Eva Amsen

COMPANY IS COMING YouTube video by Chris Fleming

My mom is coming to visit so this is my current mode: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBwE...

Groundbreaking new drug shows promise for treating children with a devastating form of epilepsy An experimental treatment reduces seizures and other symptoms in children with a type of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome.

In my first piece for Live Science I wrote about a new drug for a rare form of epilepsy. www.livescience.com/health/groun...

Groundbreaking new drug shows promise for treating children with a devastating form of epilepsy An experimental treatment reduces seizures and other symptoms in children with a type of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome.

In my first piece for Live Science I wrote about a new drug for a rare form of epilepsy. www.livescience.com/health/groun...

Hey, There's Science In This - Eva Amsen Hey, There’s Science In This Hey, There’s Science In This is a collection of essays about unexpected science links to everyday topics. Rubber ducks at sea, a Japanese TV show or food-based paint techn...

Happy #worldbookday to all books and their readers. If you’re looking for a quick science read, take a look at “Hey, There’s Science In This” evaamsen.com/HTSIT/

It's basically biodiesel for planes. Several airlines already use it whenever they land at an airport that has it. (Not all do, but it can be mixed with regular fuel so the planes aren't limited to flying between airports with SAF) www.icao.int/SAF/SAF-airp...

Digesting lactose is pretty weird But it's just another genetic quirk, really. Plus: what that has to do with a book I reviewed, and some interesting science links from around the web.

New Mixture is up! It’s about the evolution of why some people can drink milk, how some people are using it to support their racist views, and what that has to do with a book I recently reviewed for @undark.org 🧪 #scicomm mixture.substack.com/p/digesting-...

I thought it was just me! Luckily I found the paper I needed on PubMedCentral

Coral reef food chains cut short by human activity Creatures in these marine ecosystems have a much more limited menu compared with 7,000 years ago

And finally, also in the Mixture roundup, @payaldhar.bsky.social wrote about coral reefs for @cenmag.bsky.social cen.acs.org/biological-c...

Tabletop Role Playing Games Make Science an Adventure Graduate students turned tabletop role playing games into tools for science communication.

A piece about science games, by @thegeekygoth.bsky.social over at The Scientist www.the-scientist.com/tabletop-rol...

Dead mosquito beaks make surprisingly good 3D printing nozzles Researchers glued dead mosquito feeding tubes onto 3D printers and got finer lines than $80 commercial nozzles, for about 80 cents each.

This intriguing crossover between mosquitoes and tech seen at @boingboing.net boingboing.net/2026/02/20/d...

The Origins of Agar First introduced into laboratories in 1881, agar remains indispensable as a culture medium.

The origins of agar, by Corrado Nai at @asimovpress.bsky.social www.asimov.press/p/agar

Coffee crops are dying from a fungus with species-jumping genes – researchers are ‘resurrecting’ their genomes to understand how and why Coffee wilt disease has continually devastated farms around the world. Understanding the fungus’s genetics can help protect everyone’s cup of joe.

As usual, Mixture also rounds up some recent interesting science links. Like this terrible news about coffee, courtesy of Lily Peck over at @theconversation.com theconversation.com/coffee-crops...

Digesting lactose is pretty weird But it's just another genetic quirk, really. Plus: what that has to do with a book I reviewed, and some interesting science links from around the web.

New Mixture is up! It’s about the evolution of why some people can drink milk, how some people are using it to support their racist views, and what that has to do with a book I recently reviewed for @undark.org 🧪 #scicomm mixture.substack.com/p/digesting-...

Screenshot from phone with fox photos and the caption “pet friends”

Screenshot from phone showing iPhone identifying a baby fox as a fox

My iPhone made me a “pet friends” collection with photos of the foxes that lived in the garden last year. Does it maybe think that they’re dogs or cats? Nope, the phone correctly identifies them as red foxes. Apple just thinks I keep foxes as pets.

(Google alerts show you new sites for certain keywords. Something triggered it to think that this was new?)

