Science Research Weekly

Mark R Williamson

A weekly overview of helpful scientific research topics and the successor of the podcast Statistics Weekly. Every week, I will cover 3 topic areas: Research Articles, Research Tools, and Research Funding. Science On.

  1. Attack of the 50-foot Octopus! (Season 5: Episode 13)

    1D AGO

    Attack of the 50-foot Octopus! (Season 5: Episode 13)

    Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 13, Attack of the 50-foot Octopus! Get ready for giant predatory Cretaceous octopuses, ice-water clouds on a distant Jupiter, anti-viral acrylic surfaces, 3D printing inside living cells, March’s top 40 new CRAN packages, and a grant on Engineering Biological and Biomedical Systems. Science On. References: Compositional selection of phospholipid compartments in icy environments drives the enrichment of encapsulated genetic informationEarliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceansA Second Visit to Eps Ind Ab with JWST: New Photometry Confirms Ammonia and Suggests Thick Clouds in the Exoplanet Atmosphere of the Closest Super-JupiterDesigning Scalable Mechano-Virucidal Nanostructured Acrylic Surfaces for Enhanced Viral InactivationRemoval of Microplastics from Drinking Water by Moringa oleifera Seed: Comparative Performance with Alum in Direct and in-Line Filtration SystemsTwo-Photon 3D Printing of Functional Microstructures Inside Living CellsCAN WE TEACH GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THE DESIGNLANGUAGE OF ENGINEERED LIVING MATERIALS? Harnessing AI to Build Virtual CellsUrban soil microbiomes exhibit taxonomic and functional potential for enhanced contaminant cyclingR 4.6.0 is releasedMarch 2026 Top 40 New CRAN PackagesLittle useless-useful R functions – Desk plant simulatorDesign your plots (ggplot) for mobileEngineering Biological and Biomedical Systems (EBBS)INSPIRING GENERATIONS OF NEW INNOVATORS TO IMPACT TECHNOLOGIES IN ENERGY 2026 (IGNIITE 2026)John Templeton Foundation - Life Sciences R Packages: rPandas: Translating from R to Python's Pandas Package

    11 min
  2. Dropping the PepHammer (Season 5: Episode 12)

    APR 20

    Dropping the PepHammer (Season 5: Episode 12)

    Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 12, Dropping the PepHammer. Get ready for ancient soft sponges, astronomical biosignature spotting via grouped planets, the Epidemiology of AI, crop management via smartphone, an examination of NIH funding outputs, dropping the PepHammer, asking if AI agents save time for scientists, and a grant on specialty crops. Science On. References: A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animalPearling drives mitochondrial DNA nucleoid distributionp21+TREM2+ senescent macrophages fuel inflammaging and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver diseaseAn Agnostic Biosignature Based on Modeling Panspermia and TerraformingVisplot: A visibility plot and observation scheduling tool forastronomical observatoriesAI-assisted writing and the reorganization of scientific knowledgeThe Epidemiology of Artificial IntelligenceThe Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE) Image-based leaf SPAD value and chlorophyll measurement using a mobilephone: enabling accessible and sustainable crop managementComparing the outputs of intramural and extramural grants funded by National Institutes of Health PepHammer – a lightweight web-based tool for bioactive peptide matching and identification My Domain: proteome-wide scanning of TMDsWhy Most Time Series Models Fail Before They StartDo AI coding agents save scientists time?Using R to Teach R: Lessons for Software DevelopmentSpecialty Crop Research InitiativeWhat is a Specialty Crop?Translational Medicine Postdoctoral FellowshipScience Café Mini-Grant R Packages: glm4: Fitting Generalized Linear Models Using Sparse Matricestinyrox: Minimal R Documentation Generatorbaseverse: Modern Base-R Functionstidyfun: Tidy Functional Data Wrangling and Visualization

    16 min
  3. Super Special Stellar Objects (Season 5: Episode 11)

    APR 13

    Super Special Stellar Objects (Season 5: Episode 11)

    Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 11. Get ready for Vitamin D and dementia-protection, exploding black holes, semi-autonomous robots for Martian exploration, a forbidden planet, a pristine star, Mothbox and Mothbot, One-pass statistical formulas in SAS, and building your own programming language. Science On. References: Association of Circulating Vitamin D in Midlife With Increased Tau-PET Burden in Dementia-Free AdultsDNA–drug conjugates enable logic-gated drug delivery amplified by hybridization chain reactionsExplaining the PeV Neutrino Fluxes at KM3NeT and IceCube with Quasiextremal Primordial Black HolesSemi-autonomous exploration of martian and lunar analogues with a legged robot using a Raman-equipped robotic arm and microscopic imagerGEMS JWST: Transmission Spectroscopy of TOI-5205b Reveals Significant Stellar Contamination and a Metal-poor AtmosphereA nearly pristine star from the Large Magellanic CloudSloan Digital Sky SurveyEctopic NMDAR expression in cancer unmasks germline-encoded autoimmunityRoSHI: A Versatile Robot-oriented Suit for Human Data In-the-WildClickGuard: A Trustworthy Adaptive Fusion Framework for Clickbait DetectionMothbox and Mothbot: automated light trap and data processing system for scalable insect monitoringPatterns of host plant use by monarch butterflies revealed through annotation of more than 35,000 community science recordsiNaturalistOne-pass formulas for mean and varianceHold On Hope: publication lag times at cell biology journalsCollaborating between Bioconductor and R-universe on Development of Common InfrastructureR-UniverseYou can just build your own programming languageT — The Orchestration Engine for Polyglot Data Science R Packages: aggreCAT: Mathematically Aggregating Expert Judgmentsravel: AI Copilot for R Analysis Workflows in 'RStudio'

    14 min
  4. Call me Isoptera (Season 5: Episode 10)

    APR 6

    Call me Isoptera (Season 5: Episode 10)

    Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 10, Call me Isoptera. Get ready for fusion plasma corrections, Alzheimer’s and meat consumption, cytoplasmic tradewinds, a new termite that looks like Moby Dick, immersive dreaming and restfulness, the Artemis II Crew launch, why learning R in 2026 is a good career move, and the top 40 new CRAN packages for February 2026. Science On. References: Combined Influence of Rotation and Scrape-Off Layer Drifts on Recycling Asymmetries in Tokamak PlasmasMeat Consumption and Cognitive Health by APOE GenotypeThe landscape of microbial associations in human cancerCompartmentalized cytoplasmic tradewinds direct soluble proteinsAvoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contactCryptotermes mobydicki (Isoptera, Kalotermitidae), an extraordinary new termite species from French GuianaRapid mid-Cretaceous diversification of squid and cuttlefish preceded radiation into coastal nichesImmersive NREM2 dreaming preserves subjective sleep depth against declining sleep pressureA chelicera-bearing arthropod reveals the Cambrian origin of cheliceratesNASA’s Artemis II Crew Launches to the MoonHow much information is there for inferringspecies trees?Microdiversity is higher in temperate than in virulentbacteriophages from soil environmentsBaktfold: Sensitive protein functional annotation acrossthe microbial tree of life using structural informationMeet dataviewR: The View() You Always WantedWhy Learning R is a Good Career Move in 2026February 2026 Top 40 New CRAN Packages R Packages: Taxdiv: Taxonomic Diversity Indices Using Deng EntropyGgrefine: Pretty 'ggplot2' ThemesHexsession: Create a Tile of Logos for Loaded PackagesInsectLabelR: Create Labels for Insect in Collection

    13 min
  5. My Science List is Weirder Than Yours (Season 5: Episode 9)

    MAR 30

    My Science List is Weirder Than Yours (Season 5: Episode 9)

