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Mark James Adams

@markjamesadams.bsky.social
451 followers 226 following 148 posts

Minds, moods, and molecules ␥ Psychological and psychiatric complex trait genetics ␥ Researcher in Edinburgh, Scotland differentialist.info/about

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Reposted by Mark James Adams
Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 07/10/2026
"As programming increasingly becomes a caffeinated bender with magical bots, this measured pace and emphasis on communal thinking likely holds an important lesson." Love this piece on the development of Zotero. newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...
newsletter.dancohen.org
The Slow Formation of Durable Software
How a group of historians took years to imagine Zotero, the research application that would eventually be used by millions
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justine zhang @tisjune.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
they're saying the AI can do math and science again, so it's time to reread Thurston's On Proof and Progress in Mathematics, a lovely articulation of the social work of assembling understanding, i.e., the best reason to tackle hard problems. www.ams.org/journals/bul...
When I started as a graduate student at Berkeley, I had trouble imagining
how I could "prove" a new and interesting mathematical theorem. I didn't
really understand what a "proof was.
By going to seminars, reading papers, and talking to other graduate students,
I gradually began to catch on. Within any field, there are certain theorems and
certain techniques that are generally known and generally accepted. When you
write a paper, you refer to these without proof. You look at other papers in the
field, and you see what facts they quote without proof, and what they cite in
their bibliography. You learn from other people some idea of the proofs. Then
you're free to quote the same theorem and cite the same citations. You don't
necessarily have to read the full papers or books that are in your bibliography.
Many of the things that are generally known are things for which there may be
no known written source. As long as people in the field are comfortable that
the idea works, it doesn't need to have a formal written source.At first I was highly suspicious of this process. I would doubt whether a certain idea was really established. But I found that I could ask people, and they
could produce explanations and proofs, or else refer me to other people or to
written sources that would give explanations and proofs. There were published
theorems that were generally known to be false, or where the proofs were generally known to be incomplete. Mathematical knowledge and understanding were
embedded in the minds and in the social fabric of the community of people
thinking about a particular topic. This knowledge was supported by written
documents, but the written documents were not really primary.
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Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) @ibg.colorado.edu · 23/09/2026
IBG at CU Boulder is hiring 2-3 tenure-track faculty (junior or senior) in statistical genetics, twin/family designs, and computational work. A chance to help shape IBG for decades. Starts fall 2027. More info: colorado.edu/ibg/. Apply by Oct 15. Please repost!
colorado.edu
Home
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The gig comes with great views of Arthur's Seat and Craigmillar Castle.
Overlooking the Royal Infirmary of 
Edinburgh (RIE)'with Arthur's Seat in the background. A row of trees lines the foreground i  front of an empy field. a carpark sits off to the left. RIE is a sweeping white buildings. there is a mass
od trees on a hill with a larger hill rising up behind it.
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
More about the Generation Scotland study: genscot.ed.ac.uk/about-us We are currently funded by a Longitudinal Population Study Award from @ukri.org
genscot.ed.ac.uk
What is Generation Scotland? | Generation Scotland | Generation Scotland
Find out what Generation Scotland is and what we do.
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We are seeking a Research Coordinator to join the @genscot.bsky.social team! Manage the complex processes for running a mental and physical health research cohort to understand, prevent and treat conditions for current and future generations. elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com
Research Coordinator
Based in The University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute/School of Population Health, Generation Scotland is a prestigious, high profile, dynamic programme, supporting interdisciplinary projects in heal...
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Mike Inouye @mikeinouye.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
We are recruiting for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Biomedical AI to open up new frontiers at the interface of genetics, biochemistry and the use of population-scale data to guide development of therapeutics! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... Come do some blue sky research w/ me & @cfoguet.bsky.social 😁
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Milenna van Dijk @milennavandijk.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
We’re looking for 2 enthusiastic postdocs! Join our lab studying how gene-by-environment interactions shape depression. We integrate transcriptomics, genetics, and MRI to understand why some youth are more vulnerable to depression following adversity, while others are resilient. Spread the word!
nyspi.applicantpro.com
Postdoctoral Researcher - New York, NY
Job Title: Postdoctoral Researcher Grade: 18 Salary: $67,552 - $81,257 The Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene is seeking a qualified candidate to fill a full-time Postdoctoral Researcher position....
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Mount Sinai Institute for Genomic Health @sinaigenhealth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
🧬 We’re hiring! Join the Division of Genomic Medicine & Institute for Genomic Health at Mount Sinai as a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor in Genomic Medicine. 📍 NYC | MD or MD/PhD @sinaigenetics.bsky.social #GenomicMedicine #Genomics #FacultyJobs