Essential Social Media Sites for Science Illustrators During my recent talk at the AMI conference about social media and illustration, I skimmed this slide near the end. Talks were intended to be 20 minutes long and I don’t like to rehearse too much: I d...

This twelve-year-old blog post (2014!) from @flyingtrilobite.com came up in my Google alerts today (2026). Look how delightfully outdated it is :D www.scientificamerican.com/blog/symbiar...

Blackheath church in a field with shops in the background

Half day in the office so I could run some errands but I ended up wandering the heath

I understand why chatbot cheating happens but every time I read about it I want to gently remind everyone that the point of schoolwork is not for the submission to exist. Teachers are not just greedy for more essays or solved equations. The point is to do the work WITH YOUR OWN BRAIN, FOR LEARNING.

What can I learn from sounds? Sounds are everywhere. People make sound when they talk or play music, but you can hear other sounds as well. Maybe you hear birds singing outside, the wind blowing through the trees or traffic noises...

Something I worked on last year is now live: the Digital Museum of Learning (@dmolearning.bsky.social) story "What can I learn from sounds?" It's meant for children and part of the larger "Teaming up with Technology for Learning" virtual exhibition. #scicomm www.museumoflearning.org/stories/what...

Scientists once thought the brain couldn’t be changed. Now we know different Lifelong plasticity is a core principle of neuroscience, yet it operates within real limits shaped by effort, stress and ageing.

My favourite neuromyth is the myth that neuroplasticity stops after young adulthood. In fact, even older brains still adapt! Here's more about that from Laura Elin Pigott and Siobhan Mclernon: theconversation.com/scientists-o...

How Yorkie came to be the world's first openly sexist chocolate bar The manufacturers of Yorkie have now revealed that it could have been completely different.

When I first moved to the UK, I really did avoid Yorkie bars because the "not for girls" on the wrapper made me think it was unusual (like beef flavoured or something else to make it more "manly").

It was just chocolate.

www.businessinsider.com/the-story-be...

Why Winter Olympic medals broke and what the failure revealed A small design flaw in the medals for the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina turned a durability promise into a very public stress test

Italy promised durable Olympic medals. Science had other plans

This headline is the best example of Dutch nuance/Calvinism (where you always have to put things in perspective and can't enjoy things too much).

It says "Wednesday short sleeves weather with local temperatures of 20 degrees, from Thursday Sahara sand."

Besides the detail of the psychological profile, none of this is surprising to me. Of course they're keeping records of searches: you can even SEE these previous searches when you're logged in!

At the end the post says "I wrote this post with an AI." Oh, I could tell from the very first line.

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

Brainwashing, 2026 edition. This paper shows how X's algorithmic feed shifts people's views rightwards. It's a sophisticated, highly effective form of reorientation. And it is utterly chilling.
If you're still on that platform, unhook yourself now.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Book Review: The Societal Impact of Genetic Research In “What We Inherit,” Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko examine the link between genetic myths and social genomics.

I reviewed "What we inherit" for Undark. "If even two experts writing a book together don’t always see eye to eye about genetics research, then the public discussion is even more of a minefield." 🧪 undark.org/2026/02/20/b...

Mixture | Eva Amsen | Substack Where science meets everything else. Click to read Mixture, by Eva Amsen, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

I’ve taken the paywall off much of the Mixture archive, so that only posts older than 3 years are now archived. Some posts still have internal paywalls, but you can browse much more of the page now. Enjoy! mixture.substack.com

Book Review: The Societal Impact of Genetic Research In “What We Inherit,” Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko examine the link between genetic myths and social genomics.

I reviewed "What we inherit" for Undark. "If even two experts writing a book together don’t always see eye to eye about genetics research, then the public discussion is even more of a minefield." 🧪 undark.org/2026/02/20/b...

I've been getting them as well. I think they're just preparing people for increased checks (e.g. needing proof of settled status more often) and they want to make sure everyone is up to date and has details linked to current passport.

January 1st = new year
my birthday = second* try at new year
lunar new year = third* try at new year
new tax year in April = fourth try at new year
new academic year in September = okay, no, THIS is the new year

*sometimes these are switched for me but this was this year's order