Dear @dev-journal.bsky.social, do you know what makes your claim of "format-free submission" a LOT less credible?

Having in place ridiculously arcane formatting rules for submission!

This must change!

It’s been a tough few weeks. My 10yo daughter was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive cancer called interdigitating dendritic cell sarcoma (IDCS). I’m reaching out to identify clinicians/patients who have encountered pediatric IDCS or other (non-LCH) dendritic or histiocytic sarcomas cases.

100% this experience on multiple previous occasions.

Sharing in the worm community is outstanding!

Easy choice! This is incredible.

What makes you say that the "to-be-ignored" reviews are on average detrimental to the system?

De novo designed proteins neutralize lethal snake venom toxins - Nature Deep learning methods have been used to design proteins that can neutralize the effects of three-finger toxins found in snake venom, which could lead to the development of safer and more accessible an...

Here's something astounding:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Strongly endorse:

It always is!

Matt, it really was a fund read. A nice piece of classical genetic analysis that calls on diverse data types for support. What not to like?

Plus the writing - "With a bit of tedious book keeping..." Dude!

👌

Parental-effect gene-drive elements under partial selfing, or why do Caenorhabditis genomes have hyperdivergent regions? Abstract. Self-fertile Caenorhabditis nematodes carry a surprising number of Medea elements, alleles that act in heterozygous mothers and cause death or de

A nice piece of work by @wormsrock.bsky.social.

Highly recommend!

academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

You should try it at school drop off/pick up more often.

Just sayin'

I suspect all of us had reviews like this. Conservation is NOT a review criterion at the NIH. No harm in pointing that out.

A larger problem is the insane reliance on proposals to decide what should be funded.

I would trade OA publishing and players to be named later, for the system to change.

Streptomyces secretes a siderophore that sensitizes competitor bacteria to phage infection - Nature Microbiology A secondary metabolite sensitizes competitor Bacillus subtilis to a wide panel of lytic phages by sequestering iron and preventing the activation of Spo0A.

"Primarily" is a high standard to match, but I thought this study was cool.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It depends on what the meaning of the word "species" is.

(just a reminder... Funny sayings by famous people for 100)

Care to estimate the relative frequency of these four categories in 2024?

Also, how about A, B, C for Category 4 (Huge, Medium, Minor)?

Meta-analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing co-expression in human neural organoids reveals their high variability in recapitulating primary tissue Although human neural organoids are commonly used to study brain development, it is unclear how well they replicate the biology of primary tissue. These authors conduct a meta-analysis to compare over...

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

!

I am a little more positive re peer review, though I largely agree with you. But... because the current situation is unsatisfying does not mean it won't get worse if we scrap journals/review. We have recent experience - changes that were supposed to improve likely contributed to making things worse

When one is convinced that one is right, one tends to consider evidence contradicting one's conviction to be less relevant.

Best and right-est.

Are the data consistent with this take? In the 20 years of OA evangelism, the costs (per paper and overall) to investigators increased. The publishing ecosystem seems less healthy than 2-3 decades ago. Unintended consequences are a powerful force. Publishers love the current situation. Should we?

Sharp. Thoughtful. Insightful.

Probably the best thing you will read about academic publishing today, this week, this month, or this year.

DO IT!

This clean and this empty?

A nerd in a teal sweater holding a stack of books about railroads in front of a wall of framed maps.

Hi. I'm Andrew. I own New England's oldest map store because last year I moved across the country after an old guy retired and gave it to me Willy Wonka-style. Visit my store in Rhode Island. www.mapcenter.com

Combining multiple stressors blocks bacterial migration and growth Here, Sharma et al. use microfluidics to simultaneously provide a physical stressor (shear flow) and a chemical stressor (H2O2) to the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The replenishing power of shear flow increases H2O2 effectiveness 50-fold, allowing natural levels of H2O2 to block bacterial migration and growth.

Stress is bad.

Several different stresses can be too much.

A relatable experience.

@currentbiology.bsky.social

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Latitudinal gradients in air density create invisible topography at sea level, affecting animal flight costs Air density affects the costs of animal flight. This is well-established for flight at high altitude. Shepard et al. show that changes in air density cause regional differences in flight costs at sea level due to latitudinal temperature gradients. They discuss the implications for species distributions and for global change.

@currentbiology.bsky.social does it again!

Our environments are considerably more complex than we typically think. Is it really so surprising that there are broad swaths of biology we don't even know about, let alone don't know how to interpret?

www.cell.com/current-biol...

The chocolate shriveled in the Buffalo cold if you ask me.

'tis the bagels.

Natasha Staller and Gary Ruvkun, from yesterday's ceremony with the King of Sweden! 🏆