Paul Nightingale
@paulnightingale.bsky.social
Professor of Strategy at SPRU - the Science Policy Research Unit Teaches SPRU 1.01 Research Policy. HSP. Views mine, not my employer. Politics unfashionable since 1654
Scientists found a way to make RNA vaccines survive higher temperatures #NBTintheNews www.yahoo.com/news/science...
Scientists Found a Way to Make RNA Vaccines Survive Higher Temperatures
MIT's AI method stabilized experimental mRNA vaccine particles for up to one year at room temperature, potentially cutting cold-chain barriers in low-resource regions.
yahoo.com
I don't disagree with any criticism here particularly but I think that taking aim at Wikipedia, one of the great achievements of humanity, in this internet context, is reckless and dumb www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Is Wikipedia ‘deeply biased’? Sandi Toksvig says it is – so she’s backing a rival
Just 19% of the online encyclopedia’s biographies are of women. Is this because it’s edited by ‘mostly white, middle-aged, European men’, as the comedian claims?
theguardian.com
One of the biggest recipients of Russian troll farm support on the X platform says that the theories of Ukraine's strikes on Yandex facilities having reduced Russian troll activity are nonsense, as he gets 35 likes among his 4,000,000 followers.
Daniel Cox: “Men with larger social circles tend to have much more romantic success. But that’s only true for men! The number of close friends a woman has seems to have little bearing on her ability to go on dates.” www.derekthompson.org/p/are-men-th...
Why Americans Stopped Falling in Love
Americans—and young Americans, in particular—are dating less, coupling less, marrying less, and having fewer children. A new book offers several theories for why.
derekthompson.org
I double-checked this on a couple of Xitter stat sites and it's true. Average views of the main AfD account dropped 90% and average engagement dropped by 60%. This is commercial social media for you: bots, damn bots and Russian bots.
Angry@angrystaffer.bsky.social · yesterdayWe’ve been talking about this for years. None of these far-right movements are organic.
The rest of Europe could learn from Baltic states’ whole-of-society model, which seeks to prepare populations from Finland to Lithuania for an era of high-threat risk.
Russia’s Kaliningrad threats show the value of Baltic preparedness
Moscow’s nuclear rhetoric should be taken seriously. But Baltic states know grey zone attacks and territorial incursions are equally serious threats.
chathamhouse.org
Alternative take: one of the reasons the UK is beholden to foreign AI is the failure of the Alan Turing Institute.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3d agoUK must not be beholden to foreign AI, says head of Alan Turing Institute
Couldn't wait to finish Biological War: A Scenario to put Annie Jacobsen on blast for her contributions to disinforming the public about plague, pandemic risk, & Russian bioweapons so that she can use a crisis to sell her book on the national news. rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/annie-jaco...
Annie Jacobsen’s Expertise in One Photo
Fearmongering For Profit: A Scenario launches on my Substack later this week
rasmussenretorts.substack.com
Russian hybrid warfare costs the UK up to £2.5 billion per year. A new report, "Putin's Taxes," prepared by Graham Downey, Deputy Chairman of the cross-party parliamentary group on rearmament, estimates this, according to the Financial Times.
This story is an absolutely wild ride:
A death, a plagiarism scandal and a quest for revenge: the bizarre tale of Otto Z
The long read: After his mother died, Otto became convinced he’d been wronged by the forensic investigators – and that one of them was a fraud. The truth was even stranger
theguardian.com
Sewers are one of the most transformational interventions to human health in history, yet they are rarely understood or recognised for their impact. So we are holding an event about them next Tuesday. In person in London or watch online! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/searc...
The secret life of sewers
From the Big Stink to the fatberg, London's history has always flowed through what (and how) we flush away. Sewers are one of the most transformational, yet least recognised interventions in the histo...
thebritishacademy.ac.uk
London Economics’ research estimates that the net economic impact per student was circa £100,000 – in other words, “every 10 international students generate £1m worth of net economic impact for the UK economy over the duration of their studies”. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/fall-in...
