*Women receive substantially lower "potential" ratings despite receiving higher performance ratings
*Differences in potential ratings account for half of the gender promotion gap
*Women’s lower potential ratings do not reflect future performance: women subsequently outperform male colleagues
We are releasing seven new science publications today, based on our Q1 data release earlier this year. All revolve around galaxies, from dust to interactions to active centers.These are accompanied by two new image collages drawn from the same release.
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🔭 #astronomy #space #ESA
What we know, final edition of the night:
[Now in 3 parts]
—Prop 50 wins
—VA Dems flip Gov, LG, AG
—Dems gain leg seats in VA, NJ, & MS
—Dems defend NJ-Gov
—Dems win NJ+VA trifectas
—Mamdani wins
—PA Dems win state supreme court
—ME anti-mail voting measure loses
—GA Dems flip 2 statewide offices
Warning. ⚠️ If you are writing an NSF GRFP, new this year, you need official transcripts to apply. Beware. They will not review applications without official transcripts. ‼️
Much of Virginia: anxiously watching not the Gov or Lt Gov race because we all know the fracking AG is what we need to worry about at this point.
So pretty!!🤩
As a theoretical cosmologist, I'm frequently asked "what is the benefit of the work you're doing for people's lives?" Nothing I work on makes money or cures disease.
There are a few different answers one can give, at various levels of "convincing" / "actually relevant to why the work is done."
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If any of you fine folks are planetarians in (or want to be in) mid-Michigan, the Abrams Planetarium is hiring a full-time-staff position for the first time in 11 years!! Come work with the astro, scicomm, and informal ed folks at MSU!! 🔭 🧪 (reskeets welcome) careers.msu.edu/jobs/educati...
I'm hiring at Haverford - a 2 year NASA funded postdoc to work on Galaxy Zoo with Roman Space Telescope Data: www.haverford.edu/human-resour... 👩🔬🔭
A dwarf galaxy from the EDGE simulations which has formed a bright clump - a star cluster - within it
Today, our EDGE simulations are in Nature with the brilliant @astroeth.bsky.social paper on the formation of globular clusters, the clumps of ancient stars that have puzzled astronomers for centuries. Turns out to happen all by itself when you crank up the resolution. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Great article from the Simons Foundation about the open source MESA stellar evolution code, which has a had a huge impact on astrophysics over the past 15 years.
I had not heard that the code's architect, software guru Bill Paxton, had passed away in July.
www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...
But also looks at its impact on the CGM! Click the link & learn more!
The paper not only explores RT’s impact on structural parameters, dark matter, and star formation (see the plot in this tweet)
Oh look! Another Nbody Shop paper has hit the arxiv! 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/pdf/2508.19396 — this paper re-explores the simulated dwarf galaxy sample “the Seven Dwarfs” but this time includes on-the-fly radiative transfer (RT)
This is how a real leader acts. A real leader does not quit and run.
www.chronicle.com/article/gmu-...
Trust me, y'all need to watch this video
Call for Astronomy, astrophysics and space science Editors at the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) blog.joss.theoj.org/2025/08/call...
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Spectroscopic Analysis of Pictor II: a very low metallicity ultra-faint dwarf galaxy bound to the Large Magellanic Cloud" by Andrew Pace (U. Virginia, USA) and 32 others based in the USA, UK, Canada, Chile and Spain
doi.org/10.33232/001...
New Romulus paper just dropped, led by Anna Wright!
Images and surface brightness profiles of simulated LSB galaxies.
Learn more about this fantastic work led by Anna Wright in the paper! @michaeltremmel.bsky.social
Turns out these LSBs form through mergers in which the secondary galaxy is co-rotating and aligned with the primary’s gas disk!
In this paper we use the Romulus25 sims to study classical low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) - including properties like SFR, HI content as well as their formation mechanism.
While I have everyone's attention, the genocide happening in Palestine -- in Gaza AND the West Bank -- is a crime against humanity.
Please raise your voice in defense of Palestinian lives. They are depending on us to remind those with power that they have a right to live.
This is utterly, utterly horrible. We have barely a few years to contain this in any meaningful way. Weather patterns are changing and eco systems are already straining.
Everyone who voted for Trump or sat out, this is on you. I don’t care what your reason is.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/c...
85% of Gaza’s population have entered the "fifth stage" of malnutrition — the most critical and dangerous phase, which is often irreversible even if food becomes available in the future.
I think this is the most horrifying post I have ever read.
Virginia residents!! Tell Virginia Senate Democrats to say NO to six more extremists Gov Youngkin has nominated to GMU's Board of Visitors. Send your letter using this link: actionnetwork.org/letters/no-m...
Letters to a Pre-Scientist is recruiting STEM pen pal volunteers for the upcoming school year! STEM professionals send and receive 4 rounds of letters throughout a school year with a curious middle school student. prescientist.org/volunteers/
