Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · Sep 4

Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪

From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...

40 900 1.8K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 4d

In all seriousness, the "LLMs are people and you're racist if you don't like them" shit is the natural endpoint of a consumerist society in which consuming and fandom are the only modes of identity-building many people understand. Finally, a product no one can tell you not to love.

24 390 1.8K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 8d

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 10d

⚠️ Chinese researchers have invented bone glue that mimics how oysters stick to surfaces underwater.

The adhesive can reportedly repair orthopedic fractures in 2-3 minutes, even in blood-rich environments, and is bioabsorbable.

interestingengineering.com/science/chin...

China's oyster-inspired 'bone glue' bonds fractures in minutes

A new oyster-inspired Bone-02 adhesive can revolutionize bone repair without metal fasteners.

interestingengineering.com

160 6.4K 17K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Max Fawcett @maxfawcett.bsky.social · 8d

Of course, of COURSE, Danielle Smith blamed Ottawa for Imperial Oil's plan to lay off 20 per cent of its employees by 2027.

34 93 330

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Alex Plante 🐀👑 @aplante.com · 8d

2/

continued:

Canada Post ships letters.
LETTERS.
Skinny. Mid-size. Chonky. Thicc.
Tiny little postcards. Big fat letters. Book-sized letters. Divorce-paper chonk-size letters. Skinny driver's license letters. Chunky catalogue letters.
Thicc magazine letters.
Imagine a world where Canadian companies have to pay over $15 to a US parcel delivery service (FedEx and UPS) to mail a university acceptance letter from Toronto to Red Deer. Is this what you want?

1 12 58

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 9d

It's just I've seen ppl bemoan "the state state of science" here and there, and what they actually mean is "I only read the 'science' headlines on CNN."

Like, no. Amazing things are happening. And I mean straight sci-fi shit. "We could conclusively prove extraterrestrial life exists in 2040" shit.

1 36 290

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Erich M. Schwarz @erichmschwarz.bsky.social · Aug 1

After 10 years of work, a complete telomere-to-telomere gap-free genome for C. elegans finally exists: it has 106 Mb rather than the textbook 100.3 Mb, and up to 366 additional genes.
genome.cshlp.org/content/35/8...

4 37 100

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Sophie G Martin @sophiemartinlab.bsky.social · 13d

Super excited that this story by @borissieber.bsky.social is now on BioRxiv!

For decades, we thought there was no MAPK scaffold for the ERK-like cascade that promotes sexual reproduction in fission yeast ... until Boris found it !

See the thread 👇 and enjoy the paper!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Boris Sieber @borissieber.bsky.social · 13d

Mammalian cells have KSR, budding yeast has Ste5… and fission yeast has Sms1 as the MAPK scaffold for sexual reproduction!

Very excited to share my postdoc work where we discover that the hemi-arrestin Sms1 binds all components of the MAPK cascade, including ERK-like Spk1

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Schematic of MAPK signalling in fission yeast, budding yeast and Metazoa. No MAPK scaffold was known for ERK-like MAPK in fission yeast, as opposed to budding yeast Ste5 and metazoan KSR1/2.

1 17 38

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 14d

Every year my mom gets us each a bird ornament, she texted us all today asking which we each want

My siblings never indulge in text conversations, but we’ve been chatting in that text chain for over an hour now.

Thoughts and prayers for my mother, who’ll wake up to 105 increasingly unhinged texts

SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · Nov 10

My favorite local wooden bird artist started making Canada Warblers, my favorite one (which is saying something given how much I love all warblers)

Hand holding a small three dimensional wooden bird ornament showing a blue-gray bird with a yellow throat and belly and a black necklace on its chest

1 5 100

Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · 18d

Yes. But seeing how many professors were silent or neutered when it came of field-known assholes/bullies/abusers/sex-pests/rapists, I'm expecting absolutely nothing.

@LaBonneLaB @labonnelab.bsky.social · 18d

gonna respectfully disagree with you here. These are not normal times. If we and the us scientific enterprise are to survive we ALL NEED TO STEP UP and do our part.

Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 20d

I like this piece, and I like doing sci comm. But I also think it’s not fair to demand every subject matter expert also be public-facing. Some people are really good at doing and that’s enough. We need more economically viable jobs for full-time sci comm to bridge findings from experts to public.

2

Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · 18d

FWIW, it's telling me that at least half of the federal conservative voters aren't absolute traitors.

At the same time, I'm not sure where a Red Tory would go but being a Liberal voter these days.

1

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 20d

Let's talk about root beer & why you've probably never tasted real sassafras OR sarsaparilla.

Root beer was originally made by adding yeast to a syrup made from the pulverized root bark of a sassafras tree.

