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Martin Humphries

@martinhumphries.bsky.social
1.7K followers 314 following 665 posts

Professor of Biochemistry, University of Manchester. Career interest in mechanisms of cell-matrix adhesion. Current interest in mechanosensing in pancreatic cancer and vascular dementia.

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Stephen Graham @stephengraham.bsky.social · 17h
I had this bit about Jeffrey Archer from the 1995 HIGNFY video memorised for whenever I needed a handy fact about him.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
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Andrew Curry @andrewcurry.com · 23/09/2026
10,000-year-old #GobekliTepe has it all: Massive stone pillars, elaborate carved reliefs and hundreds of fragmented human bones. Now @dai-weltweit.bsky.social researchers have uncovered burials, too – and they point to a new, natural explanation for the scattered remains at the site. @science.org
science.org
Bones link 10,000-year-old temple complex to a village, not a ‘skull cult’
Landslides, not rituals, may have scattered skulls and bones at Turkey’s famed Göbekli Tepe site
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Lauri Myllyvirta @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
NEW from us: India's rapid clean power expansion has kept power sector emissions flat for two years, for the first time in over 50 years, and sharply reduced fossil fuel imports. Oil and gas consumption have also fallen for two years in a row, helping alleviate the Hormuz shock.
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Hassinator @hassinator.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
a great letter in the times today. perhaps worth sharing in these troubled times. #RNLI #heroes
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A new (daily) low. It’s going to take the US a while to haul itself out of this hole.
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Luke Sibieta @lukesibieta.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
NEW: The latest international education comparisons from PISA 2025 have just been published Scores in England remain high relative to other countries – while in many other countries, scores are falling Across the UK, scores remain lowest in Wales www.gov.uk/government/p... @theifs.bsky.social
gov.uk
PISA 2025: national report for England
England’s PISA 2025 results, with an international comparison of the mathematics, reading and science performance of 15-year-old pupils.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
New PISA data out England is now top ten in all three areas (reading, maths, science) and the second highest performing country outside of east Asia (after Estonia). This is a huge public policy success.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Saddened to learn of the death of Ada Yonath. Her work on ribosome structure and function and antibiotic mechanisms was an immense contribution to biology. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Yon...
en.wikipedia.org
Ada Yonath - Wikipedia
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Stephanie Carvin @stephaniecarvin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Wake up, babe. The Prime Minister just dropped “hydronym”.
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. 

Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.
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Ember @ember-energy.org · 28/08/2026
#Africa’s solar boom is spreading across the entire continent, with 36 out of 54 countries set for record solar installations in 2026 🌍☀️ 19 countries saw YoY growth of over 100%, including DRC 🇨🇩 (+544%), Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 (+282%) and Egypt 🇪🇬 (+176%) ember-energy.org/lat...
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
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Ed Douglas @calmandfearless.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Pretty good going from BBC R4's Today to talk for 15 minutes about the disaster in Nepal and not once mention the impact of climate change A massive chunk of glacier collapsed and fell 1.2km, reduced to 'flash flood'.
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
$3.7 billion spent on APCs in 2025. That's ~1000X more than it costs to run bioRxiv/medRxiv. Worth thinking about as we consider how to fund infrastructure... arxiv.org/pdf/2608.16322
arxiv.org
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Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The fallout from the collapse of this glacier - a torrent of mud surging down the valley - killed hundreds of people. Gone, in a flash. Those people were wiped out by anthropogenic climate change. Our governments are simply not responding quickly enough to this disaster which is already upon us.
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 26/08/2026
Dolly Parton is credited in at least 37 research papers on the COVID vaccine, including the first phase I trial results published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2020.
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Jan Lammerding - Lab @lammerdinglab.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Interested in nuclear mechanobiology and want to know what some of the big open questions are in the field? Read our recent editorial with input from >15 leading experts in the field, along with a list of review articles on nuclear mechanobiology: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Nuclear mechanobiology: a brief history and five unresolved questions
Published in Nucleus (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2026)
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Magdalena Skipper @magdalenaskipper.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
More than 18,000 questionable images found in antibody catalogues of 15 companies 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
More than 18,000 questionable images found in antibody catalogues of 15 companies
Science sleuth’s findings raise questions for researchers working to improve the reliability of commercial antibodies.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Ancient Rome
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
We tried, and failed, to sort ours. As I remember, the University Outlook can't sync with someone else's iPhone. Very inconvenient.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Undocumented migration does not raise crime rates, huge study finds. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Undocumented migration does not raise crime rates, huge study finds
Analysis of neighbourhoods in more than 100 US cities finds no evidence that rising numbers of undocumented immigrants are linked with violent crime.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Great quotation
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 16/08/2026
A former director of BBC News speaks:
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Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · 11/08/2026
The impact of summer 2026 can perhaps best be seen from space Exceptional heat combined with limited rainfall has truly transformed the landscape across the UK
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YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 10/08/2026
With Andy Burnham set to talk about dodgy shops as part of his nationwide tour this week, the number of Britons who suspect a local business of being connected to organised crime has risen from 18% in 2022 to 43% now 2026: yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... 2022: yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...
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Private Eye Magazine @privateeyenews.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Water crisis: then vs now. From the latest Private Eye, out now.
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GPonline @gponline.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
General practice in England delivered nearly 35m appointments in June this year - a new record that is 46% above the same month in 2019, GPonline analysis shows. Full story: www.gponline.com/general-prac...
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Daily Herald #FBPE #NAFO 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇬🇱 @dailyherald.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
🗳️ NEW | Reform PLUNGES to third place 😲 🔴 Lab: 27% ( +6 ) 🔵 Con: 23% ( +2 ) ➡️ Ref: 18% ( -3 ) 🟢 Grn: 15% ( -2 ) 🟠 Lib: 8% ( -1 ) -- Seats -- 🔴 Lab: 269 🔵 Con: 193 🟡 SNP: 49 ➡️ Ref: 37 🟠 Lib: 36 🟢 Grn: 23 🟩 Plaid: 12 Poll: Lord Ashcroft, 3 Aug (+/- vs 29 Jun)
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Teresa Anderson @teresa-anderson.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
My article about @jodrellbank.bsky.social in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today: bit.ly/3UneUVN
bit.ly
Jodrell Bank isn’t a museum – it’s a place where science ...
The funding cut threatening the observatory has caused a public outcry and reinforced the site’s image as the spiritual and practical home of astronomy
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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Nice video on Manchester’s urban regeneration since the 1980s. youtu.be/VPkLUOfugjo?...
youtu.be
How Manchester became the UK's economic miracle
YouTube video by CityEd.
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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I didn’t realise that growth figures are so much better for Manchester than for the rest of the UK.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
...or separating research and teaching into separate institutions are resourcing them both fully and efficiently
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Nina Willburger @drnwillburger.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
An #IceAge masterpiece: This small carving (4.7cm) of a water #bird was made from mammoth ivory some 40,000 years ago. It's thought to be a #diver, #cormorant, or #duck. Found in the Hohle Fels cave on the Swabian Jura. It's the oldest known representation of a bird. 🧵1/2
A photo of a small bird figurine mounted on a thin metal rod, set against a blue gradient background. The figurine appears angled downward, with a pointed head and elongated body, creating a simple abstract silhouette.
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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
And on the lab leak hypothesis... While a lab leak has not been disproven (and likely can never be), every piece of positive evidence that has emerged since 2020 about where the outbreak began points to a natural origin from the Wuhan wet market. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
annualreviews.org
The Emergence and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 has evoked heated debate and strong accusations, yet seemingly little resolution. I review the scientific evidence on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and its subsequent spread throug...
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
At last - a proper Prime Minister who has a vision, a target and a strategy. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Andy Burnham wants to fix social care. It’s personal for him and for a lot of us too
Finally a grownup is in charge who speaks to voters as fellow adults. If he fixes this, he’ll achieve more than most other PMs
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Philippa Vishnyakov @revealmcr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
This week in 1846 John Owens died. He left approx £100,000 to form Owens College, the founding college of The Victoria University of Manchester. He is buried in St John’s Gardens.
St John’s Gardens. Stone cross side on, pigeon sitting on top. On the base of the cross is written ‘John Owens the founder of the Victoria University was buried in this churchyard’. Surrounded by greenery.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Pornainen, Finland (pop 5,000) is now heated by a silo of crushed soapstone. I spoke to CNBC about it. 100 MWh, charged when power is cheap, emissions down ~70%. Days to weeks of storage, no critical minerals. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/25/f...
cnbc.com
Finland’s radical answer to renewable energy’s biggest headache: The world’s largest sand battery
A small Finnish town has turned to the world's largest commercial sand battery to tackle a major hurdle in the energy transition: intermittency.
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D. Earl Stephens @dearlstephens.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
📌NEW MARQUETTE POLL: Trump approvals are at an all-time worst -18% in Wisconsin. 📌WHY THIS MATTERS: Wisconsin might be the '“swingiest” state in the country. If Trump is polling this bad there, he will be a drag on GOP candidates throughout the country. 📌PREDICTION: Robust Blue Wave in November.
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Fascinating
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
...or Travelling Wilburys!
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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Gaining two seats from Reform? In Thurrock? Not bad as first council by-election results for a new PM go
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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Agree with every word of this excellent post but especially this www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/my-p-hacki...
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Martin Humphries @martinhumphries.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
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