Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Ana Pineda, PhD @anapineda.bsky.social · 3h

As hard as it sounds...Not every lab member is a good fit 😅
Learn how to spot red flags, raise standards, and lead your research team without burnout.
We're hosting a free class with @glia-leadership.bsky.social + @stefanierobel.bsky.social
👉 buff.ly/AzDWf09
#NewPI #TenureTrack #AcademicSky

From Good To Great Research Teams Free Webinar

Free webinar for PIs and future PIs: hire right, prevent conflict, raise standards without burnout. Practical tools you can use immediately.

buff.ly

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

David Kelley @drkbio.bsky.social · 13h

Excited to share our new paper on predicting gene expression in yeast! We introduce "Shorkie," a supervised ML model that builds off a self-supervised foundation to interpret regulatory DNA.
Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Predicting dynamic expression patterns in budding yeast with a fungal DNA language model

Predicting gene expression from DNA sequence remains challenging due to complex regulatory codes. We introduce a masked DNA language model pretrained on 165 fungal genomes closely related to budding y...

www.biorxiv.org

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 6h

A fun thing about living in well-off Perth is seeing unusual rich people cars. Who knew Lamborghini made an SUV? And that it's the ugliest thing in existence??

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 9h

NZ's govt has announced reforms to science funding

just one line about basic science in there: "Discovery-led science & research will continue to be funded. This will sit outside the pillars & is essential for maintaining vibrant curiosity-driven science system"

yea mate seems like a real priority

A new strategy for the science system | Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment

The Government is changing how science, innovation and technology are funded and supported in New Zealand. The goal is a simpler and more strategic system that helps researchers turn ideas into solutions that benefit New Zealand.

www.mbie.govt.nz

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 11h

Adaptively integrated sequencing and assembly of near-complete genomes
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Adaptively integrated sequencing and assembly of near-complete genomes

Recent advances in long-read sequencing (LRS) and assembly algorithms have made it possible to create highly complete genome assemblies for humans, animals, plants and other eukaryotes. However, there...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Adam Phillippy @aphillippy.bsky.social · 16h

In honor of ASHG week (since I won’t be there), see "Choose your human genome reference wisely", in which Vivien Marx interviewed me @fergalmartin.bsky.social @lh3lh3.bsky.social @danrdanny.bsky.social @heidirehm.bsky.social and others on the state of the human reference rdcu.be/eJejg 🧵[1/10]

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 12h

You'd think, right!!! Especially with a federation the size of dozens of billions. But what if they didn't specify the replicator to check for enantiomers every time? Like if you say 'Earl Gray, hot' and it comes out boiling

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 12h

Ever thought about how Star Trek replicators surely introduce enantiomers from time to time into the stuff they reproduce, especially the medication?

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 1d

Previous postdoc's perl script

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 2d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 2d

"The chancellor approved it"

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Linnea Lungstrom @linnealungstrom.bsky.social · 2d

No better reason to join Bluesky then to say the first chapter of my PhD is out as a preprint! New surgeonfish phylogeny, ecomorphological relationships, evolutionary shape correlations-with NEW method to accurately account for phylogenetic covariation among shapes!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenetic relationships and the evolution of fin and body shape in the surgeonfishes

Patterns of evolutionary change in the fin and body shapes of fishes are strongly related to dietary ecology and locomotor mechanisms, and associations between shapes affects ecomorphological relation...

www.biorxiv.org

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 1d

I feel (but i have no stats to back this up) that this pause in funding has had a real effect on ECR hiring. I've had so many PhD students reach out to me asking whether I've heard of any positions (I have not - its dire out there). Could also be general uni funding downturn, or both.

ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 1d

It's mid-October & ARC haven't updated us since mid-July on the Brand New Grants System.

When will we be told?

What schemes will even run?

ARC "paused" (cancelled?) the only Indigenous scheme, plus Laureates & all Industry Fellowships, and so far there's no replacements.

ARC? Anyone?

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 2d

Today's Perth Running Festival with both boys :) we learn: don't do parkrun the day before. The kids will whinge the entire time

Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 3d

What a life. www.bluewin.ch/en/entertain...

Nobel Prize winner opts for suicide in Switzerland

At the age of 90, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has decided to die by his own hand in Switzerland. He spent his last days in Paris - conscious, fulfilled and quiet.

www.bluewin.ch

Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Andre Kahles @akkah21.bsky.social · 5d

After years of research and continuous refinement, we’re thrilled to share that our paper on the MetaGraph framework — enabling Petabase-scale search across sequencing data — has been published today in Nature (www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

Efficient and accurate search in petabase-scale sequence repositories - Nature

MetaGraph enables scalable indexing of large sets of DNA, RNA or protein sequences using annotated de Bruijn graphs.

www.nature.com

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 3d

First parkrun with just me and my seven year old! I'm proud

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Sam Bogan @snbogan.bsky.social · 4d

Excited to share this work, out today in MBE! In polar fishes, we found that antifreeze protein genes expanded in copy number at low temperatures and contracted in the deep sea, highlighting a role of depth and pressure in AFP evolution.

🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Mike Eckel @mikeeckel.bsky.social · 4d

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Corina Machado for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 5d

Y'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook.

How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't?

scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...

Statistics in the era of AI

How do we mentor, teach, and do stats when AI can do so much of the work?

scienceforeveryone.science

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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Andrew Iwaniuk @evoneuro.bsky.social · 4d

As I tell my students, if you arrived at a simple answer in biology you have done one of two things: arrived at the wrong answer or asked the wrong question

Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 6d

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
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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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 4d

God this is so depressing

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 5d

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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Reposted by Philipp Bayer

Maarten De Brauwer @maartendb.bsky.social · 4d

PhD opportunity: improving #eDNA methods to better understand estuarine health.

A collaborative university-government project to provide solutions and improve the management of estuaries in Australia.

sednasociety.com/2025/10/10/p...

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 4d

One of the parenting influencers introduces herself with "I've been a steiner instructor for eight years" and lady, that's not a good thing!!!!! That whole system is just 1800s racist German guy vibes, nothing is backed in research. Or even coherent thought

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 4d

Takeshi Miike's AUDITION walked so that SPICE GIRLS: THE MOVIE could run

Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 4d

Never have I've seen an internet subculture that is as sanctimonious, self-righteous, arrogant, and also plain unqualified as parenting/relationship influencers. And I thought bicycling subreddits were horrible

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Philipp Bayer @philippbayer.bsky.social · 4d

My wife has started to send me tiktoks of awful parenting influencers, so I spent some time finding the influencers who back up my parenting approach, and I guess we're now at war.
We're all the worse for it, may God have mercy on our souls

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