Co-founder of OpenAI...

Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 4d ago

“Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest… After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud”

Back in the streets this afternoon. Peaceful protest and infinite sadness for the victims of the far-right racist attack in Trappes yesterday

We need to chop down the forests as fast as possible, so we can quickly build more data centers, so AI can scale into AGI, which will solve climate change. Somehow.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 4d ago

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

Just as a private equity firm buys out a corporation and strips it for parts, a consultant class is raiding the Democratic Party and getting “generationally wealthy” along the way New from me and @adambonica.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2163...

How the Consulting Class Is Eating the Democratic Party

Fundraising costs gobble up most of the funds raised. Billions are spent on TV ads that have virtually no impact. Candidates may win or lose—but the consulting class always wins.

newrepublic.com

I’m very excited to share the first big project from my PhD (my first proper-first, yay!) where we use cryoET and a fun new flavour of CLEM to study the re-organisation of photosynthetic machinery of cyanobacteria growing beyond the red limit of light. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Most Americans say AI is bad for society and oppose new data centers abcnews.com/Politics/ame...

More applications AND less funding - what a combination...

Devang Mehta🌱🧬@mehta-lab.com · 7d ago

Bravo @erc.europa.eu 🙄

Cripes. The ERC StG success rate is expected at around 5% this year: 373 grants for 7710 applications. Research strategies across the EU are shaped around securing ERC grants. But with such low odds, aligning national or institutional priorities with ERC objectives becomes a deeply flawed strategy.

Go Netherlands! This is a well-deserved cryo-reboot for a country that has so many outstanding scientists using cryo-EM.

Luuk Loeff@lloeff.bsky.social · 7d ago

Exciting times for cryo-EM in NL 🇳🇱! As part of EMPower, two new Titan Krios G5 microscopes have been installed at NeCEN in Leiden and Utrecht. First benchmarks with ApoF reached 1.12 Å resolution 🤯. Looking forward to seeing all the exciting science these microscopes will enable! 🔬

I’m sorry to have to be the bad guy here but we need to recognize that we live in a compressed air thrusters world now. If you’re not finding ways to teach the critical use of compressed air thrusters in your classroom, you’re setting your students up to fail when you could be setting them up to fly

Yahoo Finance@yahoofinance.com · last wk.

Tesla stock pops after unveiling Roadster with compressed air thrusters for limited flight

With climate change, it’s a matter of time before mosquitoes and the deadly diseases they cause are everywhere.

‘A living hell’: how Los Angeles got taken over by mosquitoes

Heat and humidity have led to one of the worst mosquito years in recent history, with West Nile virus at a decade high

theguardian.com

Timely new paper in @socioeconreview.bsky.social: Does rising wealth concentration undermine American democracy? Using variation across the 50 U.S. states, results reveal a clear, negative effect of millionaire wealth concentration on democratic performance. doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag058

Looking at you, AI

Prof. Feynman@proffeynman.bsky.social · 2w ago

The joy isn’t in knowing — it’s in figuring out.

Congratulations to the four Umeå University-led projects funded in this call! www.umu.se/en/news/four...

Four projects at the forefront of international research to receive 120 million

The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation is allocating 120 million to four different research projects.

umu.se

Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation@kawresearch.bsky.social · 2w ago

Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation is awarding SEK 900 million to 30 research projects that, following evaluations by international experts, have been judged innovative and at the forefront of international research. See the list of granted projects: tinyurl.com/bddfy2j8 #research #science

Great thread 👀

Mark Peifer (He, him)@peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 2w ago

I am a long time subscriber to National Geographic. National Geographic generally does a superb job of covering complex scientific topics. However, The End of Aging” in the September issue was a dramatic deviation from this record. 1/n

Tenure track assistant/associate professor positions open in my university. Within life sciences, INCLUDING PLANT SCIENCES. Please RT jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Three tenure track assistant/associate professors in life science, HiLIFE

Three tenure track assistant/associate professors in life science, HiLIFE

jobs.helsinki.fi

Nikon Small World does the right thing

‘If AI doesn’t deliver on its promise then we face a double blow to growth: because AI didn’t expand our productive capacity as hoped, and because other investments which might have didn’t take place.’ www.ft.com/content/bf40...

All of you writing grant proposals at the moment take note

Now published in Science Advances @science.org Herpes simplex virus has a single protein that completely silences neuronal activity by removing ion channels from the cell surface 🧠🤫⚡ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Bluetorial of the preprint 👇

Herpes simplex virus pUL56 abolishes neuronal activity by removing voltage-gated ion channels from the plasma membrane

Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) infections of the central nervous system cause encephalitis and are associated with increased risk of neurodegeneration, yet the molecular consequences of lytic infectio...

science.org

Stephen Graham's Lab@atomicvirology.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Can a single viral protein change how you think 🧠🧐? We think so! Our new preprint shows how herpes simplex virus protein pUL56 turns off neuronal electrical activity. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... 🟦🧵👇

Das Volk der Richter und Henker

Wahlrecht.de@wahlrecht.de · 3w ago

Sonntagsfrage zur Bundestagswahl • INSA/BILD: AfD 30,5 % | CDU/CSU 17,5 % | SPD 14,5 % | GRÜNE 14,5 % | DIE LINKE 10,5 % | FDP 4,5 % | BSW 3,5 % | Sonstige 4,5 % ➤ Übersicht: wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ ➤ Verlauf: wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ins...

Umeå can be so serene in early autumn. And yes, that is a giant clothespeg.

Wir können uns das Deutschlandticket nicht leisten.

Most people are underreacting to this El Niño.

We were told at the start of the year that MRC funding boards had been told to recommend far fewer grants for funding than normal It took a while for the data to come through, but they confirm success rates were down by a big margin The question is now whether the new MRC model will reverse that

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · 4w ago

MRC success rates drop sharply after grants overhaul. Warnings of “catastrophic” impact on medical researchers as some rates fall below 5 per cent. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Although the narrative is shifting to highlight the "increasing share of deaths" attributable to non-communicable diseases, note that "despite the global decline, 7 of the top 10 causes of death in 2023 in low-income countries were communicable diseases". www.who.int/news-room/fa...

Added a couple of things to coot1-trimmings: * Option to set default model/map appearance to mimic Coot 0.9.x * Metal helper to semi-automatically make links for the current ion * Slider to interactively set map brightness (demos of brightness slider & metal helper in subsequent posts)

Well done, Sweden!

Our World in Data@ourworldindata.org · 4w ago

How many people do Europe’s cancer screening programs reach? Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, publishes yearly figures on cancer screening for 36 European countries, going back to 2000.

Requiring scientists to be political neutral is to require scientists to shut up when the facts are inconvenient.

Colette Delawalla, PhD@cdelawalla.bsky.social · 4w ago

Knowledge is NOT politically neutral. The scientific method is a tool for deriving knowledge. So why then, are we telling the arbiters of the scientific method and developers of knowledge to be politically neutral? Are scientists supposed to forsake knowledge for politics sake?

United States President Donald Trump issues executive order instructing federal government agencies to "use the terms 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' in place of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' and will not acknowledge the usage of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in any applicable setting."

Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Every child deserves a safe and nurturing home where they ...

whitehouse.gov