Large Language Models, colloquially called Artificial Intelligence by companies selling rebranded autocomplete tools to other companies and the public, can automate a lot of entry-level projects but when it comes to anything more complex the flaws are quickly seen.

When Black people using social media exhibit possible depression in their prose, a paper claims LLM/AI tools don't detect it as easily as they do other skin colors.

When we created the Science 2.0 movement, it quickly caught cultural fire. Blogging became the thing to do, to such an extent that corporate media entered with contracts for scientists while outlets like the BBC began to explore publishing user-generated content.

Social media filled the void when the blogging movement faded and while it changed journalism - articles about social media responses became common - it did nothing for knowledge creation and scientific peer review. Instead of blogging being a firewall for the public regarding science content, pay-to-publish journals claiming to be peer-reviewed instead overwhelmed the ability of scientists to look at it all.

Tirzepatide facilitates weight loss in obese people with type 2 diabetes and therefore improves glucose control and also results in improved cardiovascular disease outcomes.

A recent analysis compared a group of adults with type 1 diabetes who were prescribed tirzepatide (off-label) to a control group of adults with type 1 diabetes who were not using any weight-loss medication. The investigators reported significantly larger declines in body mass index (BMI) and weight in the treated group compared to controls. HbA1c decreased in the treated group as early as three months and was sustained through a one-year follow-up.

One of the now rare species of oysters in the Pacific Northwest is the Olympia oyster, Ostrea lurida, (Carpenter, 1864). While rare today, these are British Columbia’s only native oyster. 

Had you been dining on their brethren in the 1800s or earlier, it would have been this species you were consuming. Middens from Vancouver Island's norther tip to California are built from Ostrea lurida.

A Devonian bony fish mortality plate showing a lower shield of Zenaspis podolica (Lankester, 1869) from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine.

While war rages on in the Ukraine, our hearts go out to those who live and work here contributing much to our understanding of Podolia, a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-central and south-western parts of Ukraine, in northeastern Moldova. 

The Hallstatt Limestone is the world's richest Triassic ammonite unit, yielding specimens of more than 500 ammonite species.


Along with diversified cephalopod fauna  — orthoceratids, nautiloids, ammonoids — we also see gastropods, bivalves, especially the late Triassic pteriid bivalve Halobia (the halobiids), brachiopods, crinoids and a few corals. We also see a lovely selection of microfauna represented. 

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park covers 23 hectares of the Bulkley River Valley, on the east side of Driftwood Creek, a tributary of the Bulkley River, 10 km northeast of the town of Smithers in northern British Columbia. 

About a month ago I was contacted by a colleague who invited me to write a piece on the topic of science outreach for an electronic journal (Ithaca). I was happy to accept, but when I later pondered on what I would have liked to write, I could not help thinking back at a piece on the power and limits of the use of analogies in the explanation of physics, which I wrote 12 years ago as a proceedings paper for a conference themed on physics outreach in Torino. It dawned on me that although 12 years had gone by, my understanding of what constitutes good techniques for engagement of the public and for effective communication of scientific concepts had not widened very significantly. 

Life may be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell which means it could be found in the frozen sea spray from the moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter.

Finding that will take is a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft, and that will happen when the Europa Clipper mission launches in October with the The SUrface Dust Analyzer.

The authors couldn't simulate grains of ice flying through space at 2 to 3 miles per second to hit an observational instrument so they used an experimental setup that sent a thin beam of liquid water into a vacuum, where it disintegrates into droplets. They then used a laser beam to excite the droplets and mass spectral analysis to mimic what instruments on the space probe will detect.

A recent study in mice suggests the the liver is key in a molecular link that may also cause humans with diabetes to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes is overwhelmingly in obese people so if the findings in mice ever apply to humans the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease in such people could be avoiding it in the first place.