Donald Dunbar
ddunbar.bsky.social
Donald Dunbar
@ddunbar.bsky.social
Dad, Chief, and Husband in Newburgh; Scientist (Bioinformatician); Scottish Indy, Atheist, Republican, Socialist, Dundonian, Arab
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
For the first time, the MAGA base has turned on Trump - over Epstein. And significantly the rebels were led by a once ultra loyal woman. It shows there’s a limit to the cult’s acceptance, and Trump’s power. It also reveals his weak spot: Epstein and female rage

My @heraldscotland.bsky.social column
Epstein is Trump’s breaking point – and Greene shows where MAGA’s limits lie
The power dynamic in the Trump movement has shifted, Neil Mackay argues, with his most loyal supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene turning on the…
www.heraldscotland.com
November 20, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
I'm participating in an "Open Science Exploratory Roundtable" in the Max Planck Society later this week, so bumping my grumpy thoughts about open science again. I'm as curious as everyone else to see what a club of competitive narcissists who succeeded under the status quo (the MPG) can manage!
November 10, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Today is Lise Meitner's birthday, as well as Marie Curie. I wrote this blogpost about Meitner and her life a while back. Let's celebrate the woman who 'never lost her humanity'. occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald...
Zombies and Narratives | Athene Donald's Blog
occamstypewriter.org
November 7, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
House prices have gone up in the French town of Sauté since it's become gentlyfried.
November 6, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
I have a very bad feeling about this...
October 27, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Cardiff will be the first UK city to introduce a surcharge for oversized SUVs and trucks, "while very large vehicles – those over 3,500kg – will be excluded from residential permits entirely."
Cardiff set to tackle SUV 'carspreading' in UK first
Cardiff Council is set to become the first local authority in the UK to introduce higher parking charges for SUVs and other heavy vehicles, in a move campaigners say will make city streets safer and f...
nation.cymru
October 16, 2025 at 6:43 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Definitely a good use of AI!
Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
October 15, 2025 at 6:39 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Oh joy, this is wonderful. And a great choice for the recipients. I had a great chat with Michel at the Helgoland quantum centenary: he's such a modest guy.
BREAKING: The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit"

Stay tuned for more.
October 7, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
🧵1/ Excited to share our new paper introducing a new #singlecell assay: scTF-seq, a high-throughput single-cell approach to explore how transcription factor (TF) dose shapes cell identity and reprogramming outcomes. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Big congrats to the entire team @EPFL & @SIAT_China
Dissecting the impact of transcription factor dose on cell reprogramming heterogeneity using scTF-seq - Nature Genetics
This study introduces single-cell transcription factor (TF) sequencing, a single-cell barcoded and doxycycline-inducible TF overexpression approach that reveals dose-sensitive functional classes of TFs and cellular heterogeneity by mapping TF dose-dependent transcriptomic changes during the reprogramming of mouse embryonic multipotent stromal cells.
www.nature.com
October 6, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
The Margrittest Captcha of all time.
October 5, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
New blog post!

Ever wonder what geom_histogram is actually doing? How about geom_boxplot?

In celebration of the release of #ggplot2 4.0.0 (ggplot8?), I explore the relationships between the “geoms” and “stats” offered by the core {ggplot2} functions.

#rstats
Exploring {ggplot2}’s Geoms and Stats – Stat’s What It’s All About
blog.msbstats.info
September 15, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
In case you’ve ever wondered how they do it…

www.worldofmoose.com/products/mum...
September 16, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope returns to this spot after more than 20 years!

This is the second-largest star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Bright, young stars light up gas clouds & sculpt clumps of dust with powerful ultraviolet radiation 👉 esahubble.org/images/potw2... 🔭
September 8, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
An evergreen thread: Race/Ethnicity is *not the same* as genetics, and you can't use Race/Ethnicity as a sort of stand-in for genetics. These two concepts are connected via aspects like skin colour, but the connection is alot less profound and categorical than most people think.
August 29, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Mariam Abu Dagga, a Palestinian journalist whose photos captured the destruction in Gaza, died in an Israeli strike on Gaza's Nasser Hospital, the one she regularly documented.

Here are some of the scenes Dagga captured during the war:
See photos by Palestinian photojournalist Mariam Dagga, killed on the job
An Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital in Gaza killed five journalists, among them an AP freelancer. She died in the hospital she had long documented.
www.washingtonpost.com
August 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin and Catwoman collaborate to dispose of the Dynamic Duo in...

🦇 BATMAN the movie (1966) 11:35am #AdamWest #BurtWard #BurgessMeredith #LeeMeriwether #CesarRomero comic strip family feature #TPTVsubtitles
August 27, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
To understand our Milky Way's history, we need to study star clusters.

Gaia excelled at this, having:

✨ performed a cluster inventory
💫 mapped the Sun’s neighbourhood
🔗 revealed hidden links in the sky

With more data still to come, Gaia has a lot more to teach us 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭
August 26, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Illinois is launching a first-of-its-kind legal hotline for LGBTQ+ individuals — Illinois Pride Connect.

As the only state in the nation that will provide free legal advice to protect the LGBTQ+ community, we'll help fight ignorance with information and cruelty with compassion.
August 22, 2025 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
RDM Weekly Issue 9 is out! 📫

- NIH DMS Plans Lesson Set
- Ethically Making and Sharing Data @cynthiaheider.com
- Creating Psych-DS #rstats Projects @ianhussey.mmmdata.io
- Yoda Metadata Editor @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social
and more!
rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...
RDM Weekly - Issue 009
A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.
rdmweekly.substack.com
August 19, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Scientists Stumbled Across A Sunken Whale Carcass That Could Support The Ecosystem For Decades | IFLScience
Deep-Sea Explorers Found A Sunken Whale Carcass – And Watched A Wild Banquet Unfold
This giant whale banquet could support the ecosystem for many years, if not decades.
www.iflscience.com
August 17, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Worst bleaching on record for Western Australian coral reefs. 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Worst coral bleaching on record for Western Australian reefs
Scientists say the damage was caused by the
www.bbc.co.uk
August 12, 2025 at 8:24 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
RFK Jr. is upset that a recent large Danish study in Annals of Internal Medicine, conducted over 20 yrs in 1 M kids, found no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines & 50 different health conditions.

His request for the retraction was rejected.
🧪 www.reuters.com/business/hea...
August 11, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Data come in many different formats and are used in many different ways, but in many cases, a checklist like this (along with good data documentation) can help you verify if a dataset is in a usable format for most general purposes.
osf.io/t8upr
August 11, 2025 at 1:26 AM
Reposted by Donald Dunbar
Tiny ribbons, big role: In zebrafish, sensory hair cells use stable microtubules and kinesin motors to build and position ribbon synapses, structures that keep signals flowing in hearing and balance.

Read our new Insight Article: buff.ly/BBVXbYw
August 7, 2025 at 1:44 PM