It's nobody's fault of course but sometimes it feels even academics forget that papers from writing to publication usually take prob more than a year. And that's part of the whole point. Slower than frenetic news and slower than blog posts is good actually because it is required for the process.
Many nascent breeding programs cross locally‑elite lines but lack structured gene‑pool design. This study compares genomic approaches to infer elite gene pools, showing that QTL‑based inference plus iso‑elite crosses boosts genetic gain in simulated forward‑breeding programs.
Astronomers have completed the largest 3D map of the universe ever made.
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4tTqtAF
Some day I’ll figure out how to work this into a talk
Sounds interesting
Science is good. We should fund it.
#Biodiversity science laments how little is known about the planet’s biodiversity, yet routinely discards much of the taxonomic evidence generated during species description. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Weekend spins 4/n
Marcos Valle - Jet-Samba (2005)
Rocinante, Três Selos, Dubas R3-058/TSPL-098
Brasil, 2024
#vinyl #bossanova #jazz
Weekend spins 3/n
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire (1973)
Columbia KC 31996
US pressing, 1973
#vinyl #fusion
Weekend spins 2/n
P J Harvey - Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)
Island Records #0898541
Reissue, 2021
#vinyl #record
Weekend spins 1/n
John Abercrombie - Timeless
ECM Records #2301 047 (1975)
Brasil, Reissue, 1983
#vinyl #records #jazz #fusion #postbop
Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us
A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)
More context on this #Artemis II image:
* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right
* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕
Some first-rate science writing: For this story, @jdrakephd.bsky.social carefully read our recent paper and then we spent a very fun 90 minutes or so talking on zoom. His article that gets right to the heart of our model, explains it clearly, and then explores why it will matter in the future.
A hand holding the record jacket of Damien Jurado's Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, front cover, a ficus lyrata to the right, and a record stand with a turntable and a receiver to the left
A hand holding the record jacket of Damien Jurado's Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, back cover, a ficus lyrata to the right, and a record stand with a turntable and a receiver to the left
Damien Jurado - Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son
Secretly Canadian, 2014 (SC295)
#vinyl #vinylcollector
This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results.
(One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...
Excited so share our newest study using a single-library HiFi-CiFi approach to generate chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of two vole genomes, identifying putative drivers of divergent pair-bonding behavior, namely a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a gene, led by @mabuelanin.bsky.social
Brasília has its own Octagonal Sector
An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.
¿Hiciste tu doctorado en México? ¿Quieres hacer un postdoc en California? ¿Te interesa la genética evolutiva? ¡Checa esta beca y mándame un mensaje! alianzamx.universityofcalifornia.edu/research-and...
Confused writing is usually a symptom of confused thinking. As we struggle to clarify writing, we clarify our thoughts. AI writing aids rob us of that struggle, leaving clean-looking text and thoughts still confused for lack of inspection. Writing is not just a product; it is a diagnostic tool.
Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material Text reads: "The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"
It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ
Asking for a friend: Colleague was shipping purified RNA samples from Brazil to Macrogen Korea. She had a FedEx prepaid shipping label provided by Macrogen. FeDex returned shipment because this was a biological sample. Anyone else had an issue like this?
Asking for a friend: Colleague was shipping purified RNA samples from Brazil to Macrogen Korea. She had a FedEx prepaid shipping label provided by Macrogen. FeDex returned shipment because this was a biological sample. Anyone else had an issue like this?
FastGA: Fast Genome Alignment www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪 www.github.com/thegenemyers...
It may be true (I don't know enough neuroscience to say) that LLMs & human brains use similar techniques to make connections between concepts & learn. But most humans don't speak confidently & coherently about something unless they actually know it. The ones who do... well, we have words for them.
I expect that consumer-facing AI programs will continue to improve and they may become much more useful tools for everyday life in the future.
But I think it was a disastrous mistake that today’s models were taught to be convincing before they were taught to be right.
