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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧

@nickdhiggs.bsky.social
677 followers 316 following 128 posts

VP for Strategy & Programs @templetonworld.bsky.social. Marine scientist.

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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 09/09/2026
Astrophotographer Adam (AJ) Smadi caught this image a few hours ago from Washington state. A thin crescent Moon, sunlight illuminating the rugged lunar surface. And 2,400 times farther away—and on the other side of the Sun—mighty Jupiter, and its moons Io (left) and Ganymede (right).
A crescent Moon seen during the day, arcing from upper left to lower right of the frame. At lower centre is the full disk of Jupiter; the small dots to its upper left and lower right and Io and Ganymede, respectively.
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Dr Craig R McClain @drcraigmc.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
A new catalog of deep-sea microbial genes, built from 2,138 samples, added 502 million genes and expanded known ocean gene diversity by 51%. The authors call the deep sea "a unique evolutionary engine driving the emergence of functionally distinctive enzymatic traits." #marinelife
sciencedirect.com
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Wow- what an amazing resource for marine science 🌊🧪 #marinelife
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 18/07/2026
Hundreds of people competing for the perfect dunk on the editor of a science journal who is writing about the harms of slop for science. Not for using ChatGPT for research, just checking his references (which it is quite able to do). I can see suggesting a different way, but canceling him seems iffy
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Dr. Thomas Ronge @thomasronge.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Today, the legendary JR begins her last journey to the shipwrecking yard. Home to many of us, she helped to understand plate tectonics, climate, deep biosphere, earthquakes/volcanoes, and was an integral part in international science and collaboration 🫡 www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/...
The research drillship JOIDES Resolution sailing into the sunset.
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Templeton World Charity Foundation @templetonworld.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
The CIFAR Neuroscience of Consciousness Winter School is now open to applications! This TWCF-funded three-day event brings together tomorrow’s neuroscience leaders to work closely with world-class researchers. 🔗 Apply before June 10: bit.ly/3ZES2Rq
cifar.ca
CIFAR Neuroscience of Consciousness Winter School - CIFAR
Follow Us FaceBook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn Instagram The CIFAR Neuroscience of Consciousness Winter School is a unique, three-day event where tomorrow’s neuroscience leaders work closely […]
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Hot take 🔥: two years after Tony Blair was elected as PM in 1997 🇬🇧, Labour saw a continuous [>50%] decline in council seats throughout their time in govt. What’s different now is that it’s not the Conservatives picking them up.
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Dr Craig R McClain @drcraigmc.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
I know everyone wants there to be a Giant Cretaceous Octopus but after looking at methods and tables, I really don't think this is a reality.
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Marc J. Lajeunesse @lajeunesselab.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Ecologists love response ratios for meta-analysis❤️ But… they can’t be converted into other effect sizes—making it impossible to have a unified dataset of all published effect sizes in ecology I fix this with a conversion to Hedges’ d to help unify our data! (Link to Ecology Letters paper below):
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I have a joke about philanthropy but it won’t have any impact.
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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
This response far better reflects my experience of how collections managers are really striving to do the best by the people they care for By @sarahtarlow1.bsky.social & @livnstutz.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
theguardian.com
A duty of care to human remains | Letters
Letter: Prof Liv Nilsson Stutz and Prof Sarah Tarlow respond to an article on ethical questions about remains from overseas in UK museums
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
AI generated presentations are the Comic Sans of our time. May future generations look back on us with grace.
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Flashbacks to first day as a grad student: “Imagine not an escape room, but an escape building. With enough challenges that it will take you a day to solve them so, not an hour.”
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
The danger of superhuman AI is not what you think. This essay in @noemamag.com by @shannonvallor.bsky.social is brilliant. Well worth a read. www.noemamag.com/the-danger-o...
noemamag.com
The Danger Of Superhuman AI Is Not What You Think | NOEMA
The rhetoric over “superhuman” AI implicitly erases what’s most important about being human.
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Russell Garwood @russellgarwood.co.uk · 20/02/2026
We just don't end papers like this any more. Maybe the world would be better if we did? ⚒️🧪
The few observations that I have made are necessarily
imperfect, but I send them, as they afford a method which
might lead a naturalist to notice habits otherwise difficult
to observe, and so to arrive at conclusions which I in my
ignorance of natural history must leave to others.
