Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

'Reduce your flesh' is a great horror title

I was recently asked by postdocs if the way the Portuguese FCT plays a call-date & regulations guessing game every year is normal.

It's not.

"Para além da escassez de financiamento, poucas coisas há que afetem mais o trabalho científico que a imprevisibilidade. Uma vez mais, os concursos dos NIH e do ERC servem de exemplo para como as coisas devem ser feitas. Todos os anos estes concursos abrem, o período de candidaturas termina, e os resultados são anunciados nas mesmas datas."

https://www.publico.pt/2023/11/14/ciencia/opiniao/truques-subterfugios-fundacao-ciencia-tecnologia-2069198

"Our experiments confirm that GCs support the side-by-side maturation of B cells with very different BCR affinities and reveal that cells from across a wide antibody affinity spectrum generate PCs. We propose that this outcome reflects imprecise discrimination for antibody affinity by GC B cells in such settings, with the result being PC populations that approximately mirror the maturation pathways from which they develop. This provides the evolutionary benefit of seeding diverse serum antibody responses."
#Immunology #GerminalCenter

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01173-X#%20

9th International Caparica Conference on Analytical Proteomics | 23-27 June, 2024 | Caparica, Portugal --- https://icap2024.com/

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#proteomics #prot-conf

"(...) Trump has declared that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” — a phrase that, to steal from the late, great Molly Ivins, might sound better in the original German."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/opinion/columnists/trump-immigrants.html

"Scientists need the time and security to investigate questions that may lead to dead ends or, alternatively, yield new understandings of the world. This rarely happens if their research is driven by short-term responses to market demands."

https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-cultural-contradictions-of-modern-science/articles/trivial-pursuits-the-decline-of-scientific-research

Women in the U.S. expected to live six years longer than men

https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/13/life-expectancy-men-women/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon_organic

#Fungi's secrets for surviving a #hypersaline environment.

#cell_wall

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-fungi-secrets-surviving-hypersaline-environment.html

I spent this year talking to the 3 young hackers behind Mirai, the malware that once broke the internet.

This is WIRED's resulting cover story—an epic, untold, 22,000-word tale of cybercrime, friendship, chaos, betrayal, paranoia, and redemption.

Read: https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-untold-story-three-young-hackers-web-killing-monster/

A STAT investigation: UnitedHealth Group pressured clinical employees to follow an algorithm to cut off care for seriously ill older and disabled Americans — while profits soared.

https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/14/unitedhealth-algorithm-medicare-advantage-investigation/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon_organic

This morning I had the honor of addressing the Macquarie Uni School of Natural Sciences at their annual research retreat.

This afternoon they turned me loose in the glorious Lane Cove National Park, where had I met this delightful fellow. A cockatoo, of course, was the one who located him for me. Cockatoo was absolutely losing his shit even though echidnas are harmless to cockatoos.

Joan Miro. The Poetess, 1940.

#Painting

For the #FolktaleWeek2023 prompt ink I chose a story from Japanese folklore of the suzuri no tamashii. This is my hand-printed lino block print of the Japanese yokai, a sort of supernatural spirit. Specifically it’s what’s called a tsukumogami, a type of spirit which can arise from an object which is used for 100 years, and then it comes alive.
🧵1/n

#linocut #printmaking #folklore #folktale #JapaneseFolklore #yokai #suzuriNoTamashii #samurai #MastoArt

Check out the recent @preLights posts that discuss preprints in #cellbio!
Our featured preLight is written by Preethi Krishnaraj and Chee Kiang Ewe covering work from Matthew McCoy & Andrew Fire.
https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/136/21/p2101/334702/preLights-in-cell-biology-November-2023