Please share widely! We will imminently be posting a technician position in our lab group since @rheasood.bsky.social is off to grad school 🙌! If you know of anyone excited about molecular biology, evolution, and functional genomics please have them reach out (schumer at stanford). Start date ~June
Doing the periodic cleaning of used plasmid miniprep columns and realized in honor of Earth Day it may be worth reminding you molecular biologists:
Plasmid miniprep columns can be cleaned and reused essentially indefinitely! Just add 1 M HCl, soak overnight and wash 3x w/ water. Save $ and plastic
I’m looking for an automated way to read others’s scientific data without giving credit or acknowledgement, and also claim full credit for insights from it. And I want it to have a fitting name
OAI: say no more
I'm one of those trans women. I worked ground ops for Artemis I.
I am torn between celebrating the success of my friends and peers and grieving how my dream of working for NASA was shattered by hateful assholes in Tallahassee
A message from Tuna Acisu asking for help maintaining cherry blossom record in Kyoto Japan.
A figure showing the cherry tree record since 812 from world in data.
A 1200+ year climate record is at risk. Do you know know anyone in Japan who could help? See below.
I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸
We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.
The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.
Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel.
King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.
Not a lot of bio is like this and the parts that are already have decent (but mostly expensive) automation available!
the bottleneck for spray and pray bio is the physical completion of the experiments, rather than something AI can solve
I’m so glad someone covered this story. Brian is an amazing scholar and person who I’ve been blessed to be able to get to know, even a little. What happened to him is awful
Oh also interesting: students report that they think we use AI to write lectures and books and articles. Some of them already think this is just a dance of meaningless nothing. I find this endlessly heartbreaking.
government funding is the driver of scientific progress.
A dragonfly larva in a white-skinned hand.
You know Meganeura, the Carboniferous dragonfly with a 2.5-foot wingspan?
All dragonflies spend years of their lives as aquatic larvae before they climb out of the water and emerge as flying adults.
Which means...yeah.
Trust me--read this. You'll be glad you did. and thank you Dr. Bennet for writing it. 🧪
this is VERY sad/funny to plant biologists (the diversity is, the cells are either under turgor pressure or they're not under turgor pressure)
Although I'm sure there are some protist biologists punching walls somewhere right now
a bit worried it’s not petco but Orchid etc that could be the target for the tech…
Here's a fun exercise! Complete the following sentence: "I'm so glad we slashed diabetes research by more than one-third last year because..."
I cold-emailed Ralph as a second-year grad student: I wanted to work on moss but had no idea what I was doing. He invited me to spend weeks in his lab, joined my committee, and supported me throughout my PhD - my thesis project would 100% not have been possible without his generosity and kindness
Ralph was incredibly generous when I wanted to start working on moss. He invited me to visit his lab for a day and talk to/shadow people in his lab.
But I don't think it will be easy to convey why that is so unless we have a better standard of discourse about genetics more generally. The word eugenics is rightly floated in this context, but we now understand why early ideas about eugenics were scientifically and not just ethically flawed. /3
I have so many examples of students questioning whether I know enough about a topic to teach it. I asked in faculty meeting "who has been questioned whether they are qualified to teach a class?" The women raised their hands, the men didn't. It's definitely rooted in sexism and racism.
it's "whales are fish" day in Principles of Biology
What would you think if a hypothetical biology professor at a hypothetical public university in a state starting with an N, who was involved in helping organize a Stand Up for Science Rally this week, and got a visit from their hypothetical Department chair and... 1/2
Diaspora/émigré politics is wild stuff, man.
I think people think we're exaggerating when we say the widespread use of the term "biological sex" as a term itself isn't organic. This data isn't anomalous, it comports with everything we've seen about the specific use of the term.
AI is going to trash every single way that we had modernised university teaching and send us back to handwritten exams and vivas for every assessment. Which will bring back every problem with those assessment models (and make us seem even more out-of-touch even as we just try to do meaningful work).
If you haven't yet changed how you teach and evaluate thanks to AI, you probably need to. This is not something that educators asked to happen, but it is worth noting what is out there - in this case an OpenClaw tool designed to cheat.
"so basically, penetrance is fake?" - student, 1 inch away from genetics enlightenment
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.
This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
(to be fair so are roses…)
