Laura Howes
@laurahowes.bsky.social
Editor (she/her) @cenmag.bsky.social into biomolecules, drug discovery, and biotech. Also beer, skiing, and the joys of being an immigrant in Germany. All views expressed here are absolutely mine, especially when they're right. DM for Signal.
One for #RomanRoadsFriday! “Roman Autobahn” uncovered next to the A8 (a motorway in Southern Germany). Achaeologists have uncovered a 90m stretch of the so-called Roman Alblimes road – a key frontier route linking Rottweil (my hometown) and Heidenheim. 👉 www.tagesschau.de/inland/regio...
Hard to take stock when new twists are flying in every hour but football could well be witnessing the real-time defenestration of a FIFA president who less than a fortnight ago thought himself invincible and the mastermind behind "the best show in the world". Delicious hubris
🧵This @lighthousereports.com investigation of hidden exports of uranium from the DRC to China in cobalt supply chains, co-published with @data.ft.com, has been almost two years in the making. Very pleased to have helped out! www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio... www.ft.com/content/7781...
DR Congo’s cobalt boom carries an unwanted cargo: uranium
Radioactive ores have become a proliferation risk in the land that supplied material for second world war atomic bombs
ft.com
Well 100 years ago one side weren't born yet and the other side were children. But if I were "given my grandparent's job" 70-75 years ago I'd be a stay at home mother. And on one side soon to be widowed and left to deal with three school age sons and little money.
Revan@revan.eurosky.social · 7d agoEnough “what would you do on the commune questions” If you got sent back 100 years and were given your grandparent’s job, what are you doing?
++BREAKING++ The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight: "[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life." www.gov.uk/government/n...
Nearly 10,000 dead in Germany due to this year's heat waves so far, I have yet to see a statement about this from a government minister
DIE ZEIT@zeit.de · 6d agoBundesweit sind in diesem jahr 9.800 Menschen wegen hoher Temperaturen gestorben. Das übersteigt die Zahl jedes Gesamtjahrs seit 2016.
We already do this and companies who want them are happy to pay for PhD student interns. Why do precious and limited NSF funds need to be deployed for this? Most PhD student pursue industry jobs anyways - that has always been true. Use NSF funds to support basic science that industry wont support!
Jonathan Wosen@jonathanwosen.bsky.social · 7d agoWith academic jobs few and far between, the NSF is testing a new approach to graduate education: Giving Ph.D. students industry experience — and dollars — as part of their training. For more, see my latest for @statnews.com. www.statnews.com/2026/07/29/h...
What should worry Isomorphic and other companies betting on AI to bypass pharma research pipelines is that PDB data is probably the most accurate, organised and annotated data in all of the biosciences and this is all they could achieve with that. Genomic and expression data is a horrific mess...
Not super surprised by this. Alphafold is at a deadend. It is sometimes able to replicate a crystal structure if you handhold it enough But it's not a physics model so it's never been able to predict the conformational dynamics that are important to understanding realworld solution phase structure
Engadget@engadget.com · last wk.DeepMind's award-winning AlphaFold team is no more.
I thought, they were kind of the best in their domain and there is plenty of real science to be done in or near this domain (somewhere around computational chemistry/biology). Worrying, either because it is a short-sighted business move or because (even) they did not succeed on anything new with AI?
I am not sure what the end target of alphafold would be. It may guess structures of domains that have been characterized before, but you need to move in vitro afterwards, and a lot of fields have bottlenecks that have little to do with protein structure (ie AAV, anything with nucleic acids, dosage)
Alas poor AlphaFold, we knew you well... This is not entirely surprising to me, as it wasn't clear what more AF could do outside of what Hassabis is trying to build with Isomorphic. But I am interested in people's thoughts here #chemsky #biotech 🧪 www.ft.com/content/61b2...
Google DeepMind dismantles Nobel-winning AlphaFold team in strategy shift
Landmark project that solved protein folding gives way to a wider race to build AI systems for scientific discovery
ft.com
A huge vote of confidence in a Cambridge ecosystem that has been quite consciously developed. Funnily enough, I was on a call with a VC YESTERDAY talking about this for a story idea I'm working on.
GSK to establish new flagship R&D centre on Cambridge Biomedical Campus, UK | GSK
Investment further integrates company into world-class ecosystem of biomedical research, patient care and academia
gsk.com
This is one reason I don't use AI even for "research". I don't think it's inherently evil to be using AI to find stuff (even if I don't feel the need for it), but for quotes, summaries etc it just isn't reliable. Prob generally OK for transcription of interviews, but caveat emptor.
Short-sighted, stupid cuts to the UKRI budget include shutting down Jodrell Bank, the icon of British astronomy. (Many other cuts too, including 20% to our brand new @vrubinobs.bsky.social). Interesting politically to shut down a major facility in...um..Manchester 🔭 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands
Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.
bbc.co.uk
Man, what a chapter. I need to catch my breath. What a journey!! Jane motherfuckin Austen is the best to ever do it.
It's 23 degrees in my office, and I've just gone and put on a jumper and some woolly tights. This summer is messing with me in very weird ways. That or I'm coming down with something...
So you are saying that you don‘t know how to generate rents from an increasingly commoditised technology, and want the government to help preserve your valuations?
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 2w agoOpenAI and Anthropic executives are sounding the alarm about the rise of cheap AI, particularly powerful new models produced in China, suggesting they will lead to a “dystopian” AI future and present unacceptable security risks without regulation.
A complicated disease, competing corporate and scientific priorities, and regulatory catch-22s. Please read the results of @rowanwalrath.bsky.social 's reporting as she's tried to better understand the state of drug development for long COVID and related conditions
Rowan Walrath@rowanwalrath.bsky.social · 2w agoI can't possibly do the story justice in a Twitter thread, so please read it on @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic... 13/13
Oh well, don't forget that it's already come home twice in the past five years.
Ah well lads, it was fun while it lasted
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 3w agoNew meme just dropped
You cannot score one goal and then never leave your half again — it’s so foolish to hand your opponent unlimited tokens to keep playing the slot machine