Support these data centers: SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES, BOOKSTORES

Happy National Library Week! 💙📚

What’s in a Name? For These Snails, Legal Protection

This is why scientists and policy makers should jointly consult Indigenous stakeholders in naming organisms and consider designating subspecies or populations for protection. #Mixtec #IndigenousinSTEM www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/s...

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.

There’s no routine screening for pancreatic cancer, most cases aren’t operable, and the five year survival rate after diagnosis is around 13%. It’s a traumatic news.

But new personalized mRNA immunotherapy is showing encouraging results in Phase 1 clinical trials.

Keep funding science!

The National Science Foundation which funds a quarter of all basic scientific research in the country is being dismantled.

Had quite a lot of fun today shopping for orchids.

Washington Post article on STEM cuts at federal agencies. NSF tops it at -42%!

“Between January 2025 and February 2026, STEM and health employees at science-focused agencies saw nearly 15,000 jobs cut. The rate outpaced cuts among other federal workers.”

OPM data - Figure from Wash Post article 19 April. (Where US science has been hit hardest.)

NSF at -42%!

DOGE’s cuts to government have cost the equivalent of 3 entire NIH budgets.

At the same time, they have made us: Less safe.

Less happy.

Less healthy.

Less able to handle natural disasters.

Less able to withstand military threats.

Less able to handle global intelligence crises.

Made us less…

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.

Reminder: The Trump regime cancelled nearly $500 million in federal contracts for mRNA vaccine development last year.

This is truly one of the most remarkable advances in cancer therapy in history: metastatic pancreatic cancer was a short-term death sentence and this new approach put many of them into long term remission. This is why we invest in science, and why RFKs effort to kill this work is misguided 🧪

Thousands of AI-written, edited or ‘polished’ books are being sold – an eerie echo of Orwell’s ‘novel-writing machines’ In ‘1984,’ George Orwell envisaged a world in which books were a mass-produced commodity no different from ‘jam and bootlaces.’

Here we are: George Orwell 1984
theconversation.com/thousands-of...

New mRNA vaccine research has basically been shelved by this administration.

We know that vaccines basically eliminate cervical cancers.

The prospect of expanding this to additional cancers is incredible. Particularly the most lethal ones like pancreatic.

There needs to be a giant billboard in every major American city that touts this. In any other era except this suicidal science administration, this would be a miraculous, wondrous thing.

NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology LIGHTNING TALKS: 9:15 - 10:30 AM EDT Focus on the collective: what can our community do in a time of uncertainty? PROTHAMA MANNA, CLEMSON UNIV. MOHAMED NOOR, DUKE UNIVERSITY RUTH SHAW, UNIV. OF MINNESOTA JOSEPH GRAVES, NC A&T STATE UNIV. SCOTT EDWARDS, HARVARD UNIV. EMILY JOSEPHS, MICHIGAN STATE UNIV. ALISON DAVIS RABOSKY, UNIV. OF MICHIGAN WORKSHOP & BREAKOUTS: 11 - 12:30 PM EDT Focus on the individual: how scientists can respond constructively, creatively, and sustainably in the face of instability NELIA VIVEIROS, UNIV. OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

👋 👋 SSE members, I hope you'll join me May 21 for the virtual SSE Presidential Symposium:

Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology

Pls RT to help get the word out!

Professor in Synthetic Organic Chemistry University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!

Please RT!

The Dept of Chemistry at UC Irvine invites applications for a tenured faculty position in Synthetic Organic Chemistry. Deadline: July 1, 2026.

More information about the position can be found here: recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF10109

@uciphyssci.bsky.social

Coral reefs are nearing extinction. 2026 must mark a turning point | Jason Momoa At 1.5C of global warming, up to 90% of coral reefs could be lost. The next few months could be a defining moment

"Where I come from – Hawai’i – the reef isn’t just something you look at. It’s part of us. It feeds our families, protects our shores, and lives at the center of our culture." Thank you, Jason Momoa, for writing this Op-Ed about global warming. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Happy together with my graduate students and postdoc.

Sharing a pretty pink cactus flower a friend gave me that just decided to bloom today.

Early Career Faculty Program | Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI The Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program offers comprehensive support to outstanding early career faculty committed to scientific excellence in their own research, and to fostering labs that expand the ...

@hhmi-science.bsky.social's
#FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits

Stable, sustained support can transform your career:

Senior Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

How to Keep Your Home Cool in Extreme Heat When extreme heat arrives, here are science-based tips to keep your home cool, from the most efficient way to use air conditioning to strategic uses of fans

When extreme heat arrives, here are science-based tips to keep your home cool, from the most efficient way to use air conditioning to strategic uses of fans

Looking forward to seeing you there Mónica!

Announcement of Breaking Barriers in Stem conference for women in stem

Reminding #WomenInStem of all career stages of this conference at UCLA this weekend 🧪

👀

They banned her books about trees! The same people who banned this book are now championing a Federal Book Ban Bill, which would allow the Federal Government to make the same decisions in your community.

Imagine a book about trees being targeted for removal.

It sounds unbelievable, but that is exactly what book banners are doing.

action.everylibrary.org/wishtreevid via @everylibrary.bsky.social #book #books #politics #author #authors #library #librarianship #libraries

Blue Morpho butterfly: its iridescent color comes from microscopic light-bending structures, not pigment

A fly with red eyes that are shaped upward like horns. The fly has pale legs and underside with brown on the top of the head and a brown and tan striped scutum. It is standing on an off white mushroom.

Two flies with red eyes that are shaped upward like horns. The flies have pale legs and undersides with brown on the top of the head, a brown and tan striped scutum, and a dark brown and pale striped abdomen. The fly on the left is getting ready to shove the fly on the right with his front leg.

Two flies with red eyes that are shaped upward like horns. The flies have pale legs and undersides with brown on the top of the head, a brown and tan striped scutum, and a dark brown and pale striped abdomen. The fly on the left is shoving the fly on the right with his front leg.

Just a lil guy defending his mushroom.

We found a log covered in mushrooms and spotted some small hammerhead flies on it. Turns out these are feisty fruit flies and the males are serious about defending their patch. One of our coolest finds so far! #invert
(Zygothrica sp.) Intag Refugio, Ecuador

Most prescient, clear/eyed work of writing I’ve read on reorg.

Read it.

