Sally Lowell

Time passes. 😢

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5equKrVo3zE

#Nostalgia #AndyKershaw

Good #Edinburgh things: today, the cherry blossom is out, and so is this new track from Boards of Canada 😍

Inspired by @brianbilston@mastodon.online I tried to turn this post into a Haiku but find myself defeated by the impossibility of determining how many syllables there are in the word Edinburgh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bghDcbzfEU

#Music #Syllables

RE: @CellySally@biologists.social

My #MicroBookReview of Elizabeth Alker's book

The subheading"How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop" really undersells this book. It it is somehow also about how things become connected, and how culture emerges in response to particular social or political situations, and how making strange new sounds can help us understand how to exist in strange new times, and how to find joy. And it has a good cover, and a good title written in a very good font.

I loved it. 10/10

#Music

Just look at that graph. Amazing.

Congratulations to the Pollard lab and all authors.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10329-6

Roni Size: there was drum, there was bass, there was dancing, it was ace.

It's #GoodFridayMusicQuiz day!

What links:

Whole Lotta Love by Led Zep

Please Go Home by the Rolling Stones

Race for the Prize by Flaming LIps

If you think know the answer, can you name another song with the same link?

A further clue will be provided upon request

"Why we won’t be funding open access publishing any more"
- Cancer Research UK

(h/t @@earthowned@mastodon.scot but on BlueSky)

"We want to see the academic publishing industry change in a way that benefits science, not just profits"
- Cancer Research UK, and also all the rest of us

https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/why-we-wont-be-funding-open-access-publishing-any-more/

The ABC of my fave things in this paper:

* ABOLISHING both silencing AND leakiness of SynNotch (check out the DTA-based demo of this 😍) while preserving high efficiency, in pluripotent & differentiating cells

* BOOSTING signal during #PUFFFIN neighbour-labelling

* CITING Robbie Burns (1786) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.22.713470v1

#DevBio

Favourite talk so far at BSDB2026 was from Cliff Tabin, entitled 'Quack science':

Proper hardcore dev-bio airway-patterning mechanisms... explaining distinct vocalisations in birds!

Estrogen modulates developmental signalling, explaining why male (but not female) ducks can whistle as well as quack.

Left-Right asymmetry during development of airways explains why some songbirds can harmonise with themselves.

#DevBio

MASSIVE turnout. Well done #Edinburgh. We are the people.