Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

@notjustdna.bsky.social

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Scientist and science writer from New Zealand.

BioinfoTools on Twitter.

Traveller. Cycle touring.

More later - just setting this account up!

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Urgent need for advice: I am seeing on Twitter someone with clear mental health issues currently having a breakdown and targeting his wife. They are in the US; I do not have personal contact details for either of them, and I am worried about her. What can I do from France?

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Niche piece of news that will probably only matter to Ōtautahi people... I've just heard Radio Ron (John Truman) has passed away. 😢

#NZpol: Eh? Just hearing that Simeon Brown wants to *forbid* councils from reducing speed limits 🙄😞 They pitch this as opposing Labour, but in reality they’re trying to overrule local city council planning & decisions – and the will of local citizens.

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Reply to

Dr Sarah Hendrica Bickerton 🏳️‍🌈

Sadly it has become clear that some countries are emitting more of the ozone depleting chemicals and the ozone hole is likely to start getting bigger again This is from 2014 but I'm pretty sure I've seen a more recent report www.nature.com/articles/nge...

Newly detected ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere - Nature Geosciencewww.nature.com Ozone-depleting substances emitted through human activities cause large-scale damage to the stratospheric ozone layer, and influence global climate. An analysis of unpolluted air sampled from Tasmania...

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

I was back on RNZ Nine to Noon today, sharing some interesting new research on extreme weather, fast fashion recycling, and lower speed limits (10 mins) www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

Science: More extreme weather, 'fast fashion' fixwww.rnz.co.nz Science commentator Laurie Winkless joins Kathryn with three new studies: the first focuses on what climate change is set to do to New Zealand's weather patterns in the coming years. Researchers in th...

#NZpol: A quick note on just one of Seymour’s points, “improving child immunisation rates will be critically dependent on Pharmac’s role in vaccines” Really? My impression is the major issues are access to med. services within NZ, and education/awareness of need www.teaonews.co.nz/2024/07/16/s...

Seymour tells Pharmac to stop embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi across health sectorwww.teaonews.co.nz In the letter, Seymour believed that embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi across the health sector was not an appropriate expectation to place on Pharmac.

In grumpy news, I’m sick of having to re login into BlueSky every day, sometimes more than once a day. Grr.

In after dinner news, Malaysian peanut satay is yum 😊

Sadly this seems a perennial. Civil disruptions are also disease hotspots. It’s one key reason we haven’t quite managed to end polio. They bring back infections we really ought to be able to manage and keep at low levels, if not keep out.

This is devastating to see as war and vaccine disinformation continue to hamper efforts to protect our children -so many kids with zero vaccines or incomplete vaccines to completely preventable conditions 🧪

War has prevented 15m children being immunised against diseases, UN warnswww.theguardian.com Vaccine misinformation has added to crisis of collapsed healthcare and poor nutrition, Unicef and WHO report

Two loose late night thoughts: - While these sound mild infections, every human infection is more opportunity for the virus to better adapt to us - You’d think (wish) those culling infected flocks would (should) be better than most at protecting themselves

Colorado is now reporting 5 #H5 #birdflu human cases among workers culling poultry on an infected farm. All had mild symptoms; no hospitalizations. ⁦‪#CDC has confirmed 4 so far. CDC is on the ground helping the state investigate. cdphe.colorado.gov/press-releas...

Health officials confirm human cases of avian flu in Colorado poultry workers | Department of Public Health & Environmentcdphe.colorado.gov CDC confirms avian flu cases that the state first reported on FridayDenver (July 14, 2024) — In coordination with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the State Emergency Operations Center, and Cen...

Never mind the current scenario, that’s a great saying. Adding to my 'snippets' writing file.

This thirsty bitch. The Irish have a saying about someone like this: "At every wedding, he wants to be the bride; at every funeral, he wants to be the corpse."

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Such sad news. Please help Chloe out if you can.

Just learned that Chloe Anne King, who has founded Raise the Bar Hospitality Union, and has been a tireless activist for working people recently suffered a seizure caused by a brain aneurysm. A Givealittle has been set up to support her recovery givealittle.co.nz/cause/recove...

Recovery for Chloegivealittle.co.nz Support Chloe's recovery from a brain aneurysm

If you read the replies, this is *weird*. Love to know what the story is, what’s behind, the motivation, etc.

Lol, for # reasons, I just discovered that the GOP national convention is blocking New Zealand. The entire country.

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

If you're looking for an alternative to doom scrolling, you could add all the 2024 SFF books/short fiction/fanwork you've loved so far this year to the Hugo Rec Spreadsheet! Thinking about art you love AND sharing it with others? Win/Win! 🔗 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The Hugo Awards (2025)docs.google.com about Hello! 1. This sheet is currently OPEN to public contributions. 2. Please check out the RULES sheet, with organization guidelines and category explanations. 3. To see all the categories use th...

