The ‘crazy rule-defying’ genes that determine biological sex

“In her book ‘Sex, Genes and Chromosomes’, geneticist Jennifer Graves leads readers through “one of the great detective stories of genetics”: the hunt for the genes that determine sex in vertebrates.

Graves makes an ideal guide, having contributed to many of the advances she describes.

With clear explanations, it should be a standard reference on X- and Y-chromosome biology.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01101-x

"FORRT is excited to launch the Open Research Games Portal – a crowdsourced, pedagogically informed database of games and interactive activities for teaching open and reproducible research practices."

https://forrt.org/games/

first impressions of the Lego smart brick, before I do any actual tearing down: wow, I forgot how good they are at working with plastic. the injecton molding remains impeccable, at least for this specific piece (I know about their recent QC issues elsewhere)

it's hard for me to look at the positively microscopic (I am literally using a microscope to look at it) "Li-Ion" lettering and think of anything but "showing off!"

(treehouse doesn't let me attach the full size images, you can grab them here: front, side)

New! Interactional foundations for critical AI literacies https://zenodo.org/records/19452872

Why do Anthropic engineers talking to Claude sound like Azande witch doctors addressing their potions? What does Mambila spider divination have in common with prompt engineering? Why are LLMs so irresistible to interact with?

If you're interested in questions like that, and in luminaries like Lovelace, Adorno, Suchman and Weizenbaum, you may be interested in this paper: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19452872

It will come as no surprise that ‘to live’ is etymologically related to ‘life’ and ‘alive’.

However, these words are also related to ‘to leave’ and German ‘bleiben’ (“to stay”), which used to have an English cognate: ‘to belive’.

Even ‘lipo-’ in ‘liposuction’ is related, as are the parts ‘-lev-’ and ‘-lv-’ of the numerals ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’.

All of these words stem from a common Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to stick”.

Click my new graphic to learn all about this word family:

POV: you’re a professor in the Netherlands and you receive a notification that your exams have been printed.

#AcademicMastodon #AcademicChatter #ProfessorLife #Bike #bicycling #Netherlands

"In the UK, a quarter of total university income is generated by international students, who pay much higher fees than home students. To attract them, British universities rely on vast, largely unregulated networks of agents operating primarily in Asia and Africa."

"The reason British universities spend so much to attract international students is simple: if they were to rely solely on home students, they would go bust."

What could possibly go wrong ... with university finances. This system is not well-grounded, not reliable or stable in any way or form.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/apr/07/brutal-reality-of-life-as-a-foreign-student-in-the-uk

#UK #academia