Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Anthony Berndt

ChrisSpalanca(🇨🇦) @chrisspalanca.bsky.social · 1d

🗣Stand with Canada🇨🇦!

🟢Sign📝 the #ForeverCanadian petition to keep Alberta strong✊️, united🫂, and free🕊 from foreign influence. 👍

✅️Together, we protect🛡 our democracy🕊, our #CharterOfRights📜 & our freedoms.❤️✊

#cdnpoli #cndpoli #CanadaStrong #abpoli #Alberta
www.forever-canadian.ca/sign-the-pet...

Forever Canadian Official Campaign Website

Forever Canadian campaign is a grassroots coalition of Canadians aimed at reinforcing Canadian unity. It is a proactive vehicle to secure Alberta's continued place in Canada.

www.forever-canadian.ca

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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 1d

Erica Lord, the Codes We Carry, beaded DNA #sciart for Indigenous Peoples Day
ericalord.com

Beadwork showing different DNA patterns, including one that is displayed on a dog mannequin

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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 2d

Thanksgiving in Canada has nothing to do with Columbus!

We are a colonial country with a million things to atone for but Thanksgiving is not one of them.

Our Thanksgiving is timed with the harvest and it's literally just "Be grateful for harvest"

US Imperialism has brain rotted too many of you.

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Claire Zagorski, MSc, EMT-P @clairezagorski.bsky.social · 3d

A student on TikTok has been documenting her journey with a professor who “wrote” the anatomy textbook and it’s all a bunch of AI hallucinations.

She’s saying that, understandably, the students are doing super poorly!

Behold what we’re teaching the healthcare professionals of tomorrow:

A diagram of the bones and (some) deep muscles of the hand and forearm. AI says that we only have four digits. It’s also identified a tendon as the median nerve, another tendon as the ulnar nerve, among other issues.

An AI generated diagram of the muscles of the neck. It hallucinated the “ennocleidomasid” muscle, and the “anterior scalpalin muscle”.

An AI generated diagram of the muscles of the lateral thigh. It says that the gluteus Maximus (the big juicy butt muscle) is on the anterior side. It also points to the quadriceps muscle and says “attattment”. It also says that the same structure is the tibia AND the deep fascia of the leg.

An AI generated diagram of the bones of the hand and forearm. This time AI says we have 6 digits. It also says that the radius is the ulnar artery. Among other many issues.

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · Sep 4

Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪

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

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Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 10d

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.

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 14d

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 · 16d

⚠️ 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

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Max Fawcett @maxfawcett.bsky.social · 14d

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

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Alex Plante 🐀👑 @aplante.com · 14d

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?

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 15d

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.

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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...

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Sophie G Martin @sophiemartinlab.bsky.social · 19d

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 · 19d

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.

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Reposted by Anthony Berndt

SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 20d

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

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Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · 24d

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 · 24d

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 · 26d

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.

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Anthony Berndt @anthonyberndt.bsky.social · 24d

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.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 26d

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

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Craig Harrington @craigipedia.bsky.social · Sep 12

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.

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · Sep 12

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 · Sep 11

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.

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Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · Sep 12

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 · Sep 11

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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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🎃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

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