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Covid-19 expert Akiko Iwasaki fights a different virus: sexism in science
To know virologist Akiko Iwasaki is to know that she is passionate about combatting sexism, power imbalance, and toxic behavior in academia.
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Meagan Phelan
.@VirusesImmunity said [her many recent] media appearances are crucial to fighting misinformation about the pandemic and educating the public about how the body’s immune system is likely to be able to fend off SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
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India pushes bold ‘one nation, one subscription’ journal-access plan
Researchers will also recommend an open-access policy that promotes research being shared on online repositories.
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Meagan Phelan
The growth of APCs has become an increasing concern to researchers in low- and middle-income countries, says @dominiquebabini. Funding agencies should invest more in local and regional open-access journals that do not require authors to pay to publish
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Huge Study of Coronavirus Cases in India Offers Some Surprises to Scientists
The rate of death went down in patients over 65. Researchers also found that children of all ages became infected and spread the virus to others.
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Meagan Phelan
“It still surprises me that it took until this [@sciencemagazine study] for a lot of data to come out of a low- or middle-income country about the epidemiology of Covid,” @jLewnard nytimes.com/2020/09/30/hea…. Ttory by @apoorva_nyc #COVID19
116d
Zika virus infection enhances future risk of severe dengue disease
Dengue and Zika virus epidemics have been lapping each other around the globe. These are closely related mosquito-borne viruses with about 40% homology within the envelope protein. We know that subsequent dengue infections bring a risk of...
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Meagan Phelan
From @HarrisProgram (@UCBerkeley): "An additional lesson from our study is that natural ZIKV infection can have long-term negative consequences. Thus, ZIKV vaccines are being engineered to induce a better response as compared to natural ZIKV infection" 1/2
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The danger of DIY vaccines
The world needs to trust science if vaccines are to prove useful, particularly those being developed to combat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). That is what makes the recent appearance of highly visible “do-it-yourself” (DIY) vaccine research so...
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Meagan Phelan
.@sciencemagazine editorial by @ArthurCaplan @ABatemanHouse: "So, what is wrong with a tiny group of high-profile scientists...developing a vaccine, administering it to themselves, and distributing...to others who choose to try it? A great deal is wrong."
151d
Problems with Preprints: Covering Rough-Draft Manuscripts Responsibly - The Open Notebook
In the rush to disseminate their findings about COVID-19, scientists are increasingly posting preliminary manuscripts of their studies online before these papers are vetted for quality by their peers. Here are the steps journalists can take to...
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Meagan Phelan
@cshperspectives ICYMI: Thoughtful piece on this topic from @rkhamsi in a Monday 1 June @Open_Notebook story: "Covering Rough-Draft Manuscripts Responsibly"
234d
Will the pandemic permanently alter scientific publishing?
The push for rapid and open publishing could take off — although financial pressures lie ahead: part 4 in a series on science after the pandemic.
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Meagan Phelan
“We might find ...heat is going to go out of the open-access movement, and that you’re going to find fewer journals, fewer articles being written, and greater attempts in a tight job market to publish in highly regarded publications,” @JosephJEsposito.
236d
Genes And Musical Ability Both Affect How People Hear Tonal Languages
Speakers of tonal languages such as Cantonese appear to have a genetic variant that makes it easier to hear lexical tones. But the genetic effect is only small. Having had music lessons is much more likely to predict how well someone hears lexical...
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Meagan Phelan
Cantonese speakers with a particular variant of the brain development gene ASPM were better at perceiving lexical tones, new @ScienceAdvances @CUHKofficial study shows. w/ @easternblot reporting.
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Covering research preprints amid the coronavirus: 6 things to know
Journalists need to know these six things to cover coronavirus-related preprints, research papers that haven't been peer reviewed by experts.
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Meagan Phelan
To make it clear that #preprint findings are preliminary, bioRxiv co-founder @JohnRInglis says journalists should explicitly point it out in their stories.
297d
Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing
The newly emergent human virus SARS-CoV-2 is resulting in high fatality rates and incapacitated health systems. Preventing further transmission is a priority. We analyzed key parameters of epidemic spread to estimate the contribution of different...