C. V. Bovs
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SPARC @sparcopen.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
We're glad to amplify the good work of @bioone.bsky.social! We celebrate this milestone of Subscribe to Open (S2O), a model that is emerging as a promising means of funding sustainable #OpenAccess for publishers & library systems of all sizes.
bioonepublishing.org
BioOne Achieves Inaugural Subscribe to Open Target, Opening 71 Titles for 2026 - BioOne Publishing
BioOne is proud to report the achievement of a significant milestone in its mission to increase access to scientific research. BioOne’s Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot has reached its sustainability thr...
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
🪱Ekin Tilic @etilic.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
🚨 PhD position in annelid genomics (EuroWorm) 🚨 If you love biodiversity, evolution & bioinformatics — apply or share! 🪱🧬 Details here: www.senckenberg.de/de/stellenan... #PhD #Genomics #Annelida #MarineBiology #EuroWorm
senckenberg.de
Stellenanzeigen Archiv | Senckenberg Naturforschung
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
When the original authors and those who find errors in their work, pull together for the sake of correcting the record and moving science forward, it's a beautiful thing Retracted paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Linking the narrative with data, code, methods, and context is something everyone wants to see, but at some point most people most of the time want to draw a line under a project, mark it complete and move on. Will that change? 2/2
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 05/02/2026
During a dive last year in the Atlantic Ocean off Argentina, researchers documented a giant phantom jelly, a deep-sea species rarely seen since it was discovered a little over a century ago. “There was a mixture of excitement and disbelief,” said one marine biologist. trib.al/HfkWfp4
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tomjwebb @tomjwebb.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
“…as we use AI models, let’s keep asking ourselves if we are knowledge generating or merely output generating. Are we adding information to the world, or just words?”
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Please share: Pew Research Center will provide $3,000 each for 19 new papers using our recent global datasets. We encourage reuse of our Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures data! www.pewresearch.org/2026/01/16/seek…
To encourage reuse of our data, Pew Research Center, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, invites researchers to submit proposals for new research publications that use one or more of the following datasets (collectively, Datasets) from the Global Religious Futures (GRF) project:  Global Restrictions on Religion 2007-2022 dataset. This cumulative dataset includes measures of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion in nearly 200 countries and territories. Spring 2024 Survey. This dataset includes measures of religion and spirituality in 35 countries. (Comparable data was also collected in 2023 and 2024 for the United States. The downloadable materials which accompany the international dataset include additional information about U.S. data.) Dataset of Global Religious Composition Estimates for 2010 and 2020. This dataset includes estimates of the size of seven major religious groups in more than 200 countries and territories. We encourag
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Hallucigenia ate comb jellies www.newscientist.com/article/2511...
newscientist.com
Fossil may solve mystery of what one of the weirdest-ever animals ate
Hallucigenia was such an odd animal that palaeontologists reconstructed it upside-down when they first analysed its fossils - and now we may know what it ate
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Dr Craig R McClain @drcraigmc.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Meet Duobrachium sparksae: a newly described comb jelly that looks like a glowing hot-air balloon drifting just above the deep seafloor. Transparent, delicate, and unmistakably transfixing, it reminds us how much biodiversity is in the deep oceans. www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-stor...
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Andrew B. Watkins @windjunky.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991-2020 average. climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
So sad, but she achieved so much. An inspirational science leader.
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Paul Scheer @paulscheer.com · 23/12/2025
In 2023 I became obsessed with videos of dads in cargo shortswaiting in parking lots during Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. So when she came to town, I grabbed a camera and headed down to talk to them. I thought it'd be funny. It turned out to be something else entirely.
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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 19/12/2025
A paper in Nature presents a detailed map of human chromosomes within the nucleus. This resource provides a foundation for an improved understanding of how the physical layout of human DNA is associated with biological expression. go.nature.com/4pI8knB 🧬 🧪
This is figure 1, which gives an overview of the approach to generate and integrate genomic data on the 4D nucleome.
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Karen James @kejames.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
I’m guessing most Americans don’t know this, but because I lived in the UK for 8 years and still watch the BBC via VPN, I can tell you that the BBC iPlayer’s volume dial goes to eleven.
A pink and white volume dial that goes to eleven
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Andrew D Thaler @drandrewthaler.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Something like 99% of all international data travels through subsea cables protected by UNCLOS. Freedom of Navigation and overflight are enshrined in UNCLOS. EEZs and sovereign rights over seabed resources are created and enforced through UNCLOS.
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Help us shape our grant making priorities for the future!
