some data on the shrinkage

Faculty Defect From Texas Publics, Citing Censorship Fed up with the state’s censoring of Plato, Joan of Arc and Romeo and Juliet, humanities professors are leaving Texas public institutions in pursuit of academic freedom.

'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3

For U.S. medical researchers, shrinking labs and bare budgets are the new reality The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

American science is shrinking.

A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://wapo.st/3OgoHKV

This is why I publish almost exclusively in society journals.
The glossies just delay and delay and delay.

I have never had a positive pro-science experience there.

A wake up call 👇👇👇

Ulster University to cut up to 450 jobs It is not clear which areas of the university, which has campuses in Belfast, Londonderry and Coleraine as well as a campus in Qatar, will be affected.

News I'm hearing from across universities is disastrous. The sector has been falling apart for months, but the process is now continuously speeding up. Outside a small handful of institutions, HE as we've known it has basically zero future.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Wise words from a brilliant, humble and absolute class act from the origins of life community.

New preprint with Bonny Brewer and Raghu's lab. Ku mutant genomes just go bonkers during chemostat evolution, but in very interesting ways! Telomeric amplicons of SUL1 and Y' in yeast are generated by microhomology-mediated break induced replication occurring in cis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

(April 6, 2026) – Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, during the Artemis II crew’s flyby of the Moon. A muted blue Earth with bright white clouds sets behind the cratered lunar surface. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over the Australia and Oceania region. In the foreground, Ohm crater has terraced edges and a flat floor interrupted by central peaks. Central peaks form in complex craters when the lunar surface, liquefied on impact, splashes upwards during the crater’s formation.

“EARTHSET”

(source: images.nasa.gov/details/art0...)

For me, the question isn’t whether generating art with AI is good or bad. It’s just definitionally impossible. Art is what humans create to express the nonliteral. An algorithm, however much data it has, has no sense of the nonliteral. It might make something that pleases you, but it can’t make art.

MAHA

www.bakerinstitute.org/research/rea...

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—…

(From High Flight by John Magee)

They always underestimate 2x

It is huge! Great weather helps

The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish Researchers at Stanford University modeled how many people could die or be disabled in 25 years if vaccines for polio, measles, rubella or diphtheria were no longer available.

NEW: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been transforming a government that long championed vaccines into one that questions their safety.

This is what could happen over the next 25 years if shots are unavailable even to the people who want them.

What would you say if a student were stress-vomiting outside the door of a required graduate discussion course?

FACT OF THE DAY. 26 March 1953. In a huge medical breakthrough, US medical researcher Dr Jonas Salk announced that he had created the first polio vaccine. Polio cases fell from 58,000 per year in 1952 to 6,000 by 1958. Salk’s vaccine was replaced by a new one developed by Albert Sabin in 1962.

Or as we say, PhinisheD

💞 Cellular matchmaking: #Yeast condensin loop extrusion brings together broken DNA and repair donors during mating-type switching. Study reveals how SMC complexes facilitate homology search by creating specific chromosomal loops

🔬 #YeastResearch 🧬 #SGD 🧪
www.yeastgenome.org/reference/S1...

AAMC: NIH Has Only Obligated 15% of External Research Funding The science community fears the funding agency’s slow contract and grant making could result in another rush of multiyear obligations at the end of the fiscal year. The NIH director has said, “Don’t p...

NIH is WAY under schedule in obligating its external research funding.

Halfway through the fiscal year they're only at 15%!
#AcademicSky #ResearchSky

www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Everything I’ve heard says he was a remarkable mentor. I only met him once but was so impressed by his commitment to women in science. Truly one of the great people who made a difference.

We owe it to his memory to defend our trans brothers and sisters.

Data Show Dramatic Slowdown in NIH Grantmaking | Association of American Universities (AAU) A new AAU analysis of publicly available data from the National Institutes of Health shows a significant slowdown in the rate of competitive awards made by the agency so far this fiscal year.

It is good to see that AAU is aware of and sharing information about the slowdown in NIH grantmaking.

www.aau.edu/newsroom/lea...

really does capture it!

President of Colombia, not Columbia

Next year

I am glad i will be retiring soon

And if you have not been accepted, understand that this is a VERY weird time for grad admissions. Lack of acceptance may not be due to YOU, but due to uncontrollable factors at the university. Keep trying in the future.

#AcademicSky #GeoSky #EconSky

Scientific and medical research helps everyone, including MAGA supporters.

Cancelling that research hurts everyone.

Why oh lord why????