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Visiting Scotland for the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics? The weekend before the conference (Sep 26–27) is Doors Open Day in Edinburgh. There are many spaces to see which are not normally open to the public. #wcpg #wcpg2026 www.doorsopendays.org.uk/find-a-build...
doorsopendays.org.uk
Doors Open Days | Find a building
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Claire Niedzwiedz @drcenz.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
📣 Mixed methods PhD for health professionals at University of Glasgow to examine heat impacts on people living w/ multiple long term conditions. You must be fully registered w/ UK discipline-specific professional body & licensed to practise in the UK. Please get in touch! tinyurl.com/bp6surwt
gla.ac.uk
University of Glasgow - Postgraduate study - Centres for Doctoral Training - Multimorbidity PhD programme for Health Professionals - Research Projects - University of Glasgow Projects - UofG 06
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Ana Ignatieva @anaignatieva.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
We are advertising a 3 year postdoc position for a project on ARGs and structural variation! Based at Oxford stats. Closing date noon 12 October, full details here: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com
Job Details
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Jeff Spence @jeffspence.github.io · 14/09/2026
@roshnipatel.bsky.social and I wrote about using biobanks to learn about evolution, and how those findings shape interpretations of association studies. We focused on estimating evolutionary constraint and relating relating selection on variants to selection on traits and include open questions.
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Erin Siracusa @erinsiracusa.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Why do some animals have many social partners while others invest in a few strong relationships? Our new @royalsocietypublishing.org paper suggests the answer may be: it depends on the weather ☀️🌧️ 🐑 tinyurl.com/mry3mtpf
Soay sheep grazing on the island of Hirta, St Kilda, with dramatic misty cliffs and rough seas in the background
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I wrote down my thoughts about the last several weeks of AI hell. aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...
aiguide.substack.com
Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks
What To Fear from AI Agents and How to Reclaim Our Human Agency
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Sonya Neal @neal-lab.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The Neal lab is hiring a postdoctoral fellow to lead exciting structural and biophysical studies of membrane protein quality control! Competitive HHMI-scale salary + cutting-edge science + a genuinely wonderful and supportive lab culture. Please share widely with anyone who might be interested!
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Laura Ross @laurarossevo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
My lab @ Edinburgh university is recruiting a postdoc to work on the weird and wonderful germline-specific chromosomes of flies. elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... collaboration with @germline.bsky.social and yukiko yamashita funded by @novonordisk.bsky.social please repost!
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Are mathematical results platonic ideals waiting to be discovered or are they objects cobbled out of our inventions? openai.com/index/navier...
openai.com
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
We’re sharing an AI-generated solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, including a writeup and a formal proof in Lean.
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Maybe post your prompts as an anagram* to be able to claim priority later. *or modern technological equivalent
Huygens's anagram and solution describing the rings of Saturn. Image from the book with Latin text and a drawing of Saturn with a ring.
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Ha. "I said that if [they] released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, 'Why would you ruin your career?' replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career."
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Wild. Mathematicians use LLM coding tools to assist with proofs. Hear through the grapevine that the AI company has made progress in the same or related problem domain. Mathematicians get pressured over publication and priority. cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...
cims.nyu.edu
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Silvia Paracchini @silparacchini.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
🚨PhD opportunity for health professionals: We are offering a PhD project investigating the impact multimorbidity impact of neurodevelopmental conditions along the life course 🙏Please share 🙏 www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate...
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
A thread of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) that look like record covers... because that's EXACTLY what the world needs 1. Huey Lewis and the News: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
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Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Based on our GWAS of personality I have an academic/data driven reflection on new challenges to the environmental path from parental personality toe child personality. I could put it on my substack (bleg) or add to my near non existend blog, but I have no reach, anyone willing to let me guest blog?
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Reposted by Mark James Adams
Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
An absolute classic and already shows the importance of Chance (i.e., endogenous developmental variation) to phenotypic variance
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I'm beta testing a conversational AI that's a fabric on top of the GeneCards Knowledge Graph. Good use of a natural language interface that turns prompts into graph queries and pulls the underlying data in a structured way (it even outputs CSV sidecar files). genie.genecards.org
Screen capture of the GENIE landing page. The headline text reads "The knowledge millions of researchers trust. Now conversational."Screen capture of the GENIE conversation interface. The chat interface is in the middle with boxes for execution steps ("Queried the graph", "Lookup disorder", "Analyzed results") and a box with a list of CSV output files.


