Jeff Dean (the Biochemist) @jeffdean@qoto.org

Anyone out there in #PopGen #Populationgenomics #RNAseq or #Molecular biology have any leads on where to buy duplex-specific nuclease? Main provider is a Russian and unavailable to most because of sanctions. I have not been an alternative supplier or enzyme. Please boost!

Did you know?

There are at least 2,700 species of wasp in Ireland and only 7 of those are the black and yellow picnic wreckers!

Some are big, but most are small or tiny. They still play a huge part in the control of flies, beetles and other insects and invertebrates.

When you see them up close though... WOW!

This is male Trichopria wasmanni, a wasp of the Diapriidae family. He is only a couple of millimetres long.

Look at his hairy antennae!

#wasps #insects #entomology

The latest episode of the #EMBOPodcast is out today.

I spoke with Roberto di Lauro who's had a fascinating career at the NCI during the golden age of molecular biology there, in Naples - both at Federico II & running one of biology's mythical places, the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, and even served some time in the diplomatic core.

This was a fun talk about science, #SciencePolicy, #HistoryOfScience, #MolecularBiology, science in Italy and much more.

#Podcast #SciencePodcast

https://www.embo.org/podcasts/we-should-know-more-this-is-our-main-job/

🎺 Delighted that the paper describing Taxonium is now out in @eLife. It describes the challenges that the influx of millions of SARS-CoV-2 genomes posed, and how http://Taxonium.org allows you to explore the connections between them.
http://elifesciences.org/articles/82392

TIL that you can change the visibility on your posts so that, for instance, your replies to someone else's post don't get broadcast to the entire local/federated feed. Useful!

Cribbing from this GitHub issue:

Public: Publicly visible on your profile and in public timelines
Unlisted: Publicly visible on your profile and in your followers' timelines
Followers only: Visible only to people who follow you
Only people I mention: Visible only to people mentioned in this post

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon-android/issues/114

Hope you don't mind if I jump in on the conversation, but have you tried https://fedifinder.glitch.me ? It extracts mastodon accounts from your twitter followers/following who are here and downloads them into a file which you can merge with your account. Worked well for me.

A key thing I've learned about Mastodon: When you find people you know and want to keep up with, don't just follow them — add them to a list!

Merely following is not enough, b/c their posts may not show up in your feed at a time you're logged on. Unlike FB or Twitter, Mastodon has no algorithm to resurface your friends' posts from hours or days ago.

So create a list called "Friends" and check it when you're on. This will ensure that you see what they posted while you were away.

Small #FediTip: if you encounter a message or thread that is in any way useful to you, bookmark it straight away.

Since the fediverse doesn't have full text searches, it will be very difficult to find that particular thing again a few days later. Especially if you cannot remember who posted it or it has no hashtags.

Periodically review your bookmarks to do something with them and you should be set.

So many people are having a bad first experience with Mastodon because they're using the official app which is lacking features, doesn't allow image uploads randomly, has random slowness, and doesn't give you easy access to the two most active feeds where you can find people (Local and Federated).

Please switch to Metatext, Tusky, or Tooot for a better mobile experience (or even use a browser).

Out of the >15k users that joined this week, over 11k are on the official apps.

Hey, did you know you can follow hashtags and have them appear in your Home timeline?

➡️ Click a hashtag > and then at the top of the column, click the "person +" icon.

Did you know it is #SilentSunday here on Mastodon.People are posting beautiful photographs! You can follow along by following the hashtag.

(P.S. Reminder: For hashtags, instead of all lower case, use #CamelCase, it is easier for screen readers to read.)

#MastodonTip #Tip #FediTip #TwitterMigration

Another design consideration re: Mastodon is that it works well for ephemeral asynchronous communications, but for many reasons should not be counted on as an archival resource. Media attachments are periodically purged and may not be available after a week, or a month, etc. While some servers may try to preserve content forever, this may be costly and unsustainable. Creators, researchers should treat this as an ephemeral resource and make provisions for self-archiving anything important.

Animal models for long Covid, review at #PlosPathogens

"We review SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease manifestations in mice, Syrian hamsters, ferrets, and nonhuman primates (NHPs). Specifically, the virology, pathology, immune responses, and multiorgan involvement are summarized. These models are rationally examined for their use in understanding the complexities of the multiorgan involvement during Long COVID and the potential for their use in screening therapeutics such as anti-inflammatory drugs, which are currently used for treating other diseases. The aim of this review is to highlight Long COVID preclinical animal models that could be used for Long COVID research and to screen for pharmacological interventions."

#Covid19 #LongCovid #Covid #SarsCoV2

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1010741

Mastodon is developing a critical mass - the people I follow are boosting the people they follow - who I then can also follow - so I'm organically discovering goodness.