Fall in international student numbers ‘cost UK £2.9 billion’
Latest cost-benefit analysis finds overseas enrolments generate nearly 10 times more money for UK than they take away
timeshighereducation.com
A thorough debunking of Annie Jacobsen's scare writing. Do better, @cnn.com and @npr.org !
Annie Jacobsen’s road From Siberia to Armageddon is paved with bad assumptions
Following recent reports of a death at a secretive Siberian disease research lab, author Annie Jacobsen has become a sought-after media interview. Some interviewers are now casting Jacobsen's new best...
thebulletin.org
The UK has signed up to the vision for a "Golden Age of Science". I was teaching about this exact topic on Tuesday in SPRU 1.01. Needles to say I have some thoughts. 1) I'm not sure about the diagnosis. Science isn't broken. It has problems but overall ... www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
whitehouse.gov
… Iterative #model building, checking, #debugging, #simulation and generally good #statistical practice. And there’s a freely available edition on Github: 📖 avehtari.github.io/Bayesian-Wor... 👌 2/2 #BayesianStatistics #OpenScience
Bayesian Workflow book: Website – Bayesian Workflow book
Website for the Bayesian Workflow book by Gelman, Vehtari, McElreath, et al. — case studies, code, and exercises in R and Stan.
avehtari.github.io
⚡️ Germany arrested former BND foreign intelligence chief on suspicion of treason, espionage, and obtaining classified state secrets. united24media.com/war-in-ukrai...
Germany Arrests Former Intelligence Chief Accused of Passing Secrets to Foreign Spy Services
The arrest of ex-BND chief August Hanning on espionage charges raises questions about German intelligence security and the handling of classified BND documents.
united24media.com
"archaeology, anthropology, and sociology, which typically make hundreds of new grants—distributed zero new awards."
Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 6d agoNEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:
But no part was hit as hard as SBE, which went from an average of 800 new grants to just 91, a precipitous, 90% decline. SBE spent just 95 million on new grants, far less than its average of 247 million.
Sharp and 🎯, as always!
Andrew Chakhoyan 🇺🇦@andrewchak.bsky.social · last wk.While massacring civilians has been an ongoing Russian tactic, the “new doctrine” that emerged in October marks a further descent into depravity. The pretense of military necessity, never credible, is now gone altogether chakhoyan.substack.com/p/the-folly-...
Small business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Big companies are the engines of economic growth. The more an economy is dominated by small businesses, the more likely it is to be a weak one.
@tejparikh.ft.com · last wk.Everybody loves small businesses. But prosperity hinges on the big ones. My latest for @financialtimes.com. In defence of big business: as.ft.com/r/6b18cb3d-3...
Calls to break up the Treasury are often tied to arguments about British greatness. But the question is not whether the Treasury should win, but whether the state has the capacity to know when it should. By @tomkelsey.bsky.social politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/history...
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My thoughts about the UK's new National Centre for Information Defence. I think it can survive the 'censorship' backlash; UK discourse isn't as infected by conspiratorial brain rot (yet). But it's incumbent on the Burnham gov to fill the info void. www.thewayfinder.net/p/the-uk-get...
The UK Gets Serious About Countering Disinformation
Can the new National Centre for Information Defence survive the ‘censorship’ backlash?
thewayfinder.net
This bit of London with 21,725 people squeezed into 1 sq km has the highest population density of anywhere in the UK. Yet it's less than half as dense as the densest European city: brilliantmaps.com/densest-n... credit: Alasdair Rae
On point B, the NASA Exoplanet Archive typically serves ~10-20TB of data per month. In July it jumped to 70TB. In August it jumped to 600TB. So either our user base organically grew *30x* in two months (... unlikely), OR the bots have taken over already.
Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 2w agoOn similar lines, if we’re not careful: A. Scientific journals will only accept submissions from established researchers working within institutions. B. Data we’ve spent ages making open will be hidden to avoid the expense of continued download by bots.
This is worse. For many it wasn't unknowingly. They knew full well what they were going because they were told but did it anyway. Sooner or later this is going to lead to a UK academic going to prison. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/mi5-iss...
MI5 issues China espionage warning to UK universities
Universities have urgently been told to review their ties with Chinese research institute after spy warning
timeshighereducation.com
