Paul Nightingale | Lightnews

Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 3h

Well this is utterly depressing

How London unwittingly killed housebuilding - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

How London unwittingly killed housebuilding

A perfect storm of policy and regulatory headwinds has slowed new construction to a trickle

giftarticle.ft.com

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 10h

Not now radioactive overly amorous terror pigs!

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 12h

Ok chemist here: this is very clever!!

Jake Yeston @jakeyeston.bsky.social · 14h

Exciting chemsky work out First Release in @science.org from @gracegdhan.bsky.social and collaborators, scrunching up pyrimidones so tight with UV light that the strain release can boil water!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Molecular solar thermal energy storage in Dewar pyrimidone beyond 1.6 MJ/kg

Storing sunlight in a compact and rechargeable form remains a central challenge for solar energy utilization. Molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage systems, which harness photon energy and rel...

www.science.org

Jake Yeston @jakeyeston.bsky.social · 14h

Exciting chemsky work out First Release in @science.org from @gracegdhan.bsky.social and collaborators, scrunching up pyrimidones so tight with UV light that the strain release can boil water!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Molecular solar thermal energy storage in Dewar pyrimidone beyond 1.6 MJ/kg

Storing sunlight in a compact and rechargeable form remains a central challenge for solar energy utilization. Molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage systems, which harness photon energy and rel...

www.science.org

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 17h

Please make this just stop.....

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 19h

12th Feb - the Guardian yearly "the world's problems are caused by the axioms of neoclassical economics, and can be cured by this one neat trick, follow me for more life hacks" has arrived early!!

Professor Grant Needed looking for £100m!

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Economics has failed on the climate crisis. This complexity scientist has a mind-blowing plan to fix that

Doyne Farmer says a super-simulator of the global economy would accelerate the transition to a green, clean world

www.theguardian.com

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d

Sadly the UK debt ignores a lot of very good work on the c impact of AI because it's so framed in terms of AI and not how AI interacts with organisational and individual routines, processes etc.

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d

The structural problem about failure to regulate monopolies etc is a disaster here. AI hype etc has a dismal impact on that.

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d

Exactly the same in UK and EU. The public debate is between evidence free extreme of "AI is all hype" and "it changes everything!!!".

Sadly there is very little space for nuance.....

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d

Beamish and Butthead frog baseball at a Boston animation festival

Andy Khouri @andykhouri.bsky.social · 1d

Have asked this before and always like the responses. What are your biggest “I saw that in the first run cinema” flexes? Couple of mine:

Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Office Space (1999)

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 1d

Fascinating paper! Scholars who are secular are more likely to believe in secularization & find evidence of it in their research. The opposite pattern is true for scholars who are religious.

This is worth your time to read in full:
sociologicalscience.com/download/vol...

Few terms have the ability to fire up conversations among sociologists of religion
like secularization. Despite the amount of research produced on the topic of religious change, no consensus has been reached on the trajectory of religion facing
modernity. In this study, we test whether the secularization controversy stems
not only from disagreements over empirical evidence on religious decline but also
from different religious and secular beliefs of researchers involved in the debate.
We find that religiosity has a significant negative impact on both believing in the
validity of the secularization thesis and finding evidence for it in published work.
This effect size is non-trivial: researchers with the highest level of religiosity are
24.0 percentage points less likely to believe in secularization and 19.2 percentage
points less likely to find evidence of secularization in their published work than
their secular colleagues. This result cannot be explained by differences in methods used (whether qualitative, quantitative, or non-empirical), study impact, or
by differences in the religious traditions or geographical areas under study. Importantly, we cannot determine who is responsible for the bias, whether religious
scholars, secular scholars, or both. Nor can we assess to what extent this bias is
explicit, intentional, and how much of it is implicit and unwanted. The precise
mechanisms through which such biases emerge remain unclear as well. Is it the case
that researchers make certain methodological choices to come up with a desired
study outcome that is consistent with prior beliefs and orientations? Or is it the case
that results that align with authors’ ideological views are evaluated less critically
than results disregarding their own personal beliefs? In our view, there is likely a
confirmation bias at work: people tend to seek, favor, recall, and value evidence
confirming their pre-existing beliefs while ignoring or downgrading disconfirming
evidence

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d

My hot take: the UK Conservative party is the model for the Republican party post Trump.

