Oca sapiens
ocasapiens.bsky.social
Oca sapiens
@ocasapiens.bsky.social
Sylvie Coyaud, retired science reporter, not sapiens yet.
#biodiversity
#insecticides

Good news

"By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France’s population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%."

"The results could be mirrored across the EU..."
France’s birds start to show signs of recovery after bee-harming pesticide ban
Analysis shows small hike in populations of insect-eating species after 2018 ruling, but full recovery may take decades
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Decades of "fantastic progress" mostly in Asia and Latin America.

"What is different today is that the majority of the world’s poorest people are stuck in economies that have been stagnating for a long time" - mostly in sub-Saharan Africa...
In the last decades, the world has made fantastic progress against extreme poverty. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 *billion* people. 🧵
November 17, 2025 at 1:01 PM
#H5N1
#panzoonotic #avianflu
#biosecurity

Since 2021, the transmission from wild birds to domestic birds and mammals in North America is "primarily driven by Anseriformes, while non-canonical species act as dead-end hosts".

Press release penntoday.upenn.edu/news/wild-bi...
Ecology and spread of the North American H5N1 epizootic - Nature
The panzootic of highly pathogenic H5N1 since 2021 was driven by around nine introductions into the Atlantic and Pacific flyways, followed by rapid dissemination through wild migratory birds, primaril...
www.nature.com
November 17, 2025 at 12:39 PM
#COP30
#AGW

"Saudi Arabia almost killed the global UN climate treaty at birth three decades ago."

And then obstructed, delayed and watered down other environmental agreements.
$170,000 a minute: Why Saudi Arabia is the biggest blocker of climate action

The desert kingdom depends on oil dollars but its people already face a climate ‘at the verge of livability’. What’s going on?

#COP30 #climatecrisis
Story by me
1/7
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
$170,000 a minute: why Saudi Arabia is the biggest blocker of climate action
Desert kingdom depends on oil dollars but its people already face a climate ‘at the verge of livability’. What’s going on?
www.theguardian.com
November 16, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Correction: 20-25 *million* dollars.

bsky.app/profile/deev...
#autism

Despite $20-25 billion/year of US research funds - and sales of pre/probiotics, detox enemas, fecal transplants etc. - studies still don't show a link between autism and gut bacteria.

OA paper (tks @deevybee.bsky.social et al.)
November 15, 2025 at 5:22 PM
#autism

Despite $20-25 billion/year of US research funds - and sales of pre/probiotics, detox enemas, fecal transplants etc. - studies still don't show a link between autism and gut bacteria.

OA paper (tks @deevybee.bsky.social et al.)
November 15, 2025 at 5:15 PM
#Sudan

How a violent & "grotesque economic logic" profits both RSF's and SAF's commanders, and serves the interests of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates across the Horn of Africa, by Joshua Craze.

(See also his essay www.nybooks.com/articles/202...)
Gulf States and Warring Militias Alike Are Profiting From War in Sudan | Novara Media
For the UAE and Saudi Arabia, a divided Sudan is easier to dominate and profit from, writes Joshua Craze.
novaramedia.com
November 15, 2025 at 3:38 PM
#USpolitics
#Gaza

US plans to deploy European & Jordanian troops, & Jordanian police in the red zone - while others paid for the reconstruction of the green zone secured by IDF & (blue helmets?) - promptly "collided with reality".

"Only Italy has offered a potential troop contribution."
November 15, 2025 at 2:34 PM
#Harvard
#MIT

We already knew, didn't we?

2019
Science publishes an interview with #JeffreyEpstein in 2017

2020
@naomioreskes.bsky.social in Scientific American
web.archive.org/web/20200822...
November 15, 2025 at 12:28 PM
#commongoods

"The nonprofit research group found 420 instances where water was either the trigger, weapon, or casualty of violence last year — up 20 percent from 2023, and 78 percent from 2022."
November 14, 2025 at 12:38 PM
#FrancisCrick

Review of Matthew Cobb's "magnificent biography":

"Complex, energetic, freethinking, dazzling, and bohemian, Crick was also ruthless, immature, misogynistic, arrogant, and careless."
Francis Crick’s life and legacy
A new biography offers a definitive account of the DNA decoder
www.science.org
November 14, 2025 at 12:26 PM
#morphology

"Substantial phenotypic diversity already existed in early Holocene dogs" 11,000 years ago, long before Victorian breeding programs.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Due to early domestication? Or natural variation, and of wolves as well?
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The emergence and diversification of dog morphology
Dogs exhibit an exceptional range of morphological diversity as a result of their long-term association with humans. Attempts to identify when dog morphological variation began to expand have been con...
www.science.org
November 14, 2025 at 12:21 PM
#malaria

"Very good news"

Plasmodium falciparum is becoming increasingly resistant to artemisinin, but "A new drug combination produced by Novartis [...] has proved just as efficacious against malaria as the most widely used artemisinin-based combination therapies".
I’ve been in Toronto at the #astmh meeting these past few days and last night some very good news was presented here: A new malaria drug has proven efficacious in a large trial and could soon be approved.🧪
My story in @science.org (and 🧵on why it's important to come):
www.science.org/content/arti...
‘A sigh of relief’: New malaria drug succeeds in large clinical trial
As existing drugs falter because of resistance, the world gets a backup—but hard choices loom on how to use it
www.science.org
November 13, 2025 at 1:46 PM
#evolution
#terrestrialization

Over 487 million years, "key biological functions evolved independently & repeatedly across unrelated lineages", but each "also carries its own unique innovations, reflecting unique evolutionary paths shaped by ecology, physiology, and chance.”

