Vanessa Higham
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vanessahigham.bsky.social
Vanessa Higham
@vanessahigham.bsky.social
390 followers 1.1K following 3 posts
Biologist, PhD Researcher @MonashUni. Interested in mitochondria, sexual conflict, microbiome, diet and life-history evolution
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
kkarapanagiotidis.bsky.social
If One Nation can raise $4.7 million in 10 days for hate and division, I believe we can raise $1.5 million tomorrow for love. Our World Refugee Day Telethon goes from 7am to 11pm. Let’s send a powerful national message tomorrow that we are stronger together ❤️
June 19, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
euanritchie.bsky.social
Pauline Hanson wants a monoculture. She'd probably offer you chicken loaf on white bread for lunch, with a side of spam, too. Fuck off, Pauline.

Diversity is what makes Australia great!
June 17, 2026 at 10:44 PM
vanessahigham.bsky.social
Given the recent findings regarding psychosocial safety in australian university contexts, it is clear that change is necessary.
@taralync.bsky.social & @eivimeycook.bsky.social
diplomatically discuss academic norms around rejection and resilience

blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
Rejection in academia is structural not personal - LSE Impact
Unlike other high-profile professions, academia treats rejection as personal judgement, can it create ways of talking about rejection that are more realistic?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
June 17, 2026 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social
When they say the immigration policies of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, you know they mean the White Australia policy.
February 16, 2026 at 2:40 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
rgleadow.bsky.social
Long Covid > more blood Tau > increase chance of Alzheimer's. Nice study followed people before/after infection, plus 2 years later, and a control group that managed to avoid getting infected (how?). Not surprising to those of us who've been following the story - terrifying all the same #Covid 🧪⚕️
jgreen63.bsky.social J Green @jgreen63.bsky.social · Feb 11
The mainstream media are slowly picking up. Very slowly and very cagily. But it's not a bloody secret, whatever the level of denial or indifference in the population. www.independent.co.uk/news/health/...
February 12, 2026 at 4:04 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
genetics-gsa.bsky.social
Ever wonder what the carbon footprint of your research is?

This latest #GENETICS study presents a systematic life-cycle assessment of the #carbondioxide #emissions generated by a graduate student in a #Drosophila neuroscience lab. buff.ly/hU7pzvs
February 11, 2026 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
euanritchie.bsky.social
A massive shout-out to all women and girls in science, you make science and the world better! www.unesco.org/en/articles/...
2026 International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Join UNESCO on 11 February 2026 for a global event celebrating women in science and shaping a future where science and gender equality advance together
www.unesco.org
February 11, 2026 at 2:29 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
eivimeycook.bsky.social
Thanks to some great comments and suggestions, we've updated TADA!

Read it here: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Transferable, Available, Documented, Annotated.
January 28, 2026 at 8:20 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
eleanorbath.bsky.social
We're advertising a PhD project on how social isolation influences aggression in flies. Based at Durham, co-supervised by @clarahowcroft.bsky.social . Despite what the ad says, this is also open to international applicants! Any questions, shoot me a msg! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Angry and Alone: How Social Experience Shapes Female Aggression in Flies at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Angry and Alone: How Social Experience Shapes Female Aggression in Flies at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
January 26, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
bbmwong.bsky.social
Size matters. Among the great apes, human penises are unusually large. Why? Check out our new open access paper in @plosbiology.org led by @upama.bsky.social. Link here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

And read the lay article in @theconversation.com here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
January 22, 2026 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
nataliepilakouta.bsky.social
Hot off the press! New paper in Biology Letters (@royalsocietypublishing.org) showing that heatwaves impair female but not male fertility in burying beetles 🐞🌡️

Huge congratulations to Izzy (@izzygrieve.bsky.social) on her first first-authored paper! 🥳🙌

royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...
January 19, 2026 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
rgleadow.bsky.social
Avoid Covid to preserve your brain
erictopol.bsky.social Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · Jan 15
Not good to see the rise in p-tau181, a marker of brain inflammation tied to increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, in a prospective cohort (mean age 56 years) with #LongCovid and neurological symptoms

www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...
January 15, 2026 at 7:36 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
pnas.org
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “The variability of evolvability: Properties of dynamic fitness landscapes determine how phenotypic variability evolves.” Explore now: https://ow.ly/XouU50XWiiV

