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'Those careers are now few and far between. About 60% of life scientists who earned a Ph.D. in 1963-64 secured tenure within 10 years. But by 2021, only 3.5% of biology Ph.D.s working at universities had been tenured within a decade of graduating, according to a National Science Foundation survey.'

statnews.com/2023/06/06/postdo

'Here, we summarize progress and challenges in the development of broad-spectrum antivirals that target either viral elements (proteins, genome structures, and lipid envelopes) or cellular proviral factors co-opted by multiple viruses via newly discovered compounds or repurposing of approved drugs.'

jci.org/articles/view/170236

'What’s more surprising is that, of all the online search experiments that took place during this period – including commercially focused search systems like Lockheed’s Dialog, which has since become an enterprise product – SUPARS mimicked contemporary web search more closely than any other, prefiguring several primary features of web-search protocols we rely on more than 50 years later.'

aeon.co/essays/the-1970s-libra

'This is where an editor steps in, a reader invested in the text but also distant enough from it to see it analytically and manipulatively. To prove this point: my best editors have been those who saw in my drafts something I had not seen myself, who pointed out to me the hidden (from me, the author) lacunae where the text could grow—or redundancies that had to be cut altogether.'

lithub.com/revise-revise-anna-

'Decreased access to biomarker testing can result in delays of appropriate treatment, poor outcomes related to use of ineffective treatment and lack of access to clinical trials with biomarker-based entry criteria. Thus, the opportunities to receive benefits of precision oncology are most realized in high-income, urban and academic settings.'

nature.com/articles/s43018-023

"Similarly, reproductive aging and women’s health are finally on the scene: several initiatives have recognized not only that reproductive cessation is the earliest aging phenotype, but also that menopause itself (which is about 15 years later than reproductive aging, so not interchangeable) can cause aging, and that mid-life health may ultimately determine future longevity. This, plus the acknowledgment that female animals are important to study in all aspects of biology, may lead to the end of ignoring 50% of the aging population’s needs."

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/

Tips on how to write an article title, courtesy of Public Library of Science (PLOS ). The second "don't" is a plea to resist temptation.

Heed it.

plos.org/resource/how-to-write

'As a neuroscientist who works with flies, Tuthill knew that insect nervous systems shut down when the creatures get too cold, so even species that can tolerate subzero temperatures tend to do so by entering a dormant state. And yet here were insects, running about in apparent defiance of both biology and physics. “It immediately blew my mind,” Tuthill told me. That’s how he came to study snow flies.'

theatlantic.com/science/archiv

"As demonstrated in The US and the Holocaust—a six-hour documentary series directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein that aired on PBS last fall and is now available for streaming—antisemitic, xenophobic, and racist groups in American society had long used their political power to keep out immigrants perceived as undesirable, including Jews."

nybooks.com/articles/2023/06/2

Alzheimer's went into the textbooks with n=2

Many of you might know (or not) that Alzheimer's disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer who first reported that the brains of some patients with age-related dementia had "a peculiar substance" (which today we know as beta-amyloid plaques).

But did you know that he found that in exactly 2 patients that he studied before his boss put it in a 1910 textbook and coined it "Alzheimer's disease"? That substance could have been a complete coincidence! (And in that case, I guess we never would have heard about it again) ...

mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546010

"Typing and retyping as if you know where you're going is a version of what therapists tell you to do when they suggest that you try changing from the outside in - that if you can't master the total commitment to whatever change you want to make, you can at least do all the extraneous things connected with it, which make it that much easier to get there."
- Nora Ephron.

nytimes.com/1986/11/09/books/r

'This is where an editor steps in, a reader invested in the text but also distant enough from it to see it analytically and manipulatively. To prove this point: my best editors have been those who saw in my drafts something I had not seen myself, who pointed out to me the hidden (from me, the author) lacunae where the text could grow—or redundancies that had to be cut altogether.'

lithub.com/revise-revise-anna-

Rogue right-wing governor is repeatedly engaging in human trafficking. He’s violating the law, abusing state funds and state power, and deceiving helpless migrants. Why isn’t this a bigger story? theguardian.com/us-news/2023/j

A federal judge has ruled Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is likely unconstitutional and has issued an injunction halting enforcement of the ban.

Happy Pride, and thank you, federal judiciary!

Craig White & Dustin Marshall discuss in their JEB100 Commentary how they have developed a new theory to explain the evolutionary origin of metabolic scaling, presenting an overview of the approach and its limitations

#science #biology #zoology #comparativephysiology

journals.biologists.com/jeb/ar

File this one under "big if true":

"For decades, it was typical to use pelvic radiation. But the radiation puts women into immediate menopause and damages sexual function in men and women. It also can injure the bowel, causing issues like chronic diarrhea. Patients risk pelvic fractures, and the radiation can cause additional cancers.

Yet radiation treatment, the study found, did not improve outcomes."

nytimes.com/2023/06/04/health/

Let's hope they lose big.

'The pharmaceutical company Merck on Tuesday sued the government over a federal law that empowers Medicare for the first time to negotiate prices directly with drugmakers.'

nytimes.com/2023/06/06/busines

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