated. The polio vaccine is one of the greatest medical achievements in history. A reminder that 1 in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Polio cannot be cured. But it can be prevented. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/h...

Failure to vote to convict an obviously guilty impeached president has consequences.

This is from my great grandfather’s family Bible. Mary was 10, Johnny was 4 and William was 18 months. Don’t know if it was measles or diphtheria, but losing 3 children in 2 months was common before vaccines.

I don’t normally stray here into politics, but this is global health and child mortality: somewhat terrified this will negatively impact not just public health in the USA, but could normalise this view further afield

We really need to hold the line that vaccines like clean drinking water and basic sanitation are public health tools that save lives. Telling people not to vaccinated is like saying don't wash your hands before handling food. It works until it doesn't

I had to look it up. “ESKAPE is an acronym comprising the scientific names of six highly virulent and antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens including: Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter spp…”

Displaying our all-Ireland research network to develop new antibacterial vaccines @siobhanmcclean.bsky.social @aivrt.bsky.social