Lewis MacKenzie

I get the sense that mirror life really polarises opinions.😅

About — Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

I just found out about the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund - promoting research into the risks and mitigation of mirror life #mirrorlife #chirality #chemsky #biology

www.mbdialogues.org/about

What's 2026 like? Do you still use clipart?

No, powerpoint now has hundreds of tiny people expressing all sorts of various emotions in high resolution

I'm mainly here for the science feed, which is a less sassy version of my science-focused old-school twitter

"Detecting and controlling #mirrorlife is especially difficult because almost all diagnostic tests and tools are designed to find regular life forms"

The good news is that we have figured out an assay for mirror life - see our #ChemRxiv #preprint
chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....

#ChemSky #Biology

Even the United Nations are writing security briefings are #mirrorlife threats! #ChemSky #chiral #chirality #biology

www.un.org/scientific-a...

🧪 Schottky defects occur in ionic crystals. They are pairs of point defects, where a vacancy at a cation site is matched by a vacancy at an anion site, preserving the charge balance.
Here's my two dimensional paper representation of a Schottky defect in sodium chloride. #SciArt #SciComm

All phones have a feature that transcribes speech to text. It works on audiobooks and podcasts. I've accidentally switched it on a few times on my android. Should be somewhere in accessibility features.

Iran war threatens global helium supply Attacks on Qatar and the Strait of Hormuz remove one-third of the world’s helium from the market

The war in Iran has taken one-third of the world’s helium supply off the market. And if the conflict continues for more than 2 weeks, disruption for helium users could take months to resolve.

#chemsky 🧪

I appreciate the scrutiny - if you want things clarified/scrutinised further it's best to speak to corresponding author of each paper.

For the citations... it is a very highly cited paper because it is the first in a new field of microscopy.

Obviously we don't control who cites the papers, but I am a bit confused as to why those ones are citing it. Sometimes I wonder if people are making mistakes with their reference manager? 🤷

For the CPL spectra - well noticed by the way - I believe the pub peer puts that down to human error. Again, I didn't make that figure either and it's best to get in touch with the corresponding author.

For the FTIR spectra, I do wonder if that could be PDF image conversion issues.

For the FTIR spectral resolution and line shapes, I'd recommend contacting the corresponding author on that one.

Howdy, happy to discuss.

I don't quite follow what you mean on the first image. Could you expand upon that?

I think the second issue has been addressed on pub peer by my co-authors?

Yeah could be in supplementary info or a data repository

Just put the "less than perfect" images in the supplementary info as validation against AI fakery. No big deal.

It's a good question! We can only do what we can...

One of the ways to deal with this is to publish the not just the best nanoparticle images, but also the zoomed-out ones showing all the imperfections! (so far) imperfections are not in the training data (i.e. "publication quality" images).

don't forget that the AI assistant built into any computer can fake images of perfect nanoparticles! #Chemsky #materials #nanotech

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Likewise, on windows, holding ALT and then pressing 2 then 4 then 1 summons the '±' symbol

Your periodic reminder that holding ALT and then pressing 2 then 3 then 0 summons the 'µ' symbol

'Inversions' by Iain M. Banks. I cannot say any more without spoilers, but it is best read as part of the loose tapestry of The Culture series.

Another lovely brutalist sunset at Strathclyde Uni

Huge contratulations to Rebecca McGonigle for passing her PhD viva last Friday! A massive achievement for Rebecca and a landmark moment for my group too!

Thanks to the examiners Dr William Peveler (UoG), Dr Juliane Simmchen (Strathclyde), and Dr Alastair Wark for convening.

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

Link to the original research article in Science
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Link without paywall: archive.is/D1dyl

RNA strand that can almost self-replicate may be key to life's origins Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this

Very cool #science story - examining a trillion RNA sequences to find a few that can almost self-replicate! #chemsky #bioscience #biology #originoflife

www.newscientist.com/article/2515...

Link without paywall: archive.is/D1dyl

Yeah the book is definitely enjoyable YA Sci-fi.

If Moonbase Alpha and Snowpiercer counts, then I think the refugee fleet in Battlestar Galactica must also count. There are around 50,000 survivors which is a big town or small city.