Yngvild Vindenes
@yvinden.bsky.social
3.4K followers 2K following 13 posts
Professor, University of Oslo (Department of Biosciences). Ecology, evolution, demography, life history, disease ecology, climate change responses. Hiking, biking, baking, knitting. ORCID: 0000-0003-1197-5818
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Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
jay.bsky.team
“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
― Jane Goodall

💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero
Jane Goodall with monarch butterfly scarf
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
malorienilson.com
Just a heads up to anyone using Firefox:
Text reads: Mozilla, in its finite wisdom, embedded LLM bots into recent versions of Firefox for the vitally-important purpose of... naming tab groups. Now, some users are noticing CPU and power usage spikes caused by a background process called Inference.

Ugh. Reminder again for Firefox users to visit your about:config page, search for the browser.ml.chat.enabled key, and set that to false:

Displayed is a screenshot of Firefox showing the config search bar with the listed search. The word "false" is circled in red.

Text continues: If yours says true then double-click it until it reads false.
Doing that turns off the Al chatbot features in Firefox, but also the stupid new LLM tab-naming feature that's rolling out.
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
rebeccasear.bsky.social
“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues.

In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”
ChatGPT tends to ignore retractions on scientific papers
Study finds the chatbot doesn’t acknowledge concerns with problematic studies
cen.acs.org
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
davidho.bsky.social
WTF? I was quoted in this story but I have never spoken to the reporter nor would I have said those things. Is everything just generated by LLMs these days?

cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans...
To whom it may concern, and it should concern the editor:

I was quoted in your publication:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans/can-we-engineer-our-way-out-of-ocean-acidification/

Still, others aren't convinced that good intentions are enough. Dr. David Ho, Professor of Oceanography at University of Hawaii at Manoa, a cofounder and the Chief Science Officer of |C|Worthy, a non-profit that works on verifying ocean-based carbon dioxide removal, believes carbon removal efforts like ocean alkalinity enhancement shouldn't be left solely in the hands of private companies.

"They have no way to prove that what they're doing is effective - that's a big problem," Dr Ho said.

The crux of the dilemma, he explains, is that we are fighting a planetary-scale problem, but are doing it with tools that are still being built and tested. Geoengineering is not inherently good or bad, but it is inherently powerful. And power, especially when exercised in ecosystems as complex and fragile as the ocean, must be handled with caution.
However, I have never spoken to your reporter, nor would I have said those things. I would like you to remove my quote from your story, and issue a public correction and apology. Furthermore, you should look into whether the other parts of the article are also factually correct. Thanks.

d.
yvinden.bsky.social
Global warming is certainly a challenge for many ectotherms, and reduced fitness will likely occur with rising mean temperatures. However, this reduction in fitness may often be due to other causes than increased ageing (for example increased mortality in early life). (6/7)
yvinden.bsky.social
Our results for the daphnia suggest that observing increased rates of ageing of ectotherms in warmer environments is not necessarily a sign of stress or reduced population viability. Further research is needed to tell whether this is a common pattern across ectotherms. (5/7)
Picture of a daphnia magna female with babies in the brood pouch on the back. This female is 28 days old, of the SE-G1 clone used in the experiment.
yvinden.bsky.social
In addition, clonal lines with stronger ageing often showed higher fitness (long-term population growth rate) and net reproductive rate, calculated by matrix population models. (4/7)
A figure from the analysis with three panels, showing fitness (leftmost panel), net reproductive rate (middle panel) and generation time (right panel) for the four clonal lines used in the experiment. The results are calculated from matrix population models, for more details see the paper.
yvinden.bsky.social
When comparing the strength of ageing (shape; the relative increase in mortality hazard over one mean lifespan) on the same intrinsic timescale (pace; units of mean lifespan), temperature did not have consistent effects among the clonal lines. (3/7)
A figure from the analysis showing the relationship between pace (x-axis) and shape (y-axis) of ageing in mortality. Each panel represents one of four clonal lines, and results are color coded by temperature. The shape of ageing (y-axis) shows different temperature responses in the four clonal lines.
yvinden.bsky.social
While temperature consistently increased the rate of ageing in mortality (slope in the attached figure), it had different effects on the baseline mortality (intercept) and thereby on mean lifespan in different clonal lines. (2/7)

A figure from the analysis, showing that the rate of ageing in mortality (slope, y-axis) increases with temperature, while the age-independent intercept (x-axis) shows a more variable temperature pattern. Each panel shows results from one of four clonal lines. The color code represents temperature, shown in the legend.
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
rebeccasear.bsky.social
“Historically, no one lived past age 35”

"I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"
There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35.
A demography myth that won't die
jenndowd.substack.com
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
carlbergstrom.com
I’ve warned that this was only a matter of time, but it’s still shocking to see in person.

Here AI generated content is being used to create a fake news ecosystem, disparaging a professor who has been critical of unscientific bullshit in the form of deextinction hype.
devoevomed.bsky.social
Four AI-generated "articles" have now disparaged me, "Colleagues and experts in the field have expressed concerns about the consistency and scientific integrity of his work"

gripeo.com/02/vincent-l...
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
brunalab.bsky.social
Proposed cut to NSF Biology budget is 70%.

70%. Seventy.

Call your senators & reps nonstop. Give them numbers on NSF impact for state/district. tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFbyN... explain this will decimate the economy if their districts, especially if it has a major research univ. 🧪
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
standupforscience.bsky.social
🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨

Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham.
It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda.

We’ve launched an open letter.

SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...
Sign The Open Letter to Stand Up For Science Now!
Science is under siege. Trump’s latest Executive Order calls for politically appointed science commissars to evaluate research. Join us in adding your name to our open letter condemning Trump’s escala...
actionnetwork.org
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes
jacquelyngill.bsky.social
NSF grant terminations are disproportionately affecting underrepresented scientists. 58% of canceled grants have women PIs, despite making up only 34% of awards. 17% of canceled grants have Black PIs (versus 4% of the pool). Hispanic and disabled PIs are twice as likely to have NSF grants canceled.
Trump officials take steps toward a radically different NSF
Efforts to shrink staff, budget, and focus have alarmed members of Congress
www.science.org
Reposted by Yngvild Vindenes