Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

Reindeer are a little unusual among deer. In most species, only males grow antlers, but in reindeer, these big old head bones are a perfectly normal feature for females, too! And how and why they grow antlers is rather interesting...

This is easily my favorite preprint title of the past couple of months: "Artificial bees collect diverse conformers of small organic molecules"
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.18600.pdf

"The European Commission’s statements indicate education, research and innovation talks will progress in parallel to the future wider Swiss-EU negotiations. They follow a declaration on November 8 by the Swiss government that it would decide its overall negotiating position by the end of the year for the next stage of talks to regulate its long-term relationship with the EU."

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/explainer--can-switzerland-rejoin-horizon-europe-and-erasmus--in-2024-/49011354

"Ainda em setembro, quando foi confirmada a presença dos mosquitos Aedes Albopictus na região de Lisboa, a Direção-Geral da Saúde (DGS) criou uma taskforce para monitorizar a evolução do inseto, juntando vários especialistas e reforçando a vigilância destas espécies em todo o país."

https://expresso.pt/sociedade/2023-11-27-A-busca-pelos-mosquitos-da-dengue-e-zika-em-Portugal-como-sao-onde-vivem-que-riscos-trazem-e-quais-os-cuidados-a-ter-em-casa-f4a8fcc3

"Detailed media reports show them hounding poor patients for money, cutting nurse staffing too aggressively and giving preferential treatment to the rich over the poor. Nurses and other workers recently resorted to strikes to improve workplace safety at Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/opinion/hospitals-nonprofit-community.html

'Elliot Erwitt con su imagen de perros más famosa, en una exhibición el 29 de noviembre de 1994.
STEVEN SIEWERT (GETTY IMAGES)' https://elpais.com/cultura/2023-12-01/muere-elliot-erwitt-el-fotografo-de-los-ninos-y-los-perros.html

Protip:

"I include two guest lectures from my university’s librarians: one on literature searching and reference management, and one on “deep reading”. University librarians are, in my experience, eager to help with teaching; I strongly recommend involving them in a writing course (or, for that matter, in any other course)."

https://scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2020/05/26/steal-this-updated-syllabus-for-scientific-writing/

"O coordenador do programa do PSD para as eleições legislativas de 2011, Eduardo Catroga, escreveu uma carta a Ricardo Salgado, depois de os sociais-democratas terem conquistado o poder e cujo conteúdo sugere o envolvimento do então presidente do Banco Espírito Santo (BES) na elaboração das medidas propostas pelo partido para sanear o sector bancário, numa época em que o seu império já vivia grandes dificuldades, mas quando elas ainda não eram do conhecimento público"

https://expresso.pt/investigacao/2023-11-30-Esta-tratado-o-que-falamos-Ricardo-Salgado-ajudou-a-desenhar-programa-eleitoral-do-PSD-de-Passos-Coelho-em-2011-a3e3edfe

'Pese al criterio de los expertos en Estados Unidos, la legislación antitrans avanza imparable. Hay un gráfico elocuente que compara el mapa del país el 1 de enero de 2021 con el de este otoño. En el de la izquierda, los 50 Estados aparecen en blanco. En el de la derecha, lucen coloreados los 22 que han aprobado leyes que prohíben a los menores el acceso a los tratamientos de género.'

https://elpais.com/sociedad/2023-12-03/no-podemos-seguir-aqui-las-familias-con-menores-trans-en-ee-uu-que-huyen-de-los-estados-republicanos.html

December. For many years this time of the year meant rush, pressure and huge stress to me. I had to think over a lot and change a lot to enjoy this time again. First, I stopped buying - new ornaments and many unnecessary things. Avoiding shops and crowds in December is the best thing I could do for myself. And if I want some new Xmas ornaments I use old baubles and paint them with acrylic paint or make paper ornaments.

#RepairReuseRecycle #diy #MonochromePhotography #MonochromeMonday

Globally, #obesity is on the rise.

Ann Marie Schmidt looks at how research over the past 20 years has changed the way we view obesity and what the future might hold.

https://plos.io/483SJFE

Are we being too harsh on quantitative #metrics for researcher assessment?

John Ioannidis & Zacharias Maniadis argue for using rigorous, field-adjusted, centralized, quantitative metrics to help improve research practices as a low-cost public good.

https://plos.io/4167hTa

My brother just got hit by a really insidious bank scam. Scammers spoofed caller ID with citibank’s real online banking number and tell him “there was a fraudulent Zelle transfer from your account. Call Zelle at this number.” Fake-Zelle rep confirms fake case numbers that fake-Citi gave him, dazzles with still more bullshit and gets him to actually transfer money to them under some plausible sounding “fix” pretext. Slick. Citi says it’s a new one on them and are investigating ASAP.

Alexandre Dumas père, one of the most prolific and most popular French authors of the 19th century died #OTD in 1870. Close to the Romantics and turned towards the theater, he first wrote a successful vaudeville and historical dramas. A prolific writer, he then turned to historical novels such as the Musketeers trilogy, or Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, La Reine Margot and La Dame de Monsoreau. The authorship of some of his works is disputed.

Alexandre Dumas at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/492

#books

#RiboSeq suggests pervasive translation of noncanonical short ORFs, but shotgun MS detects very few - why? @aaronwacholder & @carvunis explore this, showing that shotgun MS has intrinsically low sensitivity for small, low-abundance proteins #PLOSBiology https://plos.io/3t8CfgI