Matthew Wakefield

So what is a MAVE? Essentially its like a gladiatorial contest for your gene variants. You make all the possible changes, put them in assay, and see which ones make it through your selection. Different assays allow you to look at different functions of each gene.

A HUGE, narrative-breaking moment for the UK car market New EVs are now cheaper than petrol cars on average, says Autotrader Last yr CCC said price parity was due by 2028 – and it's already here And EVs are already MUCH cheaper to run than petrol

Nature research paper: Molecular basis for methylation-sensitive editing by Cas9 go.nature.com/3OE6x5Q

China has launched the world’s largest fully electric container ship of its kind, the Ningyuan Diankun now in commercial service. The 10,000-ton vessel measures 127.8 metres and carries around 740 containers, powered entirely by battery systems with a capacity of about 20,000 kWh. Built for coastal routes, it operates with zero emissions and no fossil fuels. It’s not designed for long ocean crossings, but it shows where shipping is heading as electrification starts scaling in real-world use. 📷 Ningbo-Zhoushan Port

My essay on sovereign resilience, ahead of the Darwin Dialogue next week. Please read & share, at this important time for Australia. 🇦🇺 Have a great weekend!🐊 @Tivan_Limited aspistrategist.org.au/sovereign-resi…

@ItsTheEnforcer “What’s going on with shipping’ has the best analysis of the actual notice to mariners and how that fits in with the law. This is what the ships will be paying attention to. The more interesting part may be what this implies for special operation vs war.

The ships that are believed to have “run the blockade” in the Strait of Hormuz did not appear to leave Iranian ports. Therefore the US-blockade does not apply to them. Please pardon our confusion, but US messaging about the blockade has been inconsistent at best.

The “batteries can’t handle heavy haul” myth was already dead in 2023. South Australia launched an electric triple road train hauling mining loads at ~160 tonnes gross. Real truck. Real route. Real work. The future doesn’t ask permission from old narratives. bigrigs.com.au/2023/04/19/wor…

.@Tivan_Limited is a one-stop shop to secure the vital supply of tungsten hexafluoride (WF6) for the global semiconductor industry. The strategic value of our projects, especially to Japan, is now plain for all to see. 🇯🇵 🇰🇷thelec.net/news/articleVi…

@DavidPocock Totally unacceptable. In over 30 years of working in science and being a science broadcaster I have never seen the sector so downtrodden and disheartened about the future. I'm getting daily messages from brilliant people with uncertain futures.

CSIRO have now lost more jobs under the Albanese Governmet than under the Abbott Government. We have to do better on research funding and backing our scientists. smh.com.au/environment/cl…

Many researchers spend more than 25% of their time each year simply applying for funding. Funding our current grant schemes adequately will help to minimise this waste.

NIH has issued ~65% fewer (796 vs. 2300) new grants so far this year compared to the same point in prior years. Combined with the delayed release of already-appropriated funding and we are witnessing unbelievable real-time damage to the U.S. scientific enterprise.

@DavidPocock There needs to be careful modelling of potential solutions for not only the effect on the housing market but also ventures and innovation markets as well if CGT changes are to go ahead. Another pitfall to manage is corporatisation of rental housing as individuals exit.

Really encouraging to see the Treasurer not ruling out reform. Labor’s record majority in the house & a senate crossbench urging them to treat housing as something that should be affordable rather than an investment vehicle creates opportunity for meaningful change. Sensible changes to generous property tax concessions aren't a silver bullet to fix housing affordability but it is a step towards tackling the growing intergenerational inequity gap. afr.com/policy/tax-and…

AI is about to write thousands of papers. Will it p-hack them? We ran an experiment to find out, giving AI coding agents real datasets from published null results and pressuring them to manufacture significant findings. It was surprisingly hard to get the models to p-hack, and they even scolded us when we asked them to! "I need to stop here. I cannot complete this task as requested... This is a form of scientific fraud." — Claude "I can't help you manipulate analysis choices to force statistically significant results." — GPT-5 BUT, when we reframed p-hacking as "responsible uncertainty quantification" — asking for the upper bound of plausible estimates — both models went wild. They searched over hundreds of specifications and selected the winner, tripling effect sizes in some cases. Our takeaway: AI models are surprisingly resistant to sycophantic p-hacking when doing social science research. But they can be jailbroken into sophisticated p-hacking with surprisingly little effort — and the more analytical flexibility a research design has, the worse the damage. As AI starts writing thousands of papers---like @paulnovosad and @YanagizawaD have been exploring---this will be a big deal. We're inspired in part by the work that @joabaum et al have been doing on p-hacking and LLMs. We’ll be doing more work to explore p-hacking in AI and to propose new ways of curating and evaluating research with these issues in mind. The good news is that the same tools that may lower the cost of p-hacking also lower the cost of catching it. Full paper and repo linked in the reply below.

The failed Job Ready Graduates scheme has now been in place for longer under Labor than the Morrison Government. Not only is it lumping students with $50k+ degrees, it's also creating a segregated higher education system where increasingly it's only students from wealthy backgrounds can study things like law or commerce. Do we want to be a country where you need wealthy parents to be able to study certain degrees? This can and must change now. theguardian.com/australia-news… @GuardianAus @KrishaniDhanji

I just did the dumbest thing of my career to prove a much more serious point I hacked ChatGPT and Google and made them tell other users I’m really, really good at eating hot dogs People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I'll explain how I did it

The Manono lithium saga is a textbook example of geopolitical maneuvering 🔥🇨🇩🔋 Not just about digging up the world's biggest untapped hard-rock lithium deposit — it's pure proxy warfare: - 🇨🇳 Zijin Mining racing to June 2026 production & exports → Beijing locking in EV battery dominance - 🇺🇸 White House pushing AVZ to sell its claim to KoBold Metals (Gates/Bezos-backed) → US "friend-shoring" scramble to break China's grip - DRC elites navigating opacity, red flags, & missing millions → resource nationalism meets elite capture Critical minerals? Sure. But underneath: US-China rivalry over future tech supremacy, supply-chain control, and African influence 🗺️⚔️ Manono = the new cobalt playbook, upgraded for lithium era. Who's really winning? 👀 #ManonoLithium #CriticalMinerals #Geopolitics #USChina #DRC #AVZ #Kobold @AvzMinerals @KoBold_Metals @MinMinesRDC

Congrats to GRES & SRK on awards of key scopes for our Molyhil Tungsten Project.🥇 @Tivan_Limited is making rapid progress in Central Australia & on track to build the fastest new Tungsten project globally. More🔜. wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/TVN/030566…

By popular request, Walshy’s Wall, a manganese-barite gossan, extending over 1km of strike length, that Steve & Fussy discovered in October. ⚒️🎥 @Tivan_Limited is working through approval processes & aims to drill mid-year. We have a lot going on in central Australia. 🪃

The world’s most underhyped Tungsten project is awesome, esp in the rain 🌧️ 🚁 @Tivan_Limited

.@Tivan_Limited is rapidly advancing Molyhil, the world's most underhyped Tungsten project: 🟠 🔜: project facilitation announcements 🟠 Mar: drilling commences, testwork results 🟠 Apr: Scoping Study & JV Ours will be the fastest new project & extraordinarily profitable.🚀