Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

C. Chen @ Jamsteeeec @squamiferum.bsky.social · 18h

[New Paper] names Chaetoderma naga, a gigantic (>13 cm) new worm-mollusc from a cold seep! Like its sister-species C. shenloong, it probably relies on endosymbiotic bacteria for energy. We named it after Nāga, a snake-god from Asian mythologies!

Out now in Moll. Res., LINK: doi.org/10.1080/1323...

2 6 25

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 2d

Conch 🐚 = “conk” 🤕
Cay 🏝️= “key” 🔑
Nassau📍= “Nah-saw” (not NAS’s-ow)

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 2d

🇧🇸
Conch 🐚
Cay 🏝️
Nassau 📍

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 2d

What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?

1

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 14d

Maybe based on annual landings and frequency of observance. That seems to be the case in the BBC article: “with the average catch in Cornwall of roughly half a million individual lobsters landed each year, we should only see one blue lobster every two years”

1

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 15d

Blue lobsters might not be as rare as once thought:
www.bbc.com/news/article...

1 3 17

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 15d

What if quotes were also auto-pasted as a reply so could be read out in a thread. Would that work? 🤔

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 16d

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

730 10K 30K

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 17d

Climate change is not a con-job. If you want to know more about the evidence for and causes of #ClimateChange, head to our website: royalsociety.org/news-resourc...

Climate change: evidence and causes | Royal Society

Supplementary information for the project 'Climate Change: Evidence and causes'.

royalsociety.org

6 64 110

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 25d

Check out MARMORIS - a new NGO founded to explore #deepsea habitats in The Bahamas ewnews.com/new-bahamian... Beyond excited too see a fellow Bahamian passionate about deep-sea research. Way to go Denley, @katycroffbell.bsky.social and team!

New Bahamian Non-Profit “Marmoris” Embarks on Deep-Sea Discovery Mission

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – A new era of ocean exploration is unfolding in the Caribbean with the official launch of Marmoris, a Bahamian non-profit organisation dedicated to uncovering, documenting, and conser...

ewnews.com

6 17

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

John Rowan @jrowanbxl.bsky.social · Sep 9

This used to be an absolute plague in Brussels. Until the council said the companies were responsible for it and they'd start fining them. And then - as if by magic - the problem got solved, pdq.

3 7

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

Dan Killam @dantheclamman.blog · Aug 24

Lucinid bivalves are chemosymbiotic, partnering with microbes which oxidize sulfide and give them food. How do they breathe in such a sulfide-rich environment? In their burrows, one end leads up to oxygen, while another set of branching burrows lead downward, mining sulfide (203)

A diagram from Blouet et al 2021 showing a lucinid in its burrow, one end heading up to oxygen, the other branched tunnel heading down to the hydrogen sulfide

1 2 23

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Aug 30

a muppet wearing a top hat is standing in front of a door and saying `` and tiny tim ... '' .

ALT: a muppet wearing a top hat is standing in front of a door and saying `` and tiny tim ... '' .

media.tenor.com

1

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Aug 30

This one’s not far off
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Ta...

High Table, Lower Orders - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

Templeton World Charity Foundation @templetonworld.bsky.social · Aug 19

Dr. Berry Billingsley ‪at Swansea University‬ is reimagining how classrooms engage with questions that transcend subject boundaries.

On @storiesofimpact.bsky.social‬, she discusses how to equip students to explore queries on life, the universe, and existence.

🎧 bit.ly/47BzVAL

Big Questions That Change How We Learn with Berry Billingsley (podcast)

Interdisciplinary approaches to learning are reshaping religious education and science classes in schools.

www.templetonworldcharity.org

1

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · Aug 17

This *Osedax* comic by @thefuzzyslug.bsky.social is just amazing! 🤩 #MarineLife #Invertebrate #SciArt 🦑🌊🐡

Comic featuring conversations between bone-eating *Osedax* worms feeding on a deep-sea whale fall: “Bone. Is. Forever.”

2 32 100

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Aug 15

Second guessing myself now. Is that way everyone has smart watches - for continuous micro-updates?

2 2

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Aug 15

Wow- I can’t imagine a world where you get notifications every time a new message comes in. I don’t know if I’ve ever had that turned on (def not for email) and assumed most people didn’t. Do you think it’s more common than not to operate that way? Genuinely worried about my staff now…

2 3

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Aug 14

I think it’s a lack of awareness of external perception beyond one’s own discipline. I’ve noticed huge discrepancies in how people describe their at area of work between even different sub-disciplines.

1

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Aug 9

When I got back from holiday recently, colleagues asked; “are you someone who tries to keep on top of emails when you’re away?”

a bald man wearing glasses and a black shirt is sitting in front of a wall .

ALT: a bald man wearing glasses and a black shirt is sitting in front of a wall .

media.tenor.com

1 1 6

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Jul 31

Deepest know chemosynthesis-based ecosystems!

Nature @nature.com · Jul 31

This surprisingly relaxing footage is from SIX MILES under the ocean – and it’s the deepest ecosystem yet discovered

5 24

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

Nature @nature.com · Jul 31

This surprisingly relaxing footage is from SIX MILES under the ocean – and it’s the deepest ecosystem yet discovered

440 3.5K 14K

Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

Ned Richardson-Little @historyned.bsky.social · Jul 30

“Digital asbestos” is such a perfect descriptor! bsky.app/profile/katr...

Katrina Navickas @katrinanavickas.bsky.social · Jul 30

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

Ned Richardson-Little @historyned.bsky.social · Jul 30

From my own academic research, even pre LLMs there was a huge danger of zombie factoids that begin in a respectable publication by mistake and then get reprinted for decades because no one is backtracing to the original source. Once bad info gets into the system it can take years to clear it out.

1 39 260

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Jul 11

For example www.independent.co.uk/life-style/b...

Inside the scandal that rocked behavioural science – and paved the way for revolution

Five years after a widely revered study was debunked as totally bogus, Helen Coffey asks the experts whether trust in the sexiest branch of science has been irrevocably eroded – and how to discern bet...

www.independent.co.uk

1

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Jul 11

📌

Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · Jul 9

This thread on storytelling from @toriherridge.bsky.social keeps haunting me…

Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · Mar 15

Tucked inside this piece by @iandunt.bsky.social is a paragraph that speaks to a deep unease that has been growing inside me about storytelling, and how it’s power is divorced from truth (or maybe reality/fact is a better word).

iandunt.substack.com/p/you-dont-w...

A screen grab of a paragraph from Ian Dunt’s substack article “You don't want to read this.
And I don't want to write it.” Link in post.

The text reads:

The people of 1919 blocked out the Spanish flu just like we’re blocking out covid. Too painful? That can't be it. Wars are painful and no-one feels the need to block them out. But then, wars have a narrative. They have comrades and enemies. They have tragedy and perhaps even glory. The trouble with pandemics is that they're so meaningless. They have no storyline. They have no three-act structure. We are deprived of agency. Instead we have to sit there and hope it doesn't happen to us. Then if it does happen to us, we have to lie there and hope it doesn't worsen. It is an exercise in powerlessness and passivity.

1