Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

AUTOCRACY INC reviewed by the BBC's John Simpson, who remembers "disagreeing with me genteelly at editorial meetings in the early 1990s"
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/17/autocracy-inc-by-anne-applebaum-review-the-devil-you-know?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks

The #OpenAccess 101 series kicks off Aug. 6 @ 3-4 pm ET. Sign up now to learn about the foundations of open practices - or get a refresher. Perfect for those with OA responsibilities on campus. Free & open to all. Thanks to @ScNotebook team for partnering.

http://sparcopen.org/news/2024/open-access-101-foundations-for-oa-work-in-a-rapidly-evolving-landscape

“I know you’re trying to skirt around it,” says Benjamín Labatut when I put to him that his books concern people of unworldly intelligence working on problems that are maximally deep, “but the best way to sum it up is: ‘Why am I interested in mad scientists?’” Fair play. There’s no getting away from it: that’s exactly what his richly satisfying, deeply researched books are about.'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/13/people-say-my-book-gave-them-a-panic-attack-when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world-author-benjamin-labatut

' Japanese disaster food — which also goes by the names bōsaishoku (disaster-prevention food), bichikushoku (food reserves), hozonshoku (preserved food), and hijōshoku (emergency food) — is wonderfully diverse. There’s dehydrated mushroom risotto, freeze-dried chicken stew, and canned mackerel in miso and sesame. Ready-to-eat food packets range from Japanese classics like nikujaga (beef and potato stew), oden (fish cakes and vegetables in savory-sweet broth), and curry to more globally recognizable dishes like pasta carbonara and beef stroganoff. Some meals come with a built-in heating unit. One company claims that its meals will keep for 25 years. For dessert, there’s Toyo Foods’ canned matcha cheesecake, Izameshi’s anko mochi (pounded rice cakes with sweet red bean paste), or Imuraya’s yōkan (sweet jellied red bean paste), which won an award from the Disaster Prevention Safety Association.'

https://www.eater.com/24194897/japan-saigaishoku-disaster-food-emergency-rations

'Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermine or silence their work documenting false and misleading internet content. The claim is that online misinformation researchers are trying to silence conservative voices. The evidence suggests just the opposite.'
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr3820

'Correlation is not causation: this simple and uncontroversial statement has far-reaching implications. Defining and applying causality in biomedical research has posed significant challenges to the scientific community. In this perspective, we attempt to connect the partly disparate fields of systems biology, causal reasoning, and machine learning to inform future approaches in the field of systems biology and molecular medicine'

https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44320-024-00041-w

'Global vaccine coverage has yet to return to 2019’s levels, before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted immunisation programmes. That year, 12.8 million children were classed as “zero-dose” and a further 5.5 million as under-vaccinated.

More than half of the world’s zero-dose children live in 10 countries, which officials said were “a mix of those with large birth cohorts, weak health systems or both”'

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jul/15/war-conflict-immunisation-vaccination-vaccine-hesitancy-nutrition-disease-children-who-unicef-measles-hpv?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

'Isto em nada implica descurar a investigação básica, cujos resultados são impossíveis de prever, e que é fundamental precisamente por isso. Mas que deve ser, além de apoiada, devidamente explicada. Sobretudo, explicada de maneira a envolver a comunidade, não usando um tom professoral para recetores passivos, algo que em comunicação de ciência se designa por “modelo do défice”. Por mais boa vontade que se tenha, há sempre a sensação de alguma arrogância neste tipo de iniciativas, que pode afastar as pessoas a quem se dirige, acabando por cristalizar numa bolha que inclui apenas os já convertidos.'
https://www.publico.pt/2024/07/15/ciencia/opiniao/ciencia-comunidade-2097321

'Lisbon-based Somai Pharmaceuticals, which is involved in the extraction, development and distribution of medical cannabis products, is seeking €250mn as a “reasonable” valuation in a Nasdaq IPO, with a secondary listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange or the LSE, said chief executive Michael Sassano.'

https://www.ft.com/content/e5e099b5-d7c9-4281-b370-79cb437459e6

'(...) Enger was later arrested and sentenced to six years and three months, Norway’s longest-ever stretch for theft. Hill joked: “‘The Scream’ was stolen by a bunch of Oslo no-hopers. I suppose you could say it was Norwegian organised crime: two men and a ladder.”

https://www.ft.com/content/30c7f586-e3bd-445c-af55-d46814283d60

'Meanwhile, since 2005, more than two thousand dogs have been successfully cloned. Biologically, their genesis is not very different from that of cloned cows or sheep, but in other respects the cloning of pets is far more uncanny.'
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/01/would-you-clone-your-dog

"HuR is a crucial regulator of glutaminase RNA metabolism in breast cancer that affects different aspects of mRNA metabolism, such as mRNA stability and splicing. Overall, HuR coordinates glutamine metabolism through the TCA cycle, and its depletion renders cells more dependent on glutamine for growth and migration and more sensitive to glutaminase inhibition."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49874-x#Sec10

'This is obvious gaming of the system, in order to benefit people who are being evaluated by systems that are themselves set up like some sort of game. It reminds me of the old Soviet joke, "As long as they pretend to pay me, I'll pretend to work". But surely there are better ways to spend ones time and effort - and surely the scientific literature is not served by having yet more garbage dumped into it. I know, this is all happening down in the Lower Depths of the mass of published papers, but floods of sewage need to be addressed in general even if they're not washing over your driveway.'

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/more-citation-weirdness

'We pair this with a discussion about who has the power to make these changes, from funders to administrators to teachers and people outside of academia. The aim is to teach students that there are people behind the decisions and priorities of academia and research, and thus these issues can be addressed by getting the right people involved.'

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcp.31352?utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack

'In this article, we discuss the potential role of N-of-1 trials in cancer drug development in the era of personalized cancer medicine. We also elaborate on a suggested modified design for N-of-1 trials able to overcome limitations and make this concept more applicable to clinical oncology.'

https://aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscovery/article/13/6/1301/726949/N-of-1-Trials-in-Cancer-Drug-Development

'A situação em Gaza é inimaginável e a inação da União Europeia compromete a sua credibilidade como agente de paz. Para construir a paz na Europa, a União Europeia precisa de um discurso sério e coerente sobre a paz, para ser levada a sério pelo mundo.'

https://www.tsf.pt/61549809/catarina-martins-a-tsf-uniao-europeia-tem-dois-pesos-e-duas-medidas-nos-varios-conflitos/

'Over the four-week tournament, football fans from England to Georgia discovered often to their surprise just how unreliable the trains were. “If it wasn’t already clear, the [experience during the] Euros showed just what a problem Deutsche Bahn has with reliability and punctuality”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/15/germany-close-key-rail-corridor-overhaul-train-network-deutsche-bahn