Laurel Oldach
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laureloldach.bsky.social
Laurel Oldach
@laureloldach.bsky.social
1.2K followers 2.1K following 370 posts
Biochemistry & instrumentation reporter at Chemical & Engineering News. Signal: Laurel_Oldach.07
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laureloldach.bsky.social
My colleagues @rowanwalrath.bsky.social and @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social watched yesterday’s ACIP meeting so you won’t have to.

They caught this particularly confidence-eroding scientific critique…
💀
Since hepatitis B vaccination at birth was introduced in the US, hepatitis B cases among infants have dropped 69%, according to a presentation from CDC scientist Adam Langer. Some data presented in the meeting also suggested no increased risk of adverse events when the hepatitis B vaccine is given at birth, although Kulldorff disputed that claim after visibly doing napkin math at the conference room table during the meeting.
September 19, 2025 at 2:45 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
This is an interesting take from George Church, given that many sequencers seem to be competing on turnaround time, with neonatal diagnosis as a key use case.

www.wired.com/story/whole-...
Screenshot from a Wired story reads : “ But there was one group Church was cool on having their genomes sequenced: newborns. “It’s kind of too late for really early onset [diseases], and it’s way too early for late onset.” The latter conditions, he noted, have very few cures. “It’s kind of a recipe for anxiety more than anything else.””
September 15, 2025 at 4:12 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
Today in "AI fails to answer basic factual questions correctly, even while citing sources that have a correct and nuanced answer:
Screenshot of a Bing search (don't at me, it's my work computer) asking "how many ApoE alleles are there?" with a big Copilot-generated answer: THREE. The response lists apoE2, apoE3 and apoE4, which are indeed the *most common* human alleles, but absolutely not the only ones. (The response also links to a wikipedia article that lists two other alleles!)
July 18, 2025 at 5:10 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
Committee chair Susan Collins is here, wearing what looks to me like an Alzheimer's Association pin. After denouncing NIH proposed budget cut >$19B, she jumps right into discussing Alzheimer's impacts (she's lost numerous family members to this disease)
screenshot of Sen Susan Collins, chair. On her suit jacket she has a pin that resembles the Alzheimer's Association logo
June 10, 2025 at 2:22 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
Gang, do we reckon this is a sugar sweetened beverage?

I can't tell whether we have an Arnold Palmer or a coffee on our hands
HHS secretary RFK Jr appears before a senate committee, in a suit, with a 16oz beverage at his elbow
May 14, 2025 at 5:47 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
cen.acs.org/people/award...

Can't get over this anecdote about then-grad-student Frances Arnold proposing to turn the bathroom into a cleanroom for cell culture in @bethanyhalford.bsky.social's cover story about her for @cenmag.bsky.social
The men’s room was tiled and washable, and it wouldn’t cost too much to turn it into a clean room. It was the only restroom on the third floor, though. “We proposed this to the dean, and Frances was pretty persuasive. She almost got the dean to go along with this,” he says, but some of the male chemists who worked on the third floor did not like the idea of walking down a flight of stairs to use the restroom, so it never happened. Blanch notes that at this time, the women’s restroom was on the first floor, so Frances had to walk down two flights of stairs when she wanted to use it.
March 21, 2025 at 7:21 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
www.science.org/content/blog...

Lots to 👀 at here. This part stuck out.
(4) This report about the new NSF director does not build confidence in his leadership, in case you needed another reason to doubt it. Someone stepped in and removed the entire "Controversies" section from his Wikipedia article, which is the part that describes a lawsuit filed against him in 2021 for gender discrimination. The IP address that did the revisions resolves to. . .the NSF.
February 7, 2025 at 2:51 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
I wrote about the pitfalls of urinalysis - and how a determined primary care doctor kept his patient out of prison.

cen.acs.org/analytical-c...
Flat illustration of a blue-gloved hand holding a visual urine test strip (the kind with a lot of small swatches that change color) over a urine collection jar.
May 29, 2024 at 1:45 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
oops, didn't realize the link card had failed me!

cen.acs.org/education/sc...
a duck made of glass glowing green under UV illumination
February 21, 2024 at 6:01 PM
laureloldach.bsky.social
After Bing AI answered a search for "cysteine ubiquitination" with a concise description of lysine ubiquitination, I was finally annoyed enough to search for how to turn off the Bing AI box.

The AI chat gave instructions that didn't work. 🤬
AI searchbot writes a description of cysteine ubiquitination... that ends with ubiquitination of a lysine. Trust me that this is annoying if you're a biochemist just looking for a reference.
February 2, 2024 at 2:53 PM