    Hello and welcome to Science Research Weekly. Get ready for the dangers of cold weather on cardiovascular health, new amphipods aplenty, a list of habitable rocky exoplanet, pico-satellite concepts, mitochondrial flickers, toxin-antidotesystems in vertebrates, and using science to find the best decaf coffee. Science On. References: Cardiovascular disease mortality attributable to monthly non-optimal temperature in the united states: a county-level analysisNew deep-sea Amphipoda from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone: 24 new species described under the Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative: One Thousand Reasons campaignBiodiversity boost: 24 new deep-sea species discovered in major Pacific researchProbing the limits of habitability: a catalogue of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zoneText embedding models yield detailed conceptual knowledge maps derived from short multiple-choice quizzesThousands of pico-satellites may transform how phones connect to spaceDynamical Systems in Cosmology: Reviewing An Alternative ApproachMassive star clusters detected by JWST as natural birth places to form intermediate-mass black holesBeyond Pulsing Dyes: Are Flickers the Language of the MitochondrialNetwork? The morphotype approach to classification of aerial animals in radar data A Vertebrate Toxin-Antidote System That Sabotages Mouse EmbryogenesisDigital Biology with R: Advanced Bioinformatics, Predictive Modeling, and Time Series Analysis for Modern Life ScienceUsing science to find the best decafR Packages: Ixsurface: Interactive 3D Surface Plots for Multi-Factor Interaction Visualizationlongitree: Decision Tree Analysis for Longitudinal Measurement DataggforestplotR: Publication-Ready Forest Plots with 'ggplot2'ksformat: 'SAS'-Style 'PROC FORMAT' for Rstopmotion: Build Stop Motion Animations from Image Sequencessubtools: Read and Manipulate Video Subtitlestaxodist: Taxonomic Distance and Phylogenetic Lineage Computation Cardiovascular diseasemortality attributable to monthly non-optimal temperature in the united states:a county-level analysis New deep-sea Amphipodafrom the Clarion-Clipperton Zone: 24 new species described under theSustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative: One Thousand Reasons campaign Biodiversity boost: 24new deep-sea species discovered in major Pacific research Probing the limits ofhabitability: a catalogue of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone Text embedding modelsyield detailed conceptual knowledge maps derived from short multiple-choicequizzes Thousands ofpico-satellites may transform how phones connect to space Dynamical Systems inCosmology: Reviewing An Alternative Approach Massive star clustersdetected by JWST as natural birth places to form intermediate-mass black holes Beyond Pulsing Dyes: AreFlickers the Language of the Mitochondrial Network? The morphotype approachto classification of aerial animals in radar data A VertebrateToxin-Antidote System That Sabotages Mouse Embryogenesis Digital Biology with R:Advanced Bioinformatics, Predictive Modeling, and Time Series Analysis forModern Life Science Using science to findthe best decaf

    9 min
  6. Spinosaurus with an Attitude (Season 5: Episode 6)

    MAR 2

    Spinosaurus with an Attitude (Season 5: Episode 6)

    Welcome to Science Research Weekly, Season 5, Episode 6. Get ready for quorum sensing for bacterial engineering, an antibiotic-resistant microbe on ice, a new scimitar-crested spinosaurid, planetesimal snowmen, sheepox viral evolution, the fate of horizontally acquired genes, the R Journal Volume 17/4, and a grant for Feed the Future innovation labs. Science On. References: Revision of the trematosaurid Erythrobatrachus noonkanbahensis confirms a cryptic marine temnospondyl community from the Lower Triassic of Western Australia Construction and Functional Characterization of a Heterologous Quorum Sensing Circuit in Clostridium sporogenes First genome sequence and functional profiling of Psychrobacter SC65A.3 preserved in 5,000-year-old cave ice: insights into ancient resistome, antimicrobial potential, and enzymatic activities Scimitar-crested Spinosaurus species from the Sahara caps stepwise spinosaurid radiation Direct contact binary planetesimal formation from gravitational collapse Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor Exocometary physics: material release and tails Searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model in hyperon sector 3,500 years of sheeppox virus evolution inferred from archaeological and codicological genomes The fate of horizontally acquired genes: rapid initial turnover followed by long-term persistence The R Journal: Volume 17/4 Comparing flavor characteristics of Scotch whiskies: A principal component analysis Little useless-useful R functions – Typing speed benchmark Pathways to Enable Secure Open-Source Ecosystems Feed the Future Innovation Labs R Packages: bigMICE: Multiple Imputation of Big Data bracketeer: Tournament Generator phymapnet: Phylogeny-Guided Bayesian Microbial Network Inference tReeTraits: Calculate Tree Traits from Terrestrial Lidar ort: Create a Data Frame Representation of an Image tinyimg: Optimize and Compress Images

    11 min

About

A weekly overview of helpful scientific research topics and the successor of the podcast Statistics Weekly. Every week, I will cover 3 topic areas: Research Articles, Research Tools, and Research Funding. Science On.