For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/AiXL50XWi81.
Schematic representation of fitness landscapes. (A) Orange lines show maximum (dashed) and average (dotted) fitness of a population on a narrower peak (yellow circles), blue lines show the same for a wider peak (blue circles). (B) Trajectory of a population in a periodically changing environment with respect to a given fitness landscape (solid arrow) and with respect to an unseen other fitness landscape (dashed arrow). (C) Hypothetical “trapping” of the population in variable environments.
January 13, 2026 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
rgleadow.bsky.social
No. No Just no. We do not want guns in Australia and governments should resist the lobbying #AusPol
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
‘Blindsided’: father of Port Arthur massacre victims says NSW hunting bill will take a ‘jackhammer’ to gun control
Walter Mikac, who lost his wife and two daughters in the 1996 shooting, warns that Labor-backed Shooters party bill will weaken national firearms agreement
www.theguardian.com
August 25, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
vcarchidi.bsky.social
Could be treated as a complement to this paper finding that most LLMs tested (9 out of 10) had a tendency to over-generalize clinical trial results in summaries.

(Claude was a repeated exception, for whatever reason).

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
August 25, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
michiganpapa.bsky.social
"Any book worth banning is a book worth reading."

Isaac Asimov
August 25, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
niais.cryptoanarchy.network
Abandoning the vision of liberal arts education is at the heart of how fascism has come knocking.

Scientists speaking of abandoning humanities have not learned the core lessons of our history - and by our history I even mean THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE. Science is never separated from society.
August 13, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
shahanmemon.bsky.social
An important piece on #AI generated #preprints and why it's important to consider their impact on scientific ecosystem.

Some other important considerations related to this that are not covered in the article 👇

🧵1/14

#AI4Science #AI4Research #ScAISci #SciSci
August 13, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
joeybernhardt.bsky.social
Please help us spread the word! Please amplify!

We are searching for an associate or full professor (Canada Excellence Research Chair) in Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph! 🐟🌿🦠🐜🐸🐝

Applications are due October 6 2025.

careers.uoguelph.ca/job/Guelph-C...

#AcademicJobs #EvoBio
Canada Excellence Research Chair in Biodiversity Genomics
Canada Excellence Research Chair in Biodiversity Genomics
careers.uoguelph.ca
August 14, 2025 at 4:13 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
thetransmitter.bsky.social
FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
Harvard University lays off fly database team
The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.
www.thetransmitter.org
August 13, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social
🇬🇷 Greece- Ioanna Papadopoulou, Winter Harvest

A retelling of the myth of Demeter and Persephone that focuses on the pain and violence done to the women in classical myth (god, Zeus is such a fucking asshole)
Winter Harvest
Check out Winter Harvest - <p>When her beloved daughter Kore vanishes, Demeter is distraught. Suspecting betrayal and mistrusting of her family, she searches across the world, unable to come to terms ...
bookshop.org
August 6, 2025 at 5:49 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
hansonmark.bsky.social
A reminder you/your lab can support FlyBase at Cambridge through the following link. Every bit helps. Please share if you yourself can't donate.

www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...
August 14, 2025 at 5:25 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
tinyteerex.bsky.social
We can't go back in time, but we can change our directory going forward. If you don't mask, you can do so from now on. Kindness is one (pretty important!) way to fight fascism, and i can't think of any kinder act than protecting each others' health.
leanhealth.bsky.social Dr. med. Hank Schiffers @leanhealth.bsky.social · Aug 8
UK: What if everyone had masked up? Analysis of app data has the answer:
"Respirators would have dropped the rate of COVID transmission by an estimated factor of 9, compared with 0.6 for surgical masks. A factor of 9 is enough to put SARS-COV-2 into exponential decay!
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What if everyone had masked up? Analysis of app data has an answer
Modelling study based on almost 250,000 positive COVID-19 tests in the United Kingdom shows that universal masking could have cut transmission markedly.
www.nature.com
August 10, 2025 at 5:11 AM
Reposted by Vanessa Higham
iramjohn.bsky.social
There is, of course, no such thing as "PhD level intelligence". PhD level stubbornness ("I'm going to finish this if it kills me") or PhD level sunk cost fallaciousness, sure.

A PhD is awarded for the creation of *new* knowledge. Which is one thing that LLMs are incapable of doing.
samgrinsell.bsky.social Sam Grinsell @samgrinsell.bsky.social · Aug 9
surely related to the widespread obsession with IQ among among techbros, a notion of intelligence that rests on just thinking some people have it (and should be in charge) and others don't and should be ruled. Whereas a PhD is a mark of hard-earned expertise, not "intelligence" as a fixed attribute
shengokai.blacksky.app Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE) @shengokai.blacksky.app · Aug 9
Something that I have been thinking about with attribution of "PhD level intelligence" or "PhD level expertise" to a machine is that it reflects an increasing trend among these AI bros and their sycophants to want the products of highly skilled training without actually doing any of the work.
August 10, 2025 at 5:38 AM