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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 2h

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

AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 12h

"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 · 3h

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 · 3h

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 · 3h

that's my day gone then

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 3h

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 · 3h

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 · 3h

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 · 4h

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 · 14h

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 · 21h

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 · 20h

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

About 1 in 3 US Nobel prize winners are immigrants.
About 1 in 4 were government employees at some point.
About 44% of all Nobel prize winners were educated in US higher education.
As Trump demands a Nobel prize, he is destroying the means by which America came to dominate the prizes.

Sources below

Boston Tom Levenson @tomlevenson.bsky.social · 1d

Two things of note in today's announcement of the 2025 Nobel physics prize (besides the work being honored).

1: The US institutional dominance of the prize continues.
2: 2 of the three laureates are immigrants, drawn here decades ago by the then-unmatched opportunities for science here...

1/

Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded for Work in Quantum Mechanics

www.nytimes.com

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Don't Fret. It Adores You @seed-corn-thoughts.bsky.social · 21h

Philip K Dick, something of a personal expert on the boundary between the sane and the mad, once said that reality is that which continues to exist when you stop believing in it. No matter what immediate expediency abandoning the truth and reality can give you, it always ends in ruin.

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Noam "Free Link" Law-msky @noamlaw.bsky.social · 22h

there's an increasing tendency i'm seeing on the Left where people are essentially saying "i want disinformation too, as a treat" in response to the Right's full divorce from objective reality

i understand the impulse but it's not a winning game

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 22h

Thinking about the time my wife and I saw a flyer put up in our town about a lost yellow cockatiel named “Lola”. I immediately burst into song:

“Her name was Lola,
She was a parrot
But she said “Think again schlemiel, I’m a yellow cockatiel!”

I wonder if I will reach such heights again. . .

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 22h

I for one am a Universalist when it comes to the Elder Gods

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Grudgie the Whale @grudgie.bsky.social · 1d

Remember Wikileaks? That website that was very much earnestly concerned about government overreach and abuse and not just an op?

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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote a thing about how this split the MMR up into monovalents is bullshit that Andrew Wakefield cooked up. It will be used to strip access to the MMR.

The MAHA movement continues to destroy public health.

open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...

The Monovalent Mirage

A pretend alternative to the MMR exists, just ask Andrew Wakefield

open.substack.com

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Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 1d

Business leaders, investors and academics have cheered Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s efforts to counter the Trump administration’s research funding cuts with state money — so much so that a recent meeting on the initiative required overflow seating.

Massachusetts Counter to Trump Science Cuts Stalls in Statehouse

Business leaders, investors and academics have cheered Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s efforts to counter the Trump administration’s research funding cuts with state money — so much so that a recent meeting on the initiative required overflow seating.

bloom.bg

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 1d

This strongly suggests that a substantial number of publications with October 1, 2025 start dates have not been posted in PubMed, presumably because their records have not been created or completed.

More to come...

6/6

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

The main thing I can see them doing is clearing out some dated slang and references to 1930s celebritries. It’s no masterpiece of prose, but I thought it was *already* in perfectly good English. And very much worth reading, even if everyone in it does speak like they’re in a Sinclair Lewis novel.

Being Liberal ®🗽🏳️‍🌈 @beingliberal.bsky.social · 2d

"It can't happen here"-until it does. It's happening here... right now!

In this gripping modern-English translation of Sinclair Lewis's prophetic 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, journalist Doremus Jessup watches in disbelief as the USA descends into authoritarian rule under the populist dictator

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 1d

The latest in a long series of Nobels for work in immunology - and it won’t be the last (!)

T-reg Cells: The 2025 Medicine Nobel

www.science.org

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Keith Smith @drkeithsmith.bsky.social · 2d

The phosphine molecule, PH3, has been proposed as a biosignature in rocky planets. In @science.org, Burgasser et al. report phosphine in a brown dwarf atmosphere. "We therefore caution against the use of phosphine as a biosignature". #stellarastro #exoplanet ☄️
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Observation of undepleted phosphine in the atmosphere of a low-temperature brown dwarf

The atmospheres of low-temperature brown dwarfs and gas giant planets are expected to contain the phosphine molecule, PH3. However, previous observations have shown much lower abundances of this molec...

www.science.org

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 2d

If and when America finds a way out of authoritarianism, not only will ICE have to be abolished: All these people will need to be held accountable in a court of law for the monstrosities they are committing - those who are ordering them as well as those who are carrying them out.

Every single one.

CNN @cnn.com · 4d

Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments, crying and screaming, during a large overnight raid that has left tenants and neighbors shaken. https://cnn.it/4pPCXIt

37 people arrested and American kids separated from parents after ICE raid at Chicago apartments | CNN

Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments, crying and screaming, during a large overnight raid that has left tenants and neighbors shaken.

www.cnn.com

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