Andy Khouri @andykhouri.bsky.social · 1d

Have asked this before and always like the responses. What are your biggest “I saw that in the first run cinema” flexes? Couple of mine:

Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Office Space (1999)

National Centre for Research Methods @ncrm.ac.uk · 1d

Need to boost your digital skills? We've reduced the price of this online course to just £25!

Join Digital Research Skills for Social Scientists on 3-6 March 2026 to learn techniques for boosting the efficiency and reliability of your #research.

Find out more: www.ncrm.ac.uk/training/sho...

A person doing an online training course on a laptop.

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 1d

Great post @ruxandrabio.bsky.social on FDA’s refusal to review Moderna’s flu vaccine, changing its position on what trial design was acceptable.

Regulatory uncertainty doesn’t just mean missing out on this vaccine, but also reduces future R&D investment:
clinicaltrialsabundance.blog/p/the-modern...

Adding to the confusion, entrepreneur Dr. Jing Liang noted on X that publicly available trial data appear to show Moderna conducted analyses involving higher-dose comparators in older adults. If accurate, it would raise further questions about the basis for issuing a refusal-to-file letter in the first place.

No matter which account ultimately proves correct, this episode leaves us with two uncomfortable possibilities. If the FDA changed its regulatory position after years of clinical development, that reinforces a persistent concern about regulatory inconsistency. If, alternatively, Moderna met the agency’s highest level of stated expectations, actually did use a high-dose comparator and still received a refusal-to-file letter, the implications are even more serious, raising questions about transparency and internal coherence at the agency.

Michael Pettis @michaelpettis.bsky.social · 2d

1/4
Very interesting and timely paper. The authors find that "industrial policies lead to trade surpluses if the government pursues an unbalanced policy mix, such that domestic demand does not rise as much as supply. These surpluses are absorbed by the rest...
bw.bse.eu/wp-content/u...

bw.bse.eu

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 2d

I've been pushing this. The selection bias issue makes a joke of any claims to research quality.

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 2d

RF is fantastic. But this is a really tough job given the politics.

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 2d

Breaking: Research Excellence Framework director to step down in April.

Former director Kim Hackett returning to oversee strategy while successor to Rebecca Fairbairn is found.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Research Excellence Framework director to step down in April - Research Professional News

Former director Kim Hackett returning to oversee strategy while successor to Rebecca Fairbairn is found

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 2d

Breaking: Research Excellence Framework director to step down in April.

Former director Kim Hackett returning to oversee strategy while successor to Rebecca Fairbairn is found.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Research Excellence Framework director to step down in April - Research Professional News

Former director Kim Hackett returning to oversee strategy while successor to Rebecca Fairbairn is found

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 3d

Scrapping REF should be “serious’ option”, says Manchester VC.

Duncan Ivison questions “usefulness” of “massive, bureaucratic” research assessment exercise.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Scrapping REF should be ‘serious’ option, says Manchester VC - Research Professional News

Duncan Ivison questions “usefulness” of “massive, bureaucratic” research assessment exercise

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 3d

Narrator's voice: they didn't go to mars within 7 years.

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d

Getting ready to submit a theory paper.... started in 1996.

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d

🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d

Brilliant!

Chris Osieck @chrisosieck.bsky.social · 4d

I can relate to this.

Whenever Iranians take to the streets to protest the Ayatollah’s totalitarianism, my online feed, which evidently curates ‘left-wing’ content to me, gets filled with popular accounts taking a break from declaring their support for Palestine to make shit up in defense of the Iranian regime. One video shows people searching for loved ones in a Tehran morgue filled with corpses that have clear signs of torture, while another video features some influencer who has taken it upon themselves to tell me there is a global propaganda campaign led by the US and Israel to demonise the Iranian regime.

Graham Kendall @grahamkendall.bsky.social · 5d

Can you justify using (and paying for) a service that generates a ready to submit paper with just one prompt?
🧵

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 5d

He is just vile

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 5d

Exactly the same as Houston the rising oncology centre in the USA.

Manchester lacks the concentration of cancer hospitals. Not the population!

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 5d

Manchester has great research hospitals and universities and the scale that is needed.

Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 5d

It should complement i hope. Oncology research has shifted recently from looking at population variation to individuals and the dynamics of tumours (thanks to new tech), so it's important to be (a) close to patients and (b) have population scale. It's a big city thing now.

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