Sassafras produces SAFROLE, a compound that deters animals from eating the bark or leaves.

a glass mug of a & w beer with foam on top

Alt: a glass mug of a & w beer with foam on top. The foam spills over slowly.

media.tenor.com

9 24 110

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Craig Harrington @craigipedia.bsky.social · 27d

I’m not the first person to make this observation, but this being the biggest story in the world at present really speaks to how much Twitter still serves as a universal assignments editor for English-language journalists.

110 1.3K 6.3K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 27d

With iNaturalist, GBIF, and an increasing amount of scientific literature online, it is now possible to identify many bugs from all over the world without having to get physical specimens in front of an expert. Last 5 years especially.

Molly Knight @mollyknight.bsky.social · 27d

Please give me an unironic list of things that have gotten better over the last ten years because I’m spiraling.

I’ll start: you can buy an enormous TV from Costco for like $100 bucks now.

4 55 310

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · 27d

Sedation dentistry is no longer weird. Phone cameras are really good. The price of solar panels has dropped by tens of thousands. Southern white rhinos, giant pandas, Arabian oryx and Stellar sea lions are no longer endangered.

And, I can testify, modern cancer treatments are fucking amazing.

Molly Knight @mollyknight.bsky.social · 27d

Please give me an unironic list of things that have gotten better over the last ten years because I’m spiraling.

I’ll start: you can buy an enormous TV from Costco for like $100 bucks now.

95 1.4K 5.9K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com · Sep 8

#Perspective

A discussion on virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes.

#MicroSky 🦠

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A call for caution in the biological interpretation of viral auxiliary metabolic genes - Nature Microbiology

This Perspective discusses virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and provides a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes.

www.nature.com

6 7

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

The Hearse Whisperer @babadooknukem.bsky.social · Sep 1

Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about

230 3.5K 11K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Aug 23

Thank you. To be clear, I did not merely “dismiss” AI as mid. My argument is that LLMs 1) are not intelligent 2) average textual responses in a way that is mid 3) most generous use cases are a revolution of middle skills that don’t produce anything ergo LLMs are in every demonstrable way mid.

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · Aug 23

For this article on what generative AI is actually doing to society once you cut through the hype, I referenced, drew on, and engaged with some interesting writing by @cwarzel.bsky.social @tressiemcphd.bsky.social @noupside.bsky.social @garethwatkins.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social.

The Third Algorithm

ChatGPT and other generative AI isn't about to create superintelligence, but even if what we see now is it, the impact is on the scale of Google search and algorithmic social media, except maybe worse

www.arcdigital.media

4 230 980

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

James Alistair Henry @jamesbluecat.bsky.social · Aug 23

I love our town fair day, but there's always one violent idiot who has to ruin it for everyone, trundling around making threats.

55 380 2K

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

epithelial mechanics fan club @epimechfc.bsky.social · Aug 23

Collective cell motion has many forms, but rotation is the coolest of them all.

I'm @onenimesa.bsky.social , and in this short🧵, I'll highlight some instances of global tissue rotation like this one from @BauschLab

1 26 89

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

🎃nisillos @onisillos.bsky.social · Aug 21

If you've read the recent BMJ feature about #SARS-CoV-2 and its potential effects on immunity, please consider reading the article below. Just to better understand what really happened with #Mycoplasma pneumoniae.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Global detections of Mycoplasma pneumoniae by PCR before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, 2017–24

3 9 20

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · Aug 19

Rest in peace, Jim. The father of mechanotransduction. This photo is from the April @hhmi.org meeting. Despite battling aggressive cancer, all he wanted to do was talk about science.

1 14 120

Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · Aug 17

Exactly this.

Even those of us who venture well out from the shallow shoals of model system, still absolutely benefit from it.

Figuring out what was well conserved across land plant species was key to letting me predict what most likely might _ever_ work in in janky-ass non-model algae.

1

Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · Aug 17

For all the "well does it apply to humans?!?!?" academic dick-measuring that the mouse disassemblers play, their data is a comparative Gong-Show.

The Fly and Worm people have a friendly feud. But the Mouse and Cell-Line people are actually nasty.

3

Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · Aug 15

As someone who ended up using non-model systems after doing his PhD with Drosophila, you don't realise just how amazing FlyBase or WormBase are until you try to genetics without them.

FlyBase @flybase.bsky.social · Aug 15

FlyBase needs your help! We ask that European labs continue to contribute to Cambridge, UK FlyBase, whereas US and other non-European labs can contribute to US FlyBase. For more information and how to donate: wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...

FlyBase:Contribute to FlyBase - FlyBase Wiki

wiki.flybase.org

14 34