Very useful backgrounder on the Russian plague case.
Kai Kupferschmidt@kakape.bsky.social · 4d ago"Information from Russia has been incomplete, confusing, and contradictory." My colleague @martinenserink.bsky.social on what we know so far about the possible plague death in Russia and the implications. 🧪
A scientist gave a scientific talk - on scientific work he has led for 5+ years - on a scientific topic at a scientific institution. And apparently it's so newsworthy that Politico had to write about it? Talk was only possible thanks to "academic freedom", apparently 🙄. What a world we live in 😵💫.
Greg Folkers@gregfolkers.bsky.social · 4d agoPolitico Pulse -- Wednesday, October 7, 2026 politi.co/4j9NFIO @politico.com coverage of COVID origins lecture by @kgandersen.bsky.social at NIH
[Commentary] Millions in Indonesia are already enduring toxic smoke and fighting severe blazes during an unprecedented El Niño. In a new op-ed, ecologist Akane Nishimura argues these frontline communities offer essential lessons in fortitude and adaptation as record-breaking fire seasons approach.
The Indonesians facing El Nino’s fires have lessons to teach us (commentary)
In October 2006, I was supposed to be starting my dissertation research on tropical reforestation in Indonesia. Instead, I found myself in the forests of Tanjung Puting National Park in Central…
mongabay.cc
It feels very good to have been the editor who handled Soai's 1995 paper in Nature on autocatalytic amplification of an enantiomeric excess - now known as the Soai reaction. This seemed a curiosity at the time, but we clearly made the right call.
Nobel Prize@nobelprize.org · 4d agoBREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”
A new paper (Xie et al. 2026) provides a detailed analysis of the landslides triggered by Typhoon Doksuri in northern China in 2023. They have mapped over 100,000 failures, triggered by rainfall totals that exceeded 500 mm. eos.org/thelandslide... Original study: link.springer.com/content/pdf/...
Today I gave a talk at the NIH on "Virus Emergence & The Origin of Pandemics". I had a fun time presenting on five+ years of collaborative research and got a lot of great questions! The NIH Director even found time to tweet about it.. 💫 Slides for those interested: andersen-lab.com/files/2026.1...
The IceCube neutrino detector has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics. The Trump administration has proposed slashing its budget in half in 2027.
The post on the Franklin DNA work by @matthewcobb.bsky.social is fantastic, though Matthew has understandably disabled comments, so mine are going here. The tl;dr is that history (including the history of science) is generally complicated and resists simple retrospective narratives (such as here...
A lot of excitement on here about the article in Science summarising the discoveries of @alistairsponsel.bsky.social and Brian Sutton, just published in the Journal of the History of Biology. Some people have asked, so here is what I think they show, and what are the implications:
Photograph 49 is the Key to Understanding the History of Rosalind Franklin’s DNA Photograph 51 - Journal of the History of Biology
This essay, co-authored by a historian of science and an X-ray crystallographer, sheds new light on Rosalind Franklin’s Photograph 51. We refute the infamous claim that, unlike James Watson, Franklin ...
link.springer.com
2026 cumulative daily total fire emissions for Indonesia to 30 Sept continue to keep pace with previous El Niño years of 2015, 2019 & 2006. #CopernicusAtmosphere GFASv1.2 data available via Fire Emissions Watch apps.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/fire-emissio... @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social @ecmwf.int
Mark Parrington@mparrington.bsky.social · 2w agoPersistent regional haze & #airquality impacts of extreme Indonesia fires through Sept 2026 with daily mean PM2.5 concentrations repeatedly exceeding @who.int guideline of 15 μg/m3 based on @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social global forecasts ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/datasets/cam... @ecmwf.int
When they care only about the price of science, but not the value.
Paul Voosen@voosen.me · 2w agoNew Horizons is now *three days away* from shutting off its two heliophysics instruments, simply because NASA has not provided the $2M in funding it had promised to the mission last year or this year. There is no science basis for shutting these off. Our earlier coverage:
Looks massively interesting (if complex)
Colin Carlson@colincarlson.bsky.social · 3w agoWhat's behind this tidal wave of epidemics? In the largest study ever conducted on emerging infectious diseases, we show that the popular explanation - "our relationship with nature is out of balance" - doesn't hold up. Out now in Nature, after half a decade of work: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
An international team of astronomers has found the first so-called microblazar. This system is composed of a massive star and a black hole of which the jet is pointed towards Earth. It could produce the fastest particles in the Milky Way 🔭 www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/en/fi...
First microblazar found could produce the fastest particles in the Milky Way
astronomie.nl
If @science.org is covering it, I guess I should share something here- we have for the first time definitively detected radio emission from a planet around another star! 🔭🧪🎢 What does this mean? Details in thread! (But TL;DR- still not aliens) 🧵 www.sciencenews.org/article/exop...
First radio waves seen from an exoplanet hint at otherworldly auroras
The gas giant Beta Pictoris b, about 63 light-years away, has the mass of 10 Jupiters and a magnetic field thousands of times as strong as Earth’s.
sciencenews.org
The story of the accidental discovery of pre-methylenomycin-C lactone, the antibiotic precursor that is more potent than its product, gets told in part II of my Resistance Rising Series. (Part 3 deals with the challenge of translating discovery to the pharmacy shelf.) www.bbc.com/audio/play/w...
