This misunderstanding somehow went unchallenged for the decades that followed

When I was little I heard the phrase "rainy day fund" or "saving for a rainy day" and deduced that the rainy day in question was a time when you were really bored and needed a little treat, like being stuck inside because it's raining. Rainy day fund = little treat fund.

My super department @warwicklifesci.bsky.social is hiring 6 assistant profs in the wake of recent retirements. We're looking for people in microbiology/infection, cellular disease / immunity; environmental biology; and plant/crop science. #MicroSky warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/lang-en-G...

6 at once! 😲

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

a cartoon pikachu with a surprised look on his face . Alt: a cartoon pikachu with a surprised look on his face .

Hi! I'm a scientist studying artificial stuff in animal nests, and I'm looking for a #Pokémon expert. 🌍 Yup, I found some Pokémon in a nest!! 😲

Specifically, the question concerns dating pieces of packaging, which might be tricky. Who knows EVERYTHING about Pokémon? Who can I send a DM to? 😅

A herd of young brown cows graze alongside a bike path, on a sunny morning. The path ahead crosses a cattle grid onto an iron bridge that crosses the river Cam.

Commuting on a bike across the city of Cambridge involves more cows than you might think 🐄

Huzzah! Tomorrow's Sewage Spill Day when the full stats are released on how much was discharged into rivers, lakes and coasts last year. To whet your appetites I’ve mapped the 2025 spills at outfalls affecting bathing waters.
Here are the top 10 worst offenders in reverse order:

Department of Veterinary Medicine is open for the #CambridgeFestival West Campus open day! Come and explore our activities and talks! @camvetschool.bsky.social @cambridgefestival.bsky.social

Wonderful! I hope you have a lovely concert as well! It is a challenging piece of music but so rewarding!

#Microbiology question for the masses!
Why might a bug grow on Columbia w blood, but barely survive on Columbia chocolate format? The base medium is almost identical, just slightly less peptone I think. No abx in either. 🧐

You can now view a tree of 2,399,238 bacterial genomes we made from AllTheBacteria (on the great Taxonium):
taxonium.org/atb
That's a big tree!

(unless you're used to SC2 trees)

Turns out that with a novel species, most origin tools just look for dnaA.

In the end, we pulled it together using manual examination of GC skew and read depth, judicious use of OriFinder, and similarity of the terminal dif sequence to other bacteria!

3x rRNA, 39 tRNAs! I don't have doubling time to hand, but it's pretty slow. Routine culture time is 48h.

It all began when I let the assembler automatically rotate the genome... and then realised that lots of important stuff seemed to be on the wrong strand.

This is a fascinating thread!

I am working with a species that keeps dnaA very near to its terminus 🙃 And rpoB/C are about halfway between origin and terminus. I wonder what would happen to it if these genes moved around the chromosome!

Fishbourne Roman Palace 🐬
Everyone went there!

The destruction of short courses and continuing education departments in UK universities did enormous harm to the ability of these three realms of archaeology - amateur, academic, professional - to overlap and interact, and destroyed longstanding alternative career paths.

General Board meeting about veterinary education at the University of Cambridge Statement on veterinary education at the University of Cambridge

Statement from the University on the future of the vet school. www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news...

Cambridge University has just announced that the proposal to close its undergraduate course in veterinary medicine, which would have led to the end of its Vet School and Hospital, has been dropped.

The vets will carry on with the reforms they had already launched and the course continues. Victory!!

a group of goats standing in a grassy field looking at the camera Alt: a group of goats running towards the camera

I don't think that the reviewers asking me for higher animal numbers really understand how many 40 goats are. Do you know the CHAOS that comes with dealing with 40 GOATS in an experimental setting!
Mice people cannot comprehend.
3 goats alone ate a tarp, a clock, and 2 expensive accelerometers!

'Smiling' fossil discovered in Northumberland The unusual looking fossil is estimated to be a few hundred million years old dating to the Carboniferous period.

[Lindisfarne]

Me: (chanting) teeth, teeth-

Other fossil hunters: teeth, TEETH

British Geological Society: [pounding its clipboard] TEETH, TEETH, TEETH!

A metagenomics approach to discover novel plastic degrading microbial pathways at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - A metagenomics approach to discover novel plastic degrading microbial pathways at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

Bit different from our usual work
A PhD applying metagenomics to identify microbial plastic degradation and metabolism, fully funded studentship (UK students only).

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

A card imitating the cover of a book. The background has a monstrous cartoon face. The title is in a 1920s style: "THE TERROR that came to town AND NOW ITS ON MY FACE and I'm INSANE because THE TERROR is on MY FACE and it's not a METAPHOR" by Otis Plonkerton.

My brother draws and prints custom cards and they're always amazing. This one apparently honours my taste in books

Dynamics of a large multidrug-resistant plasmid encoding New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 and oxacillinase-58 carbapenemases in Acinetobacter baumannii clinical isolates from a tertiary hospital in Mal... Acinetobacter baumannii carrying the bla NDM-1 gene, which encodes New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 (NDM-1), exhibits resistance to nearly all β-lactams and is not affected by β-lactamase inhibitors, l...

New paper out with colleagues from Malaysia www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour... #microsky

The collapse of curiosity driven research has occurred in STEM too. Everything has to be outcomes focused - cure disease, grow better crops, etc. But so much of what humanity has discovered is from "basic" curiosity-driven science. I'm hugely in favor of funding curiosity in every discipline.

Cambridge University’s Peer-Reviewed Science and Policy Journal

We publish a wide range of articles relating to the science-policy interface, ranging from Climate Change to Emerging Technologies to Health Policy. For more information, head to our website: cjsp.org.uk The journal is part of the Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange (www.cuspe.org.uk).

Accepted article types are policy briefs, perspectives, reviews, or reports. Please contact me at sjs263 (at)cam .ac. uk if you would like to pitch or submit an article, or if you have any questions!

CJSP is a student-led peer reviewed science policy journal, published both online and in print.

I'm the current Chief Editor at CJSP, which is why you're seeing this thread 😄

For this issue we welcome diverse topics within scope, for example, the impacts of disease on conservation efforts, pandemic preparedness, vaccination policy, or agricultural pathogens and food chain resilience.

🚨Submissions open for the Cambridge Journal of Science and Policy (CJSP)! 🚨

CJSP invites submissions for Volume 7, Issue 1 under the theme "Infectious disease policy: research, surveillance, and resilience".

Manuscripts for the themed issue must be received by 6th March 2026.

Now that is an excellent idea