I've just realized that I missed a trick by not posting here on Mastodon about a project to create a database of "motivated proofs", which has received funding from the AI for Math Fund, a joint venture of Renaissance Philanthropies and XTX Markets. Very roughly, that means not just proofs but […]

R.I.P. Jane Goodall 🕯🙏🐒 --- Jane Goodall, chimpanzee expert and animal rights campaigner, dies age 91 - follow live - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9qyw2ewl2nt

The world has lost its most powerful advocate for nature and hope. Yet many remain who will continue her legacy and I know she will continue to inspire generations more.

In Exeter, beautiful apples everywhere yet in M&S you can buy apples from New Zealand. This doesn't make any sense. The externalities are clearly not included in the price and supply chains are over bloated. #climatechange #gardening

#academicchatter sometimes I think my work schedule is mysteriously annoying: we are moving neurogenetic labs to the new buildings next week overlaps with two external deadlines and semester UG research project starting! (yes everything is everywhere at […] [Original post on biologists.social]

Great to see some good news concerning @FlyBase, even though the situation remains very very concerning. From: @DrGlam https://mastodon.social/@DrGlam/115257195972606449

I have some personal good news...I can continue having my job for at least another year; our PI has achieved some fund-raising magic. Of the 8 of us facing a layoff, 3 are already gone, and 2 more have decided to go, leaving 3 of us at FlyBase-Harvard.

@kofanchen My university recently changed its policy to start paying for visa renewals up through ILR. It was a big action through our local UCU, and one of the union's arguments was that not paying for it hurt retention. In fact, one of our committee members actually left partway through to […]

#academicchatter #ukpol I usually avoid talking about politics on this handle, but the news of the proposal of scrapping nonEU #ilr (indefinite leave to remain) frightens me, and got me wondering how many in #uk universities would be affected if this really happens. I wouldn't be surprised that […]

The situation with FlyBase has made the national news The FlyBase situation has made the national news https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/trumps-harvard-cuts-threaten-giant-biomedical-research-community-datab-rcna230610

Parenting tip: if you want a child to stop doing what they're doing, try to take a photo of them.

I'm really pleased that one of the projects I've been working on over the last year is now public: https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/christian.perfect/accessibility-checklist-for-events/index.html I and two colleagues at Newcastle, Elaine Lopez and Jennifer Deane, have put together a set of […]

Something we already felt but it is still depressing "UK universities cut back on crucial research because of reduced funding | Research funding | The Guardian" https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/12/uk-universities-cut-back-on-crucial-research-because-of-reduced-funding

Today, we’re ready to show you the upcoming quote posts feature in more detail. We’ve put together a blog post with examples of how quote posts will work on Mastodon, ahead of early access on our own servers next week 💬 Full launch to come, in Mastodon v4.5 […]

Cycling home in the rain. Con: Cold and wet. Pro:

What you're looking at is a brand new protist species! 🤯🔬 Isn't it beautiful? This image is just a glimpse of what's to come. We can't wait to share our full findings soon, in partnership with Guifré @beaplab.bsky.social @luisjagago.bsky.social. Stay tuned! #NewSpecies #protistsonSky #diversity

hmm linked uni page seems to have disappeared - try this instead www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOF693/p...

!!!! 😩 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy85905dj2wo

Regrowth in #berlin. #thicktrunktuesday

The Crimson has taken notice https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/9/9/flybase-funding/

When even the fence post looks tired of holding it all together. 😅

@skyglowberlin Oh, sorry, it's been around for a few years, so I thought everyone on here knows it already: https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/ https://www.ore.eu/ As the press releases say, the transition is scheduled to happen in January 2026.

Here are two easy things YOU can do: #1 Every academic supporting #openscience and #openaccess should consider ORE as their primary publishing venue and ask colleague/co-authors to do the same. #2 Point your librarian, institutional leaders, funding agencies towards the documents linked above […]

This should have been big news! Ten funding agencies from eight European countries have pledged to support a public infrastructure that is poised to replace academic journals: FWF 🇦🇹 RCN 🇳🇴 Forte 🇸🇪 ARIS 🇸🇮 SRC 🇸🇪 FCT 🇵🇹 CSIC 🇪🇸 DFG 🇩🇪 Formas 🇸🇪 ANR 🇫🇷 Only two of them issued press releases in […]

We are looking for an IT engineer with a focus on operations and research data management at the Centre for Organismal Studies at @uniheidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany #IT #sysadmin #linux #ResearchData please help to spread this opening […] [Original post on biologists.social]

