Vegard Eldholm
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vehuardo.bsky.social
Vegard Eldholm
@vehuardo.bsky.social
370 followers 280 following 330 posts
Semi-informed molecular biologist & recovering football coach / Research Professor / Microbial Genomics / Evolution / AMR /
/ https://www.fhi.no / www.haploid.no
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
samjwilsonphd.bsky.social
How does fever work?

Our new Science paper shows how elevated body temperature can protect against severe influenza and that avian-origin viruses escape this defence.

This is likely one reason why bird flus and some pandemic influenzas can be so severe.🧵

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Avian-origin influenza A viruses tolerate elevated pyrexic temperatures in mammals
Host body temperature can define a virus’s replicative profile—influenza A viruses (IAVs) adapted to 40° to 42°C in birds are less temperature sensitive in vitro compared with human isolates adapted t...
www.science.org
November 27, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
timothysnyder.bsky.social
1) Start the worst European war since 1945 and commit every imaginable war crime
2) Decide how you want to be rewarded for your aggression
3) Leak the list of your desiderata to the US press
4) Wait for the US president to enforce your wish list on your victim.
Russian policy 2025
November 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
dieworkwear.bsky.social
Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.

My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.
A Twitter account called Ivanka News tweets an AI image of a young woman wearing Muslim garb. The woman is holding a sign that says "I came here illegally. Should I be deported?" Ivanka News writes: What is your response to this person ?? In the "About this account" tab, it appears the account is based in Nigeria An account called MAGA scope writes: Who, in your view is the great enemy of the United States? Communism, Islam, Democratic Party, or Satan? The account is based in Nigeria. An account called MAGA Nadine writes: You go to work and find this. What would you do? The attached pic is an AI image that shows a microwave. The microwave has a sign that says "For religious reasons, this microwave is now making halal food only." The account is based in Morocco. An account called America First posts an AI image of Tulsi Gabbard. They wrote: How would you rate your trust in Tulsi Gabbard on a scale of 1-10?
November 23, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
malcontentnews.bsky.social
Europe is Sleep Walking Towards War and Ignoring the New Trump Reality

The Trump administration couldn’t be clearer in its signals that it has no intent to support Europe in stopping Russian aggression.
Europe is Sleep Walking Towards War and Ignoring the New Trump Reality
The Trump administration couldn’t be clearer in its signals that it has no intent to support Europe in stopping Russian aggression.
malcontentnews.substack.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
noelreports.com
Cheeseburger-eating surrender monkeys 🇺🇸🍔🐒

Call it what it is: betrayal.
November 21, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
antongerashchenko.bsky.social
Completely agree.
The fates of Ukraine and Europe are linked.
European security system will be destroyed without Ukraine.
November 21, 2025 at 5:09 PM
vehuardo.bsky.social
If EU can’t land a deal to get the frozen Russian assets to Ukraine within a couple of days, the whole project is dead and worthless.

EU will prove to be a fundamentally dysfunctional construct unable to deliver basic security to its inhabitants
November 21, 2025 at 5:00 PM
vehuardo.bsky.social
Can’t put my finger on it, but I have a feeling there is something symbolic about this
onestpress.onestnetwork.com Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 9d
BREAKING: The UN climate talks COP30 have been evacuated due to a fire breaking out inside the venue in Belém, Brazil.
November 21, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
blekhman.bsky.social
I wrote about the recent autism-microbiome paper, why I think it's the most important microbiome paper this year, and what it says about the field

open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...
The Autism-Microbiome Hypothesis Is Falling Apart
Why this new review paper should be required reading for every microbiome researcher
open.substack.com
November 19, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
alanmcn1.bsky.social
Our latest is out tonight in @microbiologysociety.org MGen. Using long read seq to ID and then control hospital transmission of a CRKp we believe shows genomic and clinical signs of hypervirulence

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
Identification and response to a putatively hypervirulent, carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae ST395 hospital outbreak in the UK
Here, we describe a putatively hypervirulent, carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (hv-CRKP) outbreak. Nanopore sequencing guided the infection prevention and control (IPC) responses during the ...
www.microbiologyresearch.org
November 20, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
ukhsa.bsky.social
🆕 #UKHSAVirusWatch: The latest flu, COVID-19 and RSV data from our weekly winter surveillance report.

For more detail, read the full report below. 🔎

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2025-to-2026-season
November 20, 2025 at 5:28 PM
vehuardo.bsky.social
Here we go again, the daily reminder that Washington has fallen and *really* wants Russia to take over (i.e destroy) Ukraine, which is the inevitable outcome if Ukraine is demilitarised.

Nothing has changed and Ukraine still needs sustained and serious support from Europe
noelreports.com NOELREPORTS @noelreports.com · 10d
The plan would even demand that Russian be recognised as an official state language in Ukraine and that the local branch of the Russian Orthodox Church receive official status, echoing long standing Kremlin political goals.

That is going to be a no.
November 19, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
katholt.bsky.social
#AMR #Klebsiella cause >100,000 neonatal deaths globally each year.

Our new preprint shows more than half of #Klebsiella pneumoniae neonatal sepsis cases in African and South Asian are nosocomial, acquired through transmission in neonatal units. #WAAW

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
figure showing estimated proportion of cases in clusters, for each site. range from 0.04 to 0.93, mean estimate in random effects model is 0.57 [0.46,0.68]
November 19, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
jcamthrash.bsky.social
Introgression impacts the evolution of bacteria, but species borders are rarely fuzzy www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs
Introgression impacts the evolution of bacteria, but species borders are rarely fuzzy - Nature Communications
It is commonly thought that bacterial species borders tend to be fuzzy, due to frequent exchange of DNA. Here, Diop et al. quantify the patterns of gene flow between core genomes across 50 major bacte...
www.nature.com
November 13, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
vehuardo.bsky.social
No snakkar vi! Kanskje vi undervurderte AP og dette var planen heile vegen
November 12, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
acritschristoph.bsky.social
Very happy to share our recent work @cultivarium.bsky.social on genetic tools for Ideonella sakaiensis, a (Betaproteo-)bacterium that degrades PET plastic.

We identified a plasmid vector for the strain and generated a large RB-TnSeq library, screening for genes impacting plastic degradation.
Figure 2. PET screen results and RB-TnSeq gene fitness results
November 12, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
wvschaik.bsky.social
Heroic work by @bluebirdsjunk.bsky.social in pulling this mammoth study together

'Staphylococcus haemolyticus Population Genomics Provides Insights into Pathogenicity and Commensalism'

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Staphylococcus haemolyticus Population Genomics Provides Insights into Pathogenicity and Commensalism
Staphylococcus haemolyticus is a common commensal bacterium but also an opportunistic pathogen, frequently implicated in bacteraemia and sepsis in preterm neonates and immunocompromised patients. Desp...
www.biorxiv.org
November 11, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
euromaidanpress.bsky.social
The German Parliament's AfD lawmakers asked hundreds of detailed questions about Germany’s military and cyber systems.

Officials now suspect these were meant to expose weaknesses — one warned they looked like “a task list from the Kremlin.”
euromaidanpress.com/2025/11/06/d...
Der Spiegel: Germany’s AfD lawmakers suspected of feeding sensitive Bundeswehr data to Russian intelligence
CDU and SPD are demanding answers after the AfD submitted detailed and structured parliamentary requests, which officials say resemble coordinated intelligence-gathering.
euromaidanpress.com
November 6, 2025 at 10:08 PM
vehuardo.bsky.social
You can take East Germany out of the Soviet Union, but you can’t take Soviet out of East Germany. Apparently.

The anti-democratic illiberal tendencies of Germany East-of-Elbe is a recurring theme in ‘The shortest history of Germany’ by James Hawes.
www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...
November 6, 2025 at 11:02 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
sebagobert.bsky.social
Combien de supporteurs de Trump faut-il pour changer une ampoule?

Aucun.

Trump affirme juste qu’il l’a changé. Et tous s’en réjouissent dans le noir.
November 1, 2025 at 1:00 PM
vehuardo.bsky.social
Why funding Ukraine is a giant opportunity for Europe
economist.com/leaders/2025...
Why funding Ukraine is a giant opportunity for Europe
The bill will be huge. It is also a historic bargain
economist.com
October 30, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
marikamikiashvili.bsky.social
“Fight before it is too late!” - a message to Europe by Georgia’s jailed political leaders Giorgi Vashadze, Zurab Girchi Japaridze, Elene Khoshtaria.

The video was made for the ALDE Congress 2025.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=77A5...
October 28, 2025 at 8:37 AM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
noelreports.com
Zelensky said China is helping Russia, and he’s right. Satellite images show a sanctioned Russian LNG tanker transferring 170,000 m³ of gas to a Hong Kong-linked ship near Malaysia, days after Trump sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil. First documented case of China-linked help dodging US sanctions.
October 24, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by Vegard Eldholm
andersostlund.bsky.social
The savages attacked a kindergarten in Kharkiv today. For years, we asked how the atrocities during WWII could be allowed to happen. Now we know. "Defenders" of freedom and democracy lack the guts to stand up for them.
October 22, 2025 at 9:58 AM