Notices by Dr. Or M. Bialik (ombialik@mastodon.world)

Something about being an expat breaks your brain. But in very particular ways, such as not feeling you belong anywhere. In turn, that means expats' psychotherapy is its own subset and needs to be acknowledged and treated as such.

Link: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol23/iss12/4/

#Psychology #Expat

We got a new paper out!
The Late Miocene Mediterranean had some stark gradients from east to west. But did they have any effect on the biology? The ecology? Reefs?
We show it did!

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018226004864

#Miocene #Reefs #Paleoecology #Mediterranean

OK, I've been putting it off long enough, time to start working on revising the first, and not very good, draft of THE DISPOSABLE PRINCESS into something I can show beta readers.

#Writing #Editing

How we were brought up has a huge impact on our politics when we grow up. Not just what we are told, parenting style affects things like empathy, or our views on deference to authority, which are just as important.

Link: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-35072-001

#PoliticalTheory #Parenting

#WeekendReading: Burke et al., on oxygen deficiency in the Atlantic during the Miocene. We're slowly building a nice global picture of the oxygen minimum zones through that period, and their relations to planetary temperatures.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-73732-7

#Ocean #Miocene #Oxygen

#WeekendReading: Dodd et al. about recurring marine phosphorus spikes during major Paleozoic mass extinctions, and how they might be driving anoxia.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-70701-y

#MassExtinction #Ocean #Anoxia #Paleozoic

There were a lot of weird chemical reactions that had to occur through Earth's history to make Earth habitable. Getting rid of barium and sulfides was one of them and might have happened very fast in the late Ediacaran.

Link: https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/11/8/nwae237/7710134

#Earth #Geology #EarthsHIstory

I'm still struggling to find my footing here on Mastodon. A bit with the platforms and tags, but mostly finding people to follow. I'm a bit all over the place, posting about my #writing, be it academic or fiction (mostly #SciFi), and about cool #Science I ran into, and the more common than it should be - complain about stuff.
I'm interested in #SFF, #publishing, #MiniaturePainting, science, #queer culture, academia, human sexuality, geekish humor, #comics & #EarthSci.

Recommend people to me!

I'll never stop being annoyed by random posts Á la "why would people with (academic) tenure be motivated to keep improving/innovate/etc?" from people who clearly don't understand how the research ecosystem (and its currencies) work, nor are interested in learning.
#AcademicChatter

Just a reminder, the monster isn't called Frankenstein, and the cat isn't called Schrödinger.

Now for a match-up I actually care about in #MinCup25 ! I feared this.
Perovskite is such a potentially important part of our #solarpunk future... but I'm #TeamCalcite through, so there was never really a choice.

https://www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r1m04

Sapropels are one of my favorite recent (geologically) oceanographic events. These are periods when the #Mediterranean became stratified and anoxic.
They are also a stark reminder of how bad #ocean oxygen loss can be for an #ecosystem.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02568-8

Most people, when they think "reef", think of corals. That might be because that is the only one they heard about, as we lost many of the oyster #reef systems that used to dot the European coastline.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-024-01441-4

The #Chernobyl exclusion zone is a strange place, and the ways #animals change in it are even stranger. They mutate faster, and those #mutations make them distinct, but at least in the case of the Eastern tree frog, no genetic erosion... but it might be because those with die before hatching.

Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eva.13282

When we talk about the impact of #reef demise will have on the #ocean's #ecosystem, I don't think many people grasp just how prevalent these reefs are right now. So let me visualise it for all of you (and this doesn't include the poorly mapped bivalve, algae, and vermiform reefs - if you have shapefiles for these, please let me know).

I don't think most people fully understand just how much ice was sitting atop the continents during the last glacial maximum. A good chunk of Eurasia and North America are still rebounding from the removed load.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264370718301443

Spiders are very sensitive to vibrations, it's how many of them hunt. So they aren't big on background #noise, it drowns the signal they actually look for. Adaptation - #spiders living in urban/loud environments make webs that dampen persistent noise.
Beats earplugs. 🙉
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00205-2

These are some rather alarming results for long-duration #spaceflight. Up-regulated bone resorption activity may be a major reason for #BoneLoss in #microgravity, and the sites from which material is lost might not be able to fully recover.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adq3632

Weird things in #ScienceFiction #writing / #WorldBuilding that bugs me: drip feed. If you're on a ship, in #space, that alternates between low #gravity and free fall, why in the hell does the clinic have drip feed? It should only have a syringe pump or peristaltic feed in case gravity is lost.