See this cool thread by @stevegis_ssg about #drosophila gene nomenclature just before we are ready for the semester starts. #genetics https://mas.to/@stevegis_ssg/112117940336207482

📣 Save the date for the 12th PCI webinar on September 18, 2025, at 4 PM CET!! Dorothy Bishop will present "Editors matter: How negligent publishers subvert quality control in scientific publishing ". For more details and registration, visit: https://peercommunityin.org/pci-webinar-series/

Darwin and Wallace's original papers to the Linnean Society (published 1858) are fascinating reads, showing how they each developed the concept of natural selection. The foreword by Lyell and Hooker makes clear that Darwin was very reluctant to publish! Both mention artificial selection, but […]

Wish me luck on my train to the conference (London to Luebeck)! https://ebrs-online.org/index.php/events/ebrs2025.html #train #climate #conferencetravel #uk #europe

Please don't be the person who thinks they can speak loud enough to ask their question without a mike in a large room. Microphone usage is not just a confort, it’s an accessibility issue for many people. #eseb2025

Coming soon on your Mastodon server… The long awaited quote posts, with user-control (you can chose if you want to be quoted on a per-post basis, change it later, and retract any quote of your post) Amazing work by the team 🎉 Expect a blog post with all the […] [Original post on oisaur.com]

End of an excellent week visiting Northumbria University. Everything is more fun when you collaborate with friends! Lots of fun science on the way, and Northumberland really turned the weather on. First North Sea swim ✅️ #northumberland #Northumbria

Great survey of current initiatives in the space of peer review, including quotes from @RoRInstitute colleagues and collaborators, and accompanied by another fantastic David Parkin illustration https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02457-2

We have a postdoc opening for a protistologist with biophysics inclinations to join our @hfspo.bsky.social project! (focus will be on characterising the morphology, ultrastructure and behaviour of excavates) #protistsonsky Apply by Sept 17th (RTs appreciated!) jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

New newsletter! https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/ai-will-be-the-biro-of-thought

Happy "they finally came for UCLA" day (yesterday) - the grants that pay my wages were suspended. Potentially looking for work soon in case they're fully cancelled

Happy launching 🎊🎊🎊 @bioclocksuk #circadian #sleep Expert Directory | Bioclocks Uk https://www.bioclocks.uk/about/bioclocks-uk-experts

« Lancaster University is proposing over 450 job cuts, with a Voluntary Redundancy Scheme underway and a Compulsory Redundancy scheme likely to launch in September 2025. That’s roughly 1 in 4 staff — gone. » […]

We have a post-doc position for 15 months in the framework of the https://dnaquaimg.eu/ project (11 countries) at UMR Carrtel https://carrtel.lyon-grenoble.hub.inrae.fr/unit (Lake Geneva, France). If you have good skills in molecular biology, aquatic ecology […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

<Grumpy old guy> I find single-cell machine learning talks which show lots of studies and results very fast without explaining any in detail a bit disappointing despite the excellent underlying science. I noticed it for the first time 2 years ago and it seems to be a general way of presenting in […]

A topic dear to my heart: Irene Julca on functional divergence of duplicated genes #evolcompgen #ismbeccb2025 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.29.620890v1

One thing I absolutely love about #drosophila behavioural #genetics is that from time to time the results present you with answers for your research questions but with complete unexpected perspective! Yesterday our MSc student showed us some cool #sleep data with manipulation of […]

CRISPR mutagenesis is also not perfect. A common limitation is generation of genetic mosaics, where only some cells carry gene knockouts. But our new generation of tools substatially improves on that. Described in the preprint below with flies on their way to VDRC: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Why use #CRISPR in #Drosophila when RNAi works so well? Because for some genes well is not good enough. Check out new preprint from the lab demonstrating a role for Vps15 in Wingless trafficking. Something that was missed in several RNAi screens. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Drosophila for the win! When you can afford more than 3 subjects per experiment, your results get more reliable... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hey @nature.com What's up with your share buttons? Can we please also get 🦋 and 🦣 options to not exclusively promote the network of the guy who has done more than most to harm US science?

Borrowing this snake pic from a colleague who spotted it the other day in Brazil - our students are spending time with our partner institution UENF. Chironius bicarinatus #worldsnakeday

[Chronic illness things] Participating in public life while having chronic illnesses means you pretty regularly need to disclose what is happening within your body sometimes to a literally molecular level, and explain what that means in a way that doesn't […] [Original post on neuromatch.social]