From South Africa. Rabies is a fatal disease - it’s not something you want to think "nah, she’ll be right". Advice is to stay well away from aggressive seals, and _always_ get attention for any bite, promptly. Story at The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘Everyone was paddling to get away’: seals with rabies alarm South Africa’s surferswww.theguardian.com Seals have been biting people in the first big outbreak of the disease in marine mammals, writes Nick Dall in Cape Town

Someone tell our current cost-conscious #NZ government? (For non-NZers: They’re hyper-focused on "saving money", but opposed to supporting cycleways, etc.)

“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.” “Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike, even in winter.” grist.org/biking/one-m...

One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 lossgrist.org Copenhagen, the bicycle-friendliest place on the planet, publishes a biannual Bicycle Account, and buried in its pages is a rather astonishing fact.

For those in #NZ, the researcher behind this is a NZer ⬇️ (*a friend’s daughter, little country that we are!)

Congratulations to @annewyllie.bsky.social! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Saliva-based tests offer an alternative to nasal swabbingwww.nature.com Drooling into a tube is not only more comfortable than nasal testing, it could also detect disease earlier. Drooling into a tube is not only more comfortable than nasal testing, it could also detect d...

Now all I see the top 2/3rds of all the images on BlueSky, with the bottom third white. Ha. What did I do???? 😀

First time for me: I’ve just seen an 'Intolerance' moderation.

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

For weekend readers two posts for the price of one, one by me on writer's block, the other by #Claude on machine #metaphors in biology blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingscienc... and blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingscienc...

Being all at sea - Making Science Publicblogs.nottingham.ac.uk It’s summer, but it isn’t. It is intermittently grey and rainy and stormy, with a few days of sunshine in between. In another year without a summer, namely 1816, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or so the myth goes* …. If she could sit in the Villa Diodati in gloomy weather and write, why can’t I, ...

😠 From ArsTechnica: Shady company relaunches popular old tech blogs, steals writers’ identities arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/i...

Shady company relaunches popular old tech blogs, steals writers’ identitiesarstechnica.com This doesn't just threaten writers' work—it has a corrosive effect on the web.

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Soon after Homo sapiens showed up as a species, we started to have sex with Neanderthals, 200k years ago. About 10% of their genome came from us, according to a new paper in Science. And some of our genes came from them. www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Neanderthals and modern humans mingled early and oftenwww.science.org Ancient DNA study gives a Neanderthal-eye view of prehistory, offers clues to how our cousins vanished

#NZ: FAN and NZDSOS get pinged in court, again Court orders anti-fluoridation groups to pay Hastings Council and Government $41,000 in costs www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/court-ord...

Hefty costs order leaves sour taste in mouth of anti-fluoridation groupwww.nzherald.co.nz Court case was in the public interest - campaigners says costs ruling 'really unfair'.

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Just a reminder this minister purposefully left out $46 billion dollars of benefits on smoke free out of cabinet papers.. #nzpol #NewZealand newsroom.co.nz/2024/04/12/m...

So its ok to do crime now? #nzpol #newZealand

Minister left $46b benefit of smokefree reforms out of Cabinet papernewsroom.co.nz Without the smokefree reforms passed in 2022, New Zealand would only reach its goal of a five percent smoking rate in 2061, officials told Casey Costello

Worth remembering (drill down to the the post Ward quotes) In my case some disabilities from birth, via congenital rubella - with more to be added in time.

As someone whose plans for the future went from "I should be able to retire at 65" to "I don't know if my body will hold up that long" within the span of the last two years, I urge all of you to remember this.

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

we are now on the *fourth* distinct mode of ACE2 binding in coronaviruses, this time from a distinct clade of merbecovirus. incredibly, not only does it not overlap the sarbecovirus, NL63 *or* NeoCoV/PDF-2180 sites, it's *50Å away on the ACE2 extracellular domain*: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Sir Ashley backs top official who expressed his dismay at the governments repeal of smokefree legislation, citing the oaths Drs take to ‘do no harm’. Be nice to see the Drs in government express a similar view, this repeal is a shocking act of legislative violence that will result in many deaths.

Stuffwww.stuff.co.nz

A suggestion/thought: Try not default to restricting replies? I can understand people wanting to block replies to, say, those you follow on aggressive platforms like X-Twitter, esp. on contentious topics, but perhaps think if it’s really helpful on innocent topics here? For example - 1/n

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

poops.nz Updated dashboard -New Zealand wastewater COVID-19 surveillance. Week ending 7 July. Nationally, levels decreased again. Levels at most of 25 sites tested are less than 4 weeks ago. Variant analysis on up to 20 sites show that KP.3 is at 65% nationally by week ending 30 June.

#HIV prevention Impressive results, although cost looks to be an obstacle -

Lenacapavir did so well at preventing HIV infection that it hit the threshold where the only ethical thing to do was stop the randomized trial and immediately offer it to literally every participant. That's huge news. www.npr.org/sections/goa...

A new way to prevent HIV delivers dramatic results in trialwww.npr.org The testing of lenacapavir was halted because results were so impressive — 100% effectiveness. The decision was made to give all participants the injection rather than the alternative daily pill.