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Meagan Phelan
New from @sciencemagazine today: Spread of #COVID19 too fast to be contained by manual contact tracing alone, according to @UniofOxford researchers. It could be controlled if contact tracing was faster, and at scale – including by using a mobile phone app.
300d
Facebook Live: Viral structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein goes under the microscope
Just weeks after the genome sequence of the recently emerged coronavirus was published online, researchers reported the cryogenic electron microscopy structu...
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Meagan Phelan
On Friday, @sciencemagazine hosted a Facebook Live with two scientists instrumental in getting the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in clinical trials in Seattle to that point. This is moving unprecedentedly fast, in vaccine history. Hear more here: youtu.be/nOzEx3OpKe8 #coronavírus pic.twitter.com/meIhSNFG9D
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Hunter-gatherer multilevel sociality accelerates cumulative cultural evolution
Although multilevel sociality is a universal feature of human social organization, its functional relevance remains unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of multilevel sociality on cumulative cultural evolution by using wireless sensing...
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Meagan Phelan
The segmented, uniquely fluid social structure of hunter-gatherer communities may have led to system of specialized knowledge where no member of a pop. possessed all innovations, accelerating evolution of human culture @ScienceAdvances @uclnews @uzh_news
328d
Brain Circuit Involved in Compulsive Drinking Identified in Mice
Activity in this circuit predicted which animals would keep drinking despite negative consequences
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Meagan Phelan
Activity in mouse brain circuit predicted which would keep drinking despite negative consequences (@sciencemagazine). “It’s a circuit we hadn’t considered, that likely has novel pharmacological control systems we can look at," said Kay Tye @salkinstitute
431d
Scientists observe mysterious cosmic web directly for first time
Observations reveal cluster of galaxies about 12bn light years away linked by gas filaments
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Meagan Phelan
The cosmic web, a vast, mysterious structure that links up far-flung galaxies, has been observed directly for the first time. @hannahdev reports on a new @sciencemagazine study
480d
Protecting elections from social media manipulation
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ILLUSTRATION: BROBEL DESIGN
To what extent are democratic elections vulnerable to social media manipulation? The fractured state of research and evidence on this most important question facing democracy is reflected in the...
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Meagan Phelan
“Our suggested approach is the rigorous path to understanding how social media will affect us in the 2020 presidential election + beyond,"@sinanaral @deaneckles. Their @ScienceMagazine Policy Forum offers agenda to study social media influence on elections
515d
The public and legislative impact of hyperconcentrated topic news
News has been shown to influence public perception, affect technology development, and increase public expression. We demonstrate that framing, a subjective aspect of news, appears to influence both significant public perception changes and federal...
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Meagan Phelan
Periods of high news article volume on a topic combined with similarity between articles represent a “hyperconcentrated news period” that foreshadows federal legislation and influences sustained public attention, according to a new @ScienceAdvances study
516d
How I became easy prey to a predatory publisher
Pressure to publish and an unfortunately timely email led this assistant professor astray
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Meagan Phelan
"After a week’s worth of back and forth correspondence, including a document on official university letterhead and threats of legal action and wide exposure, we finally persuaded the journal to withdraw the work and dismiss the fees." #predatorypublisher
627d
Nobody Can Figure Out How the First Americans Migrated Across the Continent
'It is very likely that they simply did not all run at once.'
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Meagan Phelan
In a new @ScienceAdvances study, "an international team of researchers acknowledges the existence of an intellectual standstill. The two competing theories for how humans populated the Americas, are, for now, equally viable, they argue."
900d
In Baby Teeth, Links Between Chemical Exposure in Pregnancy and Autism
The record in teeth may show associations with autism but does not mean that the mother did something to cause the condition, experts say.
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Meagan Phelan
"...there’s an unfortunate tendency to treat each new study as a single explanatory solution to what is in fact a tremendously complicated and multifactorial issue."
937d
Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test
Affluence—not willpower—seems to be what’s behind some kids' capacity to delay gratification.
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Meagan Phelan
“the capacity to hold out for a second marshmallow is shaped in large part by a child’s social and economic background—and, in turn, that that background, not the ability to delay gratification, is what’s behind kids’ long-term success ”@JessicaCalarco
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