BBC Audio | Discovery | Superbugs: Resistance rising, part 2
Antibiotic resistant bacteria is rising; is a great global crisis on the horizon?
bbc.com
biologist077.bsky.social@biologist077.bsky.social · 3w agoA new antibiotic, pre-methylenomycin C lactone, was just found in an old compound. It's over 100x more active against drug-resistant MRSA & VRE. This is hopeful news for tackling antimicrobial resistance.
In case you were in any doubt physics' holy trinity is Einstein, Newton, and Maxwell. A Great Man trope, yes, but also a way to convey Maxwell's real status.
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · last mo.Help! Parton Community Council has 60 days to raise £70k to buy Parton Kirk (resting place of James Clerk Maxwell). They plan to turn it into a visitor centre celebrating our great hero! The other buyers could turn it into long-term storage 😬 Even £5 would help 🙏🧪⚛️ www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...
This nails it. (But inevitably, it seems some are totally missing the satire, which is a bit depressing.)
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 4w agoI resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.
45 fact checks makes for a loooong read. As always correcting falsehoods is exhausting. TLDR, listen to the scientists not the politicians.
Damian Carrington@dpcarrington.bsky.social · 4w agoFactcheck: 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy from Reform UK, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice By @carbonbrief.org www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-re...
“If the UK develops additional oil and gas production, that does not mean an equivalent quantity of production elsewhere automatically stops. It adds additional fossil-fuel supply to an international market." Why is this point so hard for so many to grasp? climateuncensored.com/there-is-no-...
There Is No Atmospheric Exemption for British Oil and Gas - Climate Uncensored
I was recently contacted by a colleague from my days in the 1980s and 90s when I worked as an engineer in the offshore oil and gas sector. He remains in the
climateuncensored.com
Take a look at the examples Antrophic provides for research that they blocked, and it's immediately clear almost much all of it is just basic research - but research that has gotten scary-sounding names via the media. An example, put Ebola genomes into Claude Science and ask for a TMRCA > blocked!
Richard Sever@richardsever.bsky.social · last mo."chilling examples of state-sponsored biological weapons developers tapping into the rapidly advancing capabilities of leading AI models" www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/u...
Maybe this will slay the "but 1976" nonsense from UK denialists.
Simon Lee@simonleewx.com · last mo.8 years ago, I tweeted side-by-side maps from NASA GISS showing global temperatures in 1976 and 2018 – both hot summers in the UK. It subsequently went viral and was printed in the Daily Mail! The 2026 version is stark. Two locally extreme summers separated by 50 years of global climate change.
8 years ago, I tweeted side-by-side maps from NASA GISS showing global temperatures in 1976 and 2018 – both hot summers in the UK. It subsequently went viral and was printed in the Daily Mail! The 2026 version is stark. Two locally extreme summers separated by 50 years of global climate change.
If you feel like donating to the RNLI, here’s a link. I just have. Their minimum donation is £2: I think it might be nice for them to receive a lot of donations this week, even if they’re mostly very modest. Just so they know a lot of people out here appreciate their work. rnli.org/support-us/g...
Donate to the RNLI and help save lives at sea
Your donations really make a difference. We depend on your generosity to educate people to stay safe and prevent tragedies on and offshore. Donate here.
rnli.org
In other news, thousands of climate scientists say for decades that climate change could kill huge numbers of people and destabilize the world, and experience shows they were right all along, but it's deemed less thrillingly doomy to tackle seriously, so here we are.
Cloud storage just reminded me of this scene I snapped long ago, of a heron ignoring the instruction of the sign it was perched on.
I just signed this open letter to RNLI volunteers saying that Britain values their service. In case anyone else wants to sign act.38degrees.org.uk/act/rnli-tha...
An open letter in support of the volunteers and staff at the RNLI
This is a disgrace. Brave RNLI volunteers being called scum for risking their lives to save others at sea is just plain wrong. So I've signed an open letter of thanks for the RNLI letting them know th...
act.38degrees.org.uk
Excellent read. Just heard another AI prophet on #r4today declare our minds are too puny to perceive the terrors the technology might wreak - like some latter-day nonconformist preacher wailing the end is nigh, drunk on the attention of being the chosen interlocutor in this existential conversation.
Philipp Markolin@philippmarkolin.eurosky.social · last mo."The observation that the most alarmist claims about A.I.’s impact seem to come from the individuals most connected to Rationalism should anger us. This exaggerated grimness makes it easy to overlook the more immediate harms created by these technologies" www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/o...
How many people died? Why counting disaster fatalities is harder than it looks. An article first published on PreventionWeb by Lakshman Srikanth and myself. eos.org/thelandslide...
The cancellation of USAID in 2025 hit hard in the African country of Malawi. In the first of a series supported by the Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Science Magazine, we look at the impact the cuts have had on the country. bit.ly/4yqdVTN
