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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 4h

Some of them pretty darn well! But as usual, you can't judge a crystalline book by its cover. But there were some very nice structures, both in-house and from the synchrotron.

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 8h

It just makes you want to scream and throw things.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 10h

RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."

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Ed @edballister.bsky.social · 10h

1/3rd of world has immune memory against TB: definitely. Question is: do these people harbor living Mtb that will reactivate decades later and cause disease? Argument is no, and instead all the disease we see is driven by (relatively) recent exposures to people with active disease

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Ed @edballister.bsky.social · 10h

Absolutely agree on challenge and need for TB drugs. But the “1/3 of world has latent TB” isn’t so clear - Behr, Ramakrishnan et al have made some very interesting arguments that it’s a huge misconception:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38671272/

Rethinking the burden of latent tuberculosis to reprioritize research - PubMed

Rethinking the burden of latent tuberculosis to reprioritize research

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 9h

AI in biology: "I read about some new computational method...get excited because it’s exactly what I need...I try the method...Most of the time things don’t work...I have seen this play out so many times my default assumption is nothing is going to work" blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

blog.genesmindsmachines.com

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Michael Booth @drmikebooth.bsky.social · 12h

This is a new one for me #chemsky 🧪

My name has appeared on a published paper that I've had nothing to do with (even using an incorrect version of my email address)!

Has this happened to others? If so, what did you do?

Website image of a paper with my name on - that's not mine!

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 12h

Catching up on some blog topics: how do you get things past the weird defenses of tuberculosis bacteria, anyway?

Tuberculosis Defenses

www.science.org

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Meghan Bartels @meghanbartels.bsky.social · 1d

The science is in: COVID boosters are worth it, even if you've been vaccinated and/or infected before. Stay safe out there, friends!: 🧪 🛟 www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-...

Annual COVID Vaccines Save Lives, New Study Shows

A new study shows that receiving an updated COVID vaccine reduced people’s risk of severe disease and death in all age groups, regardless of immunity from prior infection or vaccination

www.scientificamerican.com

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 15h

The MMR vaccine is one of the most stunningly effective medical therapeutics in existence. It’s also safer than most of your everyday activities. This is simply an attempt to stop people from vaccinating.

HELLody SchreiBOO @melodyschreiber.com · 15h

The acting director of the CDC called for new, separate MMR shots. That would be "remarkably complicated, time-consuming, costly, but more importantly unnecessary," @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social told me:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Alarm as CDC calls for separate MMR vaccines despite measles outbreak

Concerns that three separate shots would be more costly and time-consuming, and keep kids from being vaccinated

www.theguardian.com

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 1d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 1d

The White House Antifa Roundtable is one of the best displays I’ve seen of this-is-how-bad-it’s-gotten — just a sewer of open fascism, dementia, morons and freaks, and incoherent rage.

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Alex J. Stirk @alexjstirk.bsky.social · 1d

They can be really pretty! Here's one that's a metal-organic rotaxane framework!

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

This year's Nobel - commentary and background, with a few more bonus MOF pictures of my own:

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-Organic Frameworks

www.science.org

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

Absolutely true. And I’m glad he’s saying it.

AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 2d

"It is going to be disastrous if this continues"

Nobel Prize physics laureate John Clarke says Trump cuts will 'cripple' US scientific research

u.afp.com/SmAy

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 1d

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

www.nobelprize.org

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, the “vomiting ferret” model is absolutely a real thing - I’ve encountered it in my own drug discovery career.

They’re one of the smallest animals that show this response- weirdly, rodents can’t do it at all.

Dan Kaszeta FRHistS @dankaszeta.bsky.social · 1d

that's my day gone then

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

Here’s one of those copper MOF crystals mounted on an x-ray diffraction loop sample holder:

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun in the lab than when I was making MOFs myself (and trying to use them for small-molecule X-ray structure determination). So let me celebrate by posting a few of the MOF crystals I prepared:

Bright green transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with copper and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed blocky roughly rectangular pieces with some very large emerald-like chunks.

Pink/red transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with cobalt and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed as a mixture of long rectangular types and aggregated chunks.

Purple transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with cobalt and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed long slightly blocky needles.

Clear transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with zirconium and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed chunky hexagons.

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

A Chemistry Nobel that many had anticipated: metal-organic frameworks! Writeup coming on the blog later this morning:

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 was awarded jointly to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi "for the development of metal–organic frameworks"

www.nobelprize.org

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 1d

I’ve just learned that John Searle, whose Chinese Room thought experiment is often used to challenge ideas of “understanding” in LLMs, died at age 93 on Sunday. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

John Searle obituary

American philosopher whose Chinese Room thought experiment rebuts the idea that computers can think as humans do

www.theguardian.com

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 2d

I grew up in NE Arkansas, and I could definitely go for some catfish, I can tell you.

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Ash Jogalekar @ashjogalekar.bsky.social · 2d

New post: Frustrated PROTACs: Exceptions or the rule? Aka discomfort may be productive. medchemash.substack.com/p/frustrated...

Frustrated PROTACs: Exceptions or the rule?

Discomfort may be productive

medchemash.substack.com

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 2d

This is going around again and it is not true. Like every site on the internet, Bluesky uses machine learning to do a first-pass approximation of image classification to detect and label content. They have repeatedly confirmed outside services do not use Bluesky user data to train their models.

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Keith Hornberger @krhornberger.bsky.social · 2d

It’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry Eve, and you know what that means - it’s time for the annual survey!

Who will win this year’s chemistry Nobel? Wrong answers only.

a cartoon hand is pressing a red button that says wrong answer

ALT: a cartoon hand is pressing a red button that says wrong answer

media.tenor.com

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 3d

I have been trying to get this published as an op-ed, but I am going to post it here since I think it is timely in light of the "consent" extortion events.

Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment

jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

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jeremymberg.github.io

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