Freelance science writer, retired biochemist, wannabe novelist, disco enthusiast 🏳️🌈
Joined May 2019
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The Mattaverse retweeted
The UK’s Conservative party is on the brink of a generational wipeout. The single most important factor driving this is the dramatic breakdown of upward social mobility on.ft.com/3SSPGeP
The Mattaverse retweeted
Ok this is kinda neat:
If you give researchrabbit.ai a scientific paper it will generate a network of references and citations!
ALT screenshot of researchrabbit.ai app showing scientific papers and how they are connected
The Mattaverse retweeted
We lost Maxi Jazz one year ago today.
Never forgotten🖤
mixmag.net/feature/maxi-jazz…
The Mattaverse retweeted
Time to put the “vaccines cause excess mortality” to rest.
Large study shows CLEARLY that higher vaccination rates corresponded to lower excess mortality.
Countries that vaccinated faster had lower mortality than countries that were slower.
🎤 ⬇️
A recent peer-reviewed study evaluated the effect of vaccination & booster administration on the reduction of excess mortality during COVID-19 waves in Europe.
Analysis of the data showed that a higher vaccination rate in a country corresponded to a lower excess mortality rate.
"In summary, a significant negative linear relationship between excess mortality and vaccination rates was found only for “slower” countries. This was true both for the Delta dominant period (R=-0.8, p<0.01) and for the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 dominant period (R=-0.5, p=0.045).
We did not find significant relationships for countries in the “faster” category, likely because all countries in the “faster” category have relatively low mortality rates.
However, an inverse linear relationship between mortality and the rate of booster administration was found for the “faster” countries during the Omicron-dominated period. The greater the percentage of the population that received booster doses, the lower the mortality rate (R=-0.8, p<<0.01).
Far more people died from COVID-19 in countries that were slow to vaccinate their populations compared to countries that did it faster.
The same can be said for the speed at which countries provided additional doses of booster vaccine - the higher the speed, the fewer deaths.
The ability of rapid vaccination to save lives was best exemplified by the Delta wave, and the ability of rapid booster administration to save lives was best exemplified by the first Omicron wave."
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article…
The Mattaverse retweeted
We just noticed that the the police in "Shetland" get their DNA results in snapgene! It also appears that the suspect's genome is a plasmid! 😂
The Mattaverse retweeted
I clicked sort by age. There are 6 pages of these before you get to the one year olds.
The Mattaverse retweeted
I am ashamed to be British. I am ashamed that in the 21st century, my country, which has spilled blood around the world for centuries, still wants more.
Government and opposition: united in support for genocide in Gaza.
#NotInMyName
The Mattaverse retweeted
‘The New York Times analysed 1,200 contracts worth nearly $22bn and found that roughly half went to companies run by friends and associates of Conservative party politicians, or with no experience in that area.’ 1/n theguardian.com/commentisfre…
The Mattaverse retweeted
I'm sorry but the sight of Loser Fox trying to give a speech to 3 people while hundreds of others chant "LOSER" at him is so funny, so true and so life-affirming that I simply had to share it again
Racist, sexist moron Laurence Fox is drowned out by protesters as he joins a tiny group of fascists at #HonorOak pub
#LaurenceFox
@DragStoryHourUK
The Mattaverse retweeted
“Thanks everyone for comments on the draft, here it is revised with all your edits.”
The Mattaverse retweeted
My husband told me I talk about epigenetics too much…
I told him I didn’t like histone
The Mattaverse retweeted
I was introduced to this app called “Journal Club” that easily breaks down important papers within specialties. Highly recommend!
The Mattaverse retweeted
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg's cage fight set to take place in 'epic location'
news.sky.com/story/elon-musk…
The Mattaverse retweeted
A mind-blowing paper has come out today in @Nature
In 2016, JC Venter Institute scientists trimmed a bacterial genome to its barest minimum required for life to synthesize what they called a "minimal genome" (science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…).
Today, a group of scientists from Indiana University reports how that minimal genome evolved over 2000 generations in comparison to the non-minimal genome.
The authors found that even when you reduce a bacterial genome to its absolute minimum where every nucleotide matters, the genome undergoes mutational events generation after generation as much as the non-minimal genome. One simply cannot stop the evolution.
Just over 300 days of evolution (equivalent to 40,000 years in humans) the minimal cell has gained everything it lacked in fitness on day one in comparison to the non-minimal cell.
When comparing the evolved traits between the minimal and non-minimal cells, the scientists found something striking. The evolutionary process increased the cell size of non-minimal cells but not that of the minimal cell. But that is not the striking part.
The scientists were able to identify the key mutation that resulted in cell size evolution. And it turned out that the mutation that helped the non-minimal cells to grow bigger is the same that helped the minimal cells to stay smaller. Growing bigger had a survival advantage for non-minimal cells and not growing bigger had a survival advantage for minimal cells. So, the mutation had a context-dependent effect. This just demonstrates that the evolutionary effects on traits have no absolute direction. All that matter is what is beneficial for the organism's survival.
The conclusion of the paper is metaphorically a quote from the Jurassic Park movie:
“Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but . . . life finds a way". (scienmag.com/artificial-cell…)
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
The Mattaverse retweeted
Covid vaccines saved an estimated 19.8 million lives in their first year.
thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
Number of lives saved by COVID Vaccines and Paxlovid over the last 3 years is ZERO.
Add to this, the sickest people, who trust "the science", the most - multiple comorbidities/prescriptions are still not being protected.
What does "the $cience", say about this, Jon?
Or should I ask an actual doctor?