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Dr. Drew Brayshaw 🌊🪨 @drewbrayshaw.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Still think this was one of the best power moves of all time www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Me: “Oh cool - the Amazon forest is bouncing back” 🌳☁️ Also me: “Ooooooh… 🙄” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Amazon reports strongest cloud growth since 2022 after major outage
Amazon Web Services (AWS) sees 20% increase in revenue year over year, topping Wall Street estimates
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Surely emphasis should be cracking down on LLM generated papers (and their authors) rather than the #openaccess datasets themselves. Bizarre precedent that proprietary data would be seen as more trustworthy. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Journals and publishers crack down on research from open health data sets
PLOS, Frontiers, and others announce policies trying to stem the tide of suspect research
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C. Chen @ Jamsteeeec @squamiferum.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
[New Paper] names Chaetoderma naga, a gigantic (>13 cm) new worm-mollusc from a cold seep! Like its sister-species C. shenloong, it probably relies on endosymbiotic bacteria for energy. We named it after Nāga, a snake-god from Asian mythologies! Out now in Moll. Res., LINK: doi.org/10.1080/1323...
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
🇧🇸 Conch 🐚 Cay 🏝️ Nassau 📍
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Blue lobsters might not be as rare as once thought: www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Blue lobsters in Devon and Cornwall waters rising, say scientists
Reports of blue lobsters are rising and scientists are calling for more research as to why.
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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 23/09/2025
Climate change is not a con-job. If you want to know more about the evidence for and causes of #ClimateChange, head to our website: royalsociety.org/news-resourc...
royalsociety.org
Climate change: evidence and causes | Royal Society
Supplementary information for the project 'Climate Change: Evidence and causes'.
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Check out MARMORIS - a new NGO founded to explore #deepsea habitats in The Bahamas ewnews.com/new-bahamian... Beyond excited too see a fellow Bahamian passionate about deep-sea research. Way to go Denley, @katycroffbell.bsky.social and team!
ewnews.com
New Bahamian Non-Profit “Marmoris” Embarks on Deep-Sea Discovery Mission
NASSAU, BAHAMAS – A new era of ocean exploration is unfolding in the Caribbean with the official launch of Marmoris, a Bahamian non-profit organisation dedicated to uncovering, documenting, and conser...
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John Rowan @jrowanbxl.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
This used to be an absolute plague in Brussels. Until the council said the companies were responsible for it and they'd start fining them. And then - as if by magic - the problem got solved, pdq.
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Dan Killam @dantheclamman.blog · 24/08/2025
Lucinid bivalves are chemosymbiotic, partnering with microbes which oxidize sulfide and give them food. How do they breathe in such a sulfide-rich environment? In their burrows, one end leads up to oxygen, while another set of branching burrows lead downward, mining sulfide (203)
A diagram from Blouet et al 2021 showing a lucinid in its burrow, one end heading up to oxygen, the other branched tunnel heading down to the hydrogen sulfide
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Templeton World Charity Foundation @templetonworld.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Dr. Berry Billingsley ‪at Swansea University‬ is reimagining how classrooms engage with questions that transcend subject boundaries. On @storiesofimpact.bsky.social‬, she discusses how to equip students to explore queries on life, the universe, and existence. 🎧 bit.ly/47BzVAL
templetonworldcharity.org
Big Questions That Change How We Learn with Berry Billingsley (podcast)
Interdisciplinary approaches to learning are reshaping religious education and science classes in schools.
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Reposted by Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧
Matt Bracken @brackenlab.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
This *Osedax* comic by @thefuzzyslug.bsky.social is just amazing! 🤩 #MarineLife #Invertebrate #SciArt 🦑🌊🐡
Comic featuring conversations between bone-eating *Osedax* worms feeding on a deep-sea whale fall: “Bone. Is. Forever.”
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Deepest know chemosynthesis-based ecosystems!
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Nature @nature.com · 31/07/2025
This surprisingly relaxing footage is from SIX MILES under the ocean – and it’s the deepest ecosystem yet discovered
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Ned Richardson-Little @historyned.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
“Digital asbestos” is such a perfect descriptor! bsky.app/profile/katr...
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
This thread on storytelling from @toriherridge.bsky.social keeps haunting me…
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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
“Data is like people. If you torture it for long enough, it’ll tell you more or less whatever you want to hear.”
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Dr Nick Higgs 🇧🇸🇬🇧 @nickdhiggs.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Junior researchers are often given poor [or no] advice about trans national shipping of scientific samples. Academic societies could really help their members by commissioning good advice on this topic, e.g. @ASMicrobiology helpful document: asm.org/guideline/pa... —- www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Chinese nationals accused of smuggling 'biological pathogen' into US
Yunqing Jian and Zunyong Liu allegedly brought a fungus into the US which damages a variety of crops and is toxic to humans and animals.
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