The query says GWAS summary statistics for major depressive disorder (MDD) were compared to multiple omic layers (protein, methylation, chromatin, splicing, and expression) using Summary Mendelian Randomisation. The following list of genes were supported by associations with MDD at 3 or more omics layers. Of these genes, 16 were associated with MDD via brain-derived molecular phenotypes (PLEKHB1, RLBP1, CDH13, RMC1, NPC1,H6PD, GIGYF2, ADK, FADS1, TMEM216, ATP23, RAB27B,CABYR, GABRB1, AMZ1, and PPP3CC), and 8 were associated with MDD via blood-derived phenotypes (RELT, TPK1,ADARB2, DUSP13, TMEM216, COA8, MAP7D1, and NFXL1). 

Considering across functional categories, pathways, interactions, co-expression etc, what ties all of these genes together? Are there other genes that are also likely implicated based on these annotations?

The first part of the response says:

Across every annotation layer the database holds, the 23 genes (TMEM216 counted once, as it appears in both your lists; DUSP13 resolved to its canonical symbol DUSP13B) do not form a coherent pathway or complex — no pathway contains more than two of them, and only three curated interactions run within the set. What ties them together is near-uniform expression across all nine GTEx brain regions and a shared membrane/cytosolic, protein-binding molecular profile — convergent molecular background rather than a single mechanistic module.
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Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
🚨& 🧵 Our new Nature paper is out! Across 46 cohorts and up to 1.14M people per Big Five trait, we do GWAS and ask how robust, generalizable and consequential the genetic signals underlying personality really are. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
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alex ioannidis @alexgioannidis.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Gnomix is published! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Still the most accurate & fastest local ancestry inference (LAI) method, bests Flare and others (RecombMix & Orchestra) released since our preprint. Easy to use, github.com/AI-sandbox/g... Use it with our toolkit, snputils.org
nature.com
Scalable high resolution ancestry deconvolution for genomic data - Nature Communications
The authors present Gnomix, a local ancestry framework that delivers leading accuracy across diverse admixed datasets on both whole-genome and array data with high efficiency, together with Gnofix, it...
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 27/08/2026
Psychological Science special issue call 📣 Ever had your research denigrated bc it's "only descriptive", "what's the mechanism though?" and "but what are the theoretical implications?" Now has come your time to shine. Send your best descriptive work! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...
Psychological Science invites submissions that advance psychological science through careful description of psychological phenomena. Psychological research often focuses on explaining and predicting phenomena before we have a sufficiently detailed understanding of them. It can be difficult to build strong theories on incomplete empirical foundations of the phenomena themselves. Careful descriptive research helps establish shared empirical reference points developed around well-characterized phenomena. As such, descriptive research contributes to psychological science both by improving our understanding of the phenomena themselves and by providing a stronger foundation for future theory-building, explanation, and prediction.

We are interested in manuscripts that:

Deepen our understanding of psychological phenomena, including what they look like, how they vary, and how they unfold;
Draw on a variety of sources of evidence and methods, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches; research conducted in naturalistic settings; intensive, longitudinal, or small-sample designs; and open or large-scale datasets; 
Provide necessary context for interpreting what is being described, including who is represented in the data, the settings and circumstances in which phenomena occur, and the broader social contexts in which they are situated; and/or
Make a substantive contribution to psychological science through the quality, depth, or significance of the description provided.
The deadline for submitting regular manuscripts is April 15, 2027. Registered Reports will also be considered. The deadline for submitting Stage 1 Registered Reports is November 15, 2026. Authors should indicate in the “Comments to Editor” box during submission that the manuscript is intended for the “Descriptive Research in Psychological Science” special issue.
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Janna Levin: "[M]aybe the AI will know things before us, but we we'll still need to acquire the understanding ourselves." (43m27s) overcast.fm/+ABGW9jfmYlo
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value plus discounted @akhilrao.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
existence of ASCII art implies existence of ASCII science
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Jonathan Pritchard @jkpritch.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Must-know numbers in human genetics -- As many of you know, I'm writing a free online textbook in human genetics. In this blog post I cover a key skill for genome scientists from that book: how to use mental math to figure out key genome properties. jkpritchard.substack.com/p/on-fermi-p...
jkpritchard.substack.com
On Fermi Problems in Human Genetics
and some very useful numbers about human genomes to get you started!
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Leonard Frach @leofrach.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
One of my hardest and longest PhD challenges is coming to a close (well, almost). Very happy to finally share the preprint to our updated Gsens method! Major updates include the extension to multiple exposure scenarios, along with using raw data, estimating mediation effects and many more.
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Torsten Günther @trstngnthr.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
One week left to apply!
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Lisa Hansen @lisanhansen.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
So excited to share my first preprint of grad school! Check out this thread to learn more about a cool new technique we are using to learn more about hidden layers of RNA regulation! Thank you so much to my coauthors, mentors, and lab for helping us get this story up!
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
>Science is not an efficiency problem< "This is because creativity is fundamentally not an efficiency problem; process is not just the means of producing output, but rather a labor vessel that holds the near-invisible work that is truly important." Paul Cantrell, hachyderm.io/@inthehands/...
hachyderm.io
Paul Cantrell (@inthehands@hachyderm.io)
I have a half-formed half-idea that I’m not really prepared to articulate or defend well, but that runs something like this: - Creative work keeps taking roughly the same amount of human labor / atte...
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Hanbin Lee @epigenci.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
The bottom line is that evolutionary theory sheds light on how empirically successful methods in statistical genetics operate. It further simplifies those models to achieve better interpretability and scalability by leaving only biologically relevant parts of the model. (n/n)
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Silvia Paracchini @silparacchini.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Wellcome also implementing changes to manage the increasing number of applications. For for CDA and Discovery awards: - moving to ‘always-open’ rolling deadlines - 12 months period (after the first review) before resubmission wellcome.org/insights/art...
wellcome.org
Rethinking the future of research funding | News | Wellcome
Wellcome is making changes to how and when people can apply for our funding so we can more effectively manage demand, easing the strain on our services, applicants and institutions.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 12/07/2026
My coauthor Jay Falk's postdoctoral fellowship was terminated by the Trump administration for documenting the hummingbird example in this paper.
FIGURE 2
Open in figure viewer
PowerPoint
Operational biological sex definitions applied to hummingbirds (Bleiweiss 1992; Bleiweiss 1999; Bleiweiss 2001; Diamant et al. 2021; Falk et al. 2022; Falk et al. 2021) where sex is operationally defined by binary plumage phenotypes in the field. Each row depicts a wild individual hummingbird with morphological traits (beak length, plumage coloration), behavioural traits (territoriality) and their unobserved gamete type. This example illustrates how the same individual can be operationally defined as one sex in the field (based on external phenotypes) but classified as a different sex based on their gametes (which cannot be easily observed in the field), highlighting how definitional choices shape scientific reporting of sex.
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Andy Lee, PhD @andylee.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
In our Viewpoint (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...) we synthesize the gametic definition (outlined by Janicke et al below) and other definitions of sex (e.g., multivariate definition). We contend that is NO consensus on “biological sex” (maybe a consensus isn’t actually necessary…)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
There is No Consensus on Biological Sex
At this critical moment when misinformation about sex is being applied to policy globally, scientific clarification on the definition of biological sex is valuable. Here, we evaluate the primary appr...
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Dr Kimberley Kendall @drkkendall.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
🚨 Fabulous job alert 🚨 The Mental Health Goals Omics Psychosis team is looking for a Psychology Assistant to join our Wales recruitment team. We're a friendly and motivated bunch, and there will be plenty of opportunities for learning and development. cardiffuniweb.eploy.net/vacancies/48...
cardiffuniweb.eploy.net
Psychology Assistant in Hadyn Ellis Building | Internal & External Website
View details and apply for this Psychology Assistant vacancy in Hadyn Ellis Building. Psychology Assistant Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences School of Medicine Colle...
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Hanbin Lee @epigenci.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
dcdehaas.github.io/grg/2025/03/... "We still end up with a slightly slower graph traversal by doing this encoding, but the 50% RAM savings seems worth it as we can essentially analyze biobank-scale datasets on a cheap consumer laptop now, entirely within RAM." Reads totally differently in 2026 lol
dcdehaas.github.io
Compressed CSR representation for efficient graph traversal
One of the challenges with non-linear data representations, like graphs, is getting reasonable performance out of modern computers with multiple levels of caches. Caches access data in chunks called “...
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
"The compiler infrastructure that began in 2000 as a federally funded two-person research project at the University of Illinois now supports multi-billion dollar hardware, software, and services industries worldwide" dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure | Communications of the ACM
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Dr Kimberley Kendall @drkkendall.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Thought I'd give this place a go again. I'm Kim. I'm a psychiatrist who does research on genetics and proteomics. I also do a lot of recruitment of people with psychosis for research studies. My clinical work is in a psychiatric genetics clinic in Cardiff.
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
New UK government guidance about "Safeguarding UK human genomic data". Applies specifically to Genomics England, Our Future Health, UK Biobank and NIHR BioResource, with major implications for sharing data outside the UK. www.gov.uk/government/p...
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Anders Sejr Hansen @andersshansen.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Very interesting new preprint from @jengreitz.bsky.social lab arguing that rather than there being significant enhancer-promoter compatibility, promoters simply differ in their enhancer responsiveness. If promoters are responsive, they respond to all enhancers. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
David Baulcombe started out speaking about "the days when you could hypothesise about things without being too burdened by data."
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Veronica van Heyningen: "Genetics is a tool to explore biology, but biological observations in many organisms help to decipher genetics"
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Mark James Adams @markjamesadams.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
At @edinuni-irr.bsky.social today and tomorrow for the @gensocuk.bsky.social Anniversary Day talks. genetics.org.uk/events/anniv...
Exterior of the Institute for Regeneration and Repair at the University of Edinburgh. The building has a medium gray exterior with large windows, a few of which are tinted yellow. The name of the institute is on the side of the building with the university crest above it. The background is a clear blue sky with the sun peaking out from a top corner of the building.
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drphilcox.bsky.social @drphilcox.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
JOB ALERT! We are recruiting at @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social - a lecturer (Grade 8) or associate professor (Grade 9) in primate or human evolutionary anatomy (research and teaching). Contact Susan Evans or myself for further details. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRZ412/l...
jobs.ac.uk
Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy at UCL
Searching for an academic job? Explore this Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy opening on jobs.ac.uk! Click to view more details and browse other academic jobs.
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