iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Mark A. Hanson

Jolyon Troscianko @jtroscianko.bsky.social · 3h

🦋 Butterfly wing patterns create motion illusions that protect them from predators! Our new study (8 years in the making) is out in Nature today doi.org/10.1038/s415... @grahancock.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @scienceanna.bsky.social @lauraakelley.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social

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Total Internal Reflection🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦 @tirscienceblog.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Great 🧵 from @hansonmark.bsky.social on why all academics should be opting to publish in non-profit journals 👏👏👏👇

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No One Upstairs @nooneupstairs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yes, to all the thread. But government assessment of universities would need to change away from for-profit, quantity & IF. Many times, the rules for assessment are made by academics who enjoy the status quo, and so we continue with these problems.

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No One Upstairs @nooneupstairs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I agree with all that! it is not just unis and funders, but also government assessment of unis that puts pressure on quantity & IFs. These bodies are, many times, ran by academics who comfortable in the status quo, thus, nothing changes. (using my alt cause I need to keep my job)

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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born OTD in 1866. If you're ever feeling that your work is uending and unedifying, remember that he once said this: "Two years work wasted, I have been breeding those flies for all that time and I've got nothing out of it." 🌱🐋🧪 #HistSTM

Photograph of Morgan's Fly Room at Columbia University, around 1920. American Philosophical Society.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I'm surprised a community of publishing writers can blame AI for the problems of peer review when those same writers cite our study, "the strain on scientific publishing", which characterizes how this problem existed before AI. bit.ly/StrainQSS It's the incentives structure, not the AI. 1/n

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

Ask the Chefs: Peer Review Capacity — Uncomfortable Truths and Overlooked Conversations - The Scholarly Kitchen

For Peer Review Week 2026, we asked the Chefs two questions: What is one uncomfortable truth about peer review that the scholarly publishing community doesn’t talk about enough? And, beyond recruiting...

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Tosin Q. Orababa @tosinorababa.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Excited to share our new publication (in mSphere) describing the mechanism of action and general bacterial (S. aureus and A. baumannii) response to Bald’s eyesalve - a reconstructed historical antimicrobial remedy. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

journals.asm.org

Uncovering the mechanism of action of a historical antimicrobial against S. aureus and A. baumannii | mSphere

The increasing mortality and economic cost of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) have made it one of the biggest threats to global health. Available antibiotics are in short supply due to the slow progres...

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University of Exeter, Cornwall @cornwall.exeter.ac.uk · 21/09/2026

Led by @hansonmark.bsky.social and Bartek Troczka at the University of Exeter Cornwall and Luke Alphey at the Univesity of York, the new project will aim to develop “genetic tools” that could protect the UK’s pollinators from population collapse. 🐝🦋

news.exeter.ac.uk

New ‘genetic tools’ could protect UK’s pollinators

Scientists aim to develop “genetic tools” that could protect the UK's pollinators from population collapse. Pollinators face mounting pressure from insecticides, habitat loss and new disease risks dri...

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Excited to finally announce we are ARIA-funded to engineer infection resilience into British Bees! My group will be characterising antimicrobial peptide - microbe interactions of bumblebees to better charactertise bee immunity, key peptides to regulate the microbiota, and principles of infection.

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Jim Woodgett @jwoodgett.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

46th Terry Fox Run. Only 10K. Terry ran 4X this distance, on one leg, every single day for 146 days, rain, snow or shine. #FinishIt

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This could be a game changer for folks working on arthropods other than Drosophila

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 14/09/2026

Your regular reminder: If the Russians stop fighting, the war ends. If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their land will be occupied, their leaders will be killed, their history and language will be erased, their children will be kidnapped to serve Russia.

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Thread. Apologies in advance, I've been grinding away for weeks on a grant with maybe a 10% success rate. Canadian researchers work in buildings held together with duct tape, run labs on shoestrings, and spend more and more time competing for lower and lower success rate operating programs.

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 13/09/2026

This will be bad for: - the students - the research progress - the universities - the towns the universities are in - the companies hiring students - the states the universities are in - the national economy - national security - the country - the world

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Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Let me bring up one example from Anthropic's report and compare the proposed research to a paper we wrote: "Genomic and phenotypic analyses suggest moderate fitness differences among Zika virus lineages". See the difference? Yeah, except the virus, me neither. journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...

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Robin May @robinmay9.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Unravelling the evolution of innate immunity in Drosophila with @hansonmark.bsky.social at the @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social meeting. Plus I learnt that Persian cats have a genetic mutation in calprotectin that makes them susceptible to ringworm...#catmysteriesexplained.

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Dr. Merritt Rae Turetsky @queenofpeat.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Forget planting trees for a second. Let's talk about BOGS. Did you know that peatlands cover a tiny 3% of Earth’s land, but store MORE CARBON than all the world's forests combined?They are an ultimate MVP of our climate system and it’s time we start hyping them. Join me! 🧵 1/

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eLife @elife.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Ever found yourself victim of the dreaded #Reviewer2? At eLife, reviewers discuss their reviews before reaching a consensus, letting you focus on how to improve. In fact, how, when and even if you revise is up to you. Learn more about our process ⬇️ elifesciences.org/about/peer-r...

elifesciences.org

Peer review and publishing at eLife · eLife

eLife is pioneering an approach to scientific publishing that combines the immediacy and openness of preprints with the scrutiny of peer review by experts.

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Marleny García Lozano @marlenygarcial.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The second chapter of my PhD thesis is out in @NatureComms 🎉!! we found that a "Yellow" protein, the same gene family known for pigmentation in many insects, has been repurposed to protect a beetle's bacterial symbiont. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Yellow protein co-opted to sustain obligate symbiosis in leaf beetles - Nature Communications

Insects have evolved diverse strategies to protect their genome-reduced symbionts during vertical transmission. Here, authors show that tortoise beetles have co-opted a Yellow protein to form spheres ...

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HHMI @hhmi-science.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

(1/2) When Janelia set out to map every neuron in the fly brain in 2008, many thought it couldn’t be done. Nearly 20 years later, a complete wiring diagram of the 166,000+ neurons of the adult male fruit fly is helping to reveal the brain’s secrets: bit.ly/4zT7jPf.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Both agree & flipside: if we do have an incredibly difficult investment in society to balance, we should just make these literal lotteries. In this scheme, something like Top 5% guaranteed, and then next 10% some mix of chance. 1/2

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Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

8.8% success rate for the ERC Starting Grant is not acceptable. It is a lottery at this point with so many great scientists and ideas left to be funded. We keep talking about the competitiveness of Europe and we can't agree to properly fund our best instrument for scientific innovation.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This looks like a really nice characterization and story. Well done to the team!

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Peter Andersen @germline.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Finally - the 🧵! So, the piRNA pathway defends the animal germline from transposons. But most of what we know comes from narrow developmental windows like late oogenesis, where it's easiest to study. We asked if the pathway is the same across development. It is not! /+

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 02/09/2026

Trade xkcd.com/3290/

Comic. [Person standing holding hammer above raised knee.] PERSON: Listen up, leg. I’ve been sending you rich, oxygenated blood for years, while you send me worthless used-up blood with no oxygen. Time to teach you a lesson about not ripping me off! [caption] Tariffs

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Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Drosophila people - I *really* need to know the story behind the naming of the Turandot genes. I have backtracked to the 2001 papers from the Hultmark lab and there's no explanation! @hansonmark.bsky.social do you know?? Any other fly stress response peeps? Opera fans? 🪰

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Alissa Armstrong @armstrongflylab.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Happy to share the lab’s latest preprint! Led by PhD student @isaiahwill.bsky.social, we hope that this thorough characterization of expression patterns for many #drosophila fat body driver lines will be a useful resource to the fruit fly community.

Panel from a composite figure showing 6 images of fat body patches taken using confocal fluorescence microscopy

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Ross Johnson @rosserford.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

We’re going to hear about how everyone loved Dolly, and that feels true. But it’s good to remember, and to her credit, that she was attacked for her AIDS activism, her vaccine advocacy, her LGBTQ+ support and even, more recently, for her reading initiatives. She ALWAYS stood firm when it mattered.

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Jonasnuts @jonasnuts.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

A UE podia criar um regime especial para importações do Canadá. Sem taxas alfandegárias e coisas do género. Seria uma ajuda. E eu sei que os canadianos são rijos, mas vão penar, não é de um dia para o outro que se ultrapassa com ligeireza uma relação comercial tão relevante.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Someone decided Outlook wanted a keyboard shortcut to send an email... Yes... let's create a keyboard shortcut for an irreversible action. How could that possibly do anything BUT improve the user experience? Just baffled... that's all.

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Simon Evans @sevans.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

*ALL* awardees are professors! And two are already Fellows of the Royal Society! It is mind-boggling that this tragicomedy is real and not the storyline of some satirical spoof of contemporary academia.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Three positions advertising in friendly lab on butterfly rearing & experiment support, image-based identification platform development, developing transgenic insects. PDRA/PDRF (2x): careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/13... careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/13... GRA: careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/13...

careers.exeter.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow in Cornwall | University of Exeter

View details and apply for this Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow vacancy in Cornwall. Postdoctoral Research Associate or Fellow This Advanced Research and Innovation Agency funded full...

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

careers.exeter.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow in Cornwall | University of Exeter

View details and apply for this Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow vacancy in Cornwall. Postdoctoral Research Associate or Fellow This Advanced Research and Innovation Agency funded full...

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John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

VACANCY - Funded by @European Research Council (ERC), we have three exciting opportunities for Postdoctoral Researchers to join the newly appointed Dr @hassansalem.bsky.social Group. These roles span: Developmental biology - okt.to/nq50wC 🧵

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 17/08/2026

1. Recently I’ve received lots of emails from people I don’t know personally, asking for my feedback on their books or papers. They explain the connection between my work and theirs and ask me to take a look. The catch, of course, is that the emails are transparently, obviously, written by AI.

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Excellent opportunity to work in an excellent institution!

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Dr. Sanne van Oosten @sbvanoosten.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I'm torturing myself by looking up colleagues who added to the pile-on against Jason Arday. And learning that they are silent now. Often people I liked and respected. Here is some clear explanation on why to never add to a pile-on against a person. katemanne.substack.com/p/gossipy-ac...

katemanne.substack.com

Gossipy Academics Helped Kill Jason Arday

Or, the anatomy of a pile-on

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Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 17/08/2026

Helpful reminder from Elsevier that they have the "legal power" to do what they want with your journals. You have the collective power to take your editorial work elsewhere.

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Simon Evans @sevans.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

This sounds cool!

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Credentials, Dan @dancredentials.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Me, nodding knowingly: The beaks.

Headline of paleontology news article: Crocodiles can't fly. Birds can. Scientists have finally figured out why

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

HIRING MICROBIOLOGIST: effective start asap! The PDRA/PDRF (per xp) will investigate the interactions of bumblebee antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with the gut microbiota & more. Our work has shown AMPs have striking specificity for ecological microbes. careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/13... 1/2

careers.exeter.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Researcher Associate or Fellow in Cornwall | University of Exeter

View details and apply for this Postdoctoral Researcher Associate or Fellow vacancy in Cornwall. Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow This job is part of an Advanced Research + Inventio...

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Objective Biotechnology @objectivebio.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

We are excited to announce that Objective Biotechnology has received an NIH SBIR Phase II award to advance the Autoinjector automated microinjection platform!

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Becky @beckvalle.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The scientific publishing landscape is an expensive, overwhelming, maze!

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