Press release
November 13, 2025 at 1:00 PM
💔
"La sera del Bataclan", dieci anni fa a Parigi.
13 Novembre : la vie après la survie. C'est la une de Libération ce jeudi.
November 13, 2025 at 11:44 AM
#polsci

Although 56% of Americans want stricter gun control laws, recent "mass shootings mobilize local voters (especially in heavily Democratic areas) but do not shift presidential vote choices".

Co-author Kevin Morris's 🧵: bsky.app/profile/kevi...

Focus: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
November 13, 2025 at 11:26 AM
#AGW
#climatejustice
#ExtremeEvents

In Mumbai, deaths due to monsoon rains & sea-level rise are up to 10 times more than official statistics suggest, and victims are mostly women & small children from the slums.

Not OA paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Editorial
Official statistics are vastly undercounting deaths from extreme weather
Research reveals that many more people lose their lives because of the effects of rainfall and flooding than are routinely accounted for.
www.nature.com
November 12, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Milan Prosecutor's team is investigating Italian "tourists" who paid Serbian forces to take part in "snipers' safaris".

The case was also filed by writer Ezio Gavazzeni who collected more evidence after watching Miran Zupanič's documentary "Sarajevo Safari" in 2022:
bsky.app/profile/vali...
November 12, 2025 at 2:06 PM
#Sarajevo

"L'indagine ha avuto origine da una denuncia presentata da Ezio Gavazzeni, uno scrittore milanese che ha raccolto prove dopo aver visto #SarajevoSafari, un documentario del 2022 del regista sloveno Miran Zupanič."

Come quella aperta in Gran Bretagna:
November 12, 2025 at 1:06 PM
😟

"For 8 months, South Australia has been besieged by mysterious toxic algae. Dead rays, octopuses, crabs, and other marine species [...] litter tens of kilometers of shoreline. [...] Besides sickening people, the toxins have caused large economic losses in fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism."
Australia’s unprecedented toxic algal bloom has a surprise culprit
A relatively unknown species is producing a notorious neurotoxin, devastating sea life
www.science.org
November 12, 2025 at 12:34 PM
#AGW
#energytransition

The yearly and reliable digest of WEO's scenarios, “none of [which] should be regarded as a forecast” and only one of which would see warming "returning to 1.5C by the end of the century...
NEW: Global fossil fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless 'stated policies' are abandoned

Contra some terrible news coverage, IEA World Energy Outlook shows coal near peak, oil peaking by 2030 & gas by 2035 (see chart)

What's going on? 🧵 + cool charts

www.carbonbrief.org/iea-fossil-f...
November 12, 2025 at 11:59 AM
#biocomputers

"Other researchers who work with human neurons are more sceptical of what’s possible. And they warn that hype — and the science-fictional allure of what are sometimes labelled brain-in-a-jar systems — could even be counterproductive."
In a handful of academic laboratories and companies, researchers are growing human neurons and trying to turn them into functional systems equivalent to biological transistors

go.nature.com/4p28R39
The computers that run on human brain cells
Move over silicon: scientists want to use neurons to make powerful computers with minuscule energy needs.
go.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 1:49 PM
#COP30

"By mid-2025, 117 million people had been displaced by war, violence and persecution. Three in four of them are living in countries facing high-to-extreme exposure to climate-related hazards."

Mostly in Africa, but #AGW exacerbates crises everywhere.
🚨 Extreme weather is colliding with conflict—forcing people to flee again and again.

A new @unhcr.org report reveals how floods, droughts, and deadly heat are undermining recovery, increasing humanitarian needs and amplifying the risks of repeated displacement. #COP30
November 11, 2025 at 12:15 PM
#Gaza
#warcrimes

A review of Ben Zand's new documentary for ITV "Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel's War", released tonight on Remembrance Day.

See also Ben Zand's interview:
November 10, 2025 at 2:35 PM
#humanrights
#SaniAbacha
#Shell

In June, Nigeria's president pardoned Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 Ogoni environmental activists executed by the military regime in 1995. He also named Saro-Wiwa Commander and the others Officers of the Order of the Niger...

www.thecable.ng/just-in-tinu...
Ken Saro-Wiwa - Goldman Environmental Prize
Ken Saro-Wiwa (d. 1995) led a peaceful movement for the environmental and human rights of Nigeria’s Ogoni people whose oil-rich land was exploited by oil companies.
www.goldmanprize.org
November 10, 2025 at 12:53 PM