The Mendel Museum in Brno was very cool!

Spotted some Mendel merch in Brno!

Also not technically part of The Culture series which @aethonausten.bsky.social pointed out has a ton of sentient weapons.

It doesn't talk, but "The Lazy Gun" in Iain M Bank's 'Against a Dark Background' is sentient, and destroys things in a humerous manner. E.g. Causing a black hole to appear, or dropping a piano on someone. It's very Douglas Adams.

Super anti-stoked to be at #UPCON 2026 in Brno, Czechia! An entire week of upconversion at the interface of physics, chemistry, and biology! #ucnps #Upconversion #nanotech

Inflation is hitting STFC quite badly, but the wider research community is warning that STFC cutting its programmes is going to hit the “substantial portion of the UK research community that relies on STFC facilities but is funded through other UKRI research councils”, another open letter says.
🧪🔭

Was that a Battlestar Galactica Reference? :D

Oh to be a little Tardigrade walking around a microscopic volvox algae colony. 🫧🐻🧪

This sketch is insanely good!

For creepy sci-fi puppets, I have to mention - "Stookie Bill" - the real-life puppet who was the subject of the first ever television image by John Logie Baird. Stookie Bill co-starred in a 2023 episode of Doctor Who called "The Giggle", alongside Neil Patrick Harris.

The beach ball alien from Dark Star really is something. There's a direct line of descent from it to Geiger's Xenomorph!

Personally speaking, I'm looking forward to The Randy Feltface Space Opera.

Scientists tried to clone mice indefinitely – and made a grave discovery Scientists cloned 1,206 mice from one female donor over 20 years to test the limits of cloning

Fascinating!

A 20 yr study into cloning has revealed a fundamental flaw.

Repeated duplication leads to an accumulation of fatal genetic mutations. Researchers in Japan generated 1,206 cloned mice from a single female donor between 2005 & 2025.

🧪 www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Printed in a gradient of dark blue-green at the bottom through dark blue to light blue at the top, this is my 9.25” x 12.5” portrait of Japanese geochemist in the lab adjusting a round bottomed flask with other posts and an array of chemical glassware in the foreground. In the background are carved ocean waves so the top looks like sky over wavy ocean

March 22 is #WorldWaterDay & an apt birthday for Japanese #geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi (1920-2007) who created tools that allowed her to make 1st measurements of CO2 in seawater, raised the alarm about nuclear fallout, tracing it in oceans & researched peaceful uses of nuclear power. 🧪🐡👩🏻‍🔬 #histsci

Project Hail Mary is really good. Only one laboratory goof. Brilliant movie!

More new additions to my #uraniumglass collection - a beautiful set of candlesticks

A uranium glass shoe ornament - really rare to find one in the UK! #fluoresencefriday

Ryugu asteroid sample contains all five key components of DNA, scientists find A sample collected by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft from the spinning top-like asteroid contained the nucleobases adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil.

This is *very* cool...

www.space.com/astronomy/as...

What would you do with near infinite time and a multitude of arms? Learn the most complex song in existence!

Scientist Rosalyn Yalow in a lab coat holding a pipette, working at a laboratory bench with scientific equipment in the background.

Rosalyn Yalow won a #LaskerAward for developing #radioimmunoassay, a technique for detecting hormones in the blood.🩸#WomensHistoryMonth #WomenInSTEM

🧪 Learn more about her: http://ow.ly/SYoR50Nikv6

engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father’s translation of Lamarck’s ‘Genera of Shells’; her illustration allowed readers to properly identify Lamarck’s genera. She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825 & devoted herself to botany & collecting specimen, including for Kew Gardens.

Major strikes at Strathclyde Uni this week: "400+ members of Unite, working at the University of Strathclyde will take 7 days strike action next week in response to proposed job cuts and a failure by the institution to consult on organisational change."

www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/...

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

OK doke, thanks for the heads up 👍

Selfie using the internal camera of an electron microscope!

I get the sense that mirror life really polarises opinions.😅

About — Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

I just found out about the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund - promoting research into the risks and mitigation of mirror life #mirrorlife #chirality #chemsky #biology

www.mbdialogues.org/about

What's 2026 like? Do you still use clipart?

No, powerpoint now has hundreds of tiny people expressing all sorts of various emotions in high resolution

I'm mainly here for the science feed, which is a less sassy version of my science-focused old-school twitter

"Detecting and controlling #mirrorlife is especially difficult because almost all diagnostic tests and tools are designed to find regular life forms"

The good news is that we have figured out an assay for mirror life - see our #ChemRxiv #preprint
chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....

#ChemSky #Biology