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Kevin Daly

@gingerhowley.bsky.social

Associate Professor at UCD. Young Academy Ireland. https://t.co/ZQ4XYYxM7H Ancient DNA, goats, sheep (begrudgingly), pathogens, climate, MTG, Traitors. I watch too many films: http://letterboxd.com/GingerHowley He is openly gay (citation needed).

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Kevin Daly@gingerhowley.bsky.social · 5d ago

The genomic identity of early smallpox in South America There's so few variola genomes! Crazy. Here's the earliest in South America, from work led by Shigeki Nakagome and Bruno González. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The genomic identity of early smallpox in South America

Smallpox was a major driver of population collapse in the Americas after European contact, yet the genetic identity of the causal strains remains unknown. Here, we report the first ancient smallpox ge...

science.org

Seth L. Sanders@nabalkattu.bsky.social · last wk.

Film criticism aside, Emily Wilson's review of the Odyssey concerned me because it misrepresents Late Bronze Age history and reinforces an old Eurocentric pattern of dismissing the experiences--and reality--of ancient peoples other than the Greeks.

Nolan’s other major addition to Homer’s narrative is the repeated reference to threats to ‘our civilisation’ from ‘the sea peoples’ – a now debunked 19th-century theory about maritime tribes who were thought to have attacked Egypt around 1200 BCE and to have also been responsible for the roughly coeval collapse of Mycenaean Greek culture. ‘Our civilisation is under attack,’ Penelope wails. Odysseus comforts her by saying that ‘Bronze Age civilisation’, including literacy, will rise again from the ashes. The current consensus, as Nolan clearly knows, is that there was no such thing as ‘the sea peoples’, and that the Greek-speaking world’s shift away from the more centralised, literate palace culture of the Mycenaeans in the 11th century BCE towards the fragmented social formations of the early Greek Iron Age was caused by a range of factors, including climate change, earthquakes and internal unrest. Nolan uses these competing historical theories to create a characteristic narrative twist about the identity of ‘the sea peoples’, which I will not spoil, though you can probably guess it.
Jolijn Erven@jolijnerven.bsky.social · last wk.

How did the rapid Mediterranean dispersal of Neolithic livestock shape their genomes? 16 Neolithic sheep & goat genomes from the Mediterranean Áine Halpin, @gingerhowley.bsky.social Roger Alcàntara Fors, Maria Saña-Segui, @brad-dan.bsky.social and others www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #aDNA

Mediterranean dispersal imposed bottlenecks in Neolithic sheep and goats

The Neolithic period in western Eurasia involved major dispersal events, including the translocation of livestock into Europe. These domestic animal translocations likely featured founder effects, fun...

biorxiv.org

Simon McGarr@tupped.bsky.social · last wk.

Imagine an entire cheery article on self expression ending in this paragraph on children. “Girlguiding’s new look is being launched shortly before a change in the charity’s membership policy from 6 September, which will force transgender girls to leave.”

Simon Cox@simonfrcox.bsky.social · last wk.

Schools should learn from Guides. Being forced to wear clothes you don’t choose is bad for children’s confidence www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Aidan O’Brien@aidanobrien.bsky.social · 3w ago

Irish Water says that data Centres consumed 810 megalitres of water in 2021. However, when pressed, they admitted that they could not say how they arrived at that figure, show their workings, or provide a more up-to-date breakdown of commercial water consumption in Ireland. Irish Water.

A spokesperson for Irish Water said on 19 June that it couldn't lay out its methodology behind the 810 megalitres figure - or give more up-to-date figures on water use by data centres, since the AI boom.Roy Keane
Andrew Jackson@andrewlrjackson.bsky.social · 3w ago

In 2021, Meta’s data centre complex in Clonee, Co. Meath, used more water from the mains than Irish Water said was being used by all Irish data centres combined. “Does Irish Water even know how much water data centres are using?”, by @lokapila.bsky.social www.dublininquirer.com/does-irish-w...

According to Irish Water, as of 2021, data centres across Ireland drank about 810 megalitres of water from the public mains a year – which is about 0.13 percent of overall national supply. But that same year, Meta reported that it withdrew 928 megalitres of water for its data centres in Clonee in Meath. Planning documents say that it was to rely on water from the mains. That’s more than Irish Water said was consumed overall in the country that year. A spokesperson for Irish Water said on 19 June [2026] that it couldn’t lay out its methodology behind the 810 megalitres figure – or give more up-to-date figures on water use by data centres, since the AI boom.
Hannah Moots@mootspoints.bsky.social · 3w ago

New paper (from my colleagues @cpgsthlm.bsky.social!) showing children in Viking-Age & Medieval Sweden were buried in gendered ways, but those buried together were rarely close biological relatives. A great example of how #AncientDNA sheds new light on childhood, kinship & social organization 🧬

Equal in death: Ancient genomic analysis of children’s early Christian burials

Ancient genomes challenge views of close kinship in multiple Christian burials, revealing flexible traditions around children.

science.org

Kevin Daly@gingerhowley.bsky.social · last mo.

Our recent study on a mass mortality assemblage of sheep, covered nicely in this article from Paris One.

Projet MALADI : Une maladie ovine identifiée grâce à l’ADN ancien - Recherche à l'université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Une étude interdisciplinaire menée par Annelise Binois-Roman, maîtresse de conférences à Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, en collaboration avec Kevin Daly de University College Dublin, a permis d’élucider l...

recherche.pantheonsorbonne.fr

Kevin Daly@gingerhowley.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our investigation of mass mortality burial of sheep is published at @royalsociety.org Open Science! Evidence of sheeppox in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage

Evidence of sheeppox in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage

Abstract. Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their

royalsocietypublishing.org

Declan Reilly@declander.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is a 9th century building in my hometown of Kells which stored many relics of St Columba. Growing up, tourists were so confused as to how to get access- "So I just knock on this person's door and ask for the key??" Kells person-"Yeah".

BildBild
Library of the Royal Irish Academy@rialibrary.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Today is the feast day of St Columba (Colum Cille), who according to tradition, wrote the Cathach (RIA MS 12 R 33) as a copy of a Latin psalter belonging to St Finnian in a single night. A dispute arose about the ownership of the copy leading to the battle of Cúl Dreimne in AD 561.

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Unreliable and underperforming antibodies are a longstanding problem, so while the reveal of apparently manipulated antibody data in Thermo Fisher's catalog was a shock, the frustration it sparked among many researchers is perhaps no surprise. My reporting:

Science sleuths uncover more than 100 suspicious images in Thermo Fisher antibody catalogue

Scientists have long worried about the reliability of commercial antibodies, and the latest findings have sparked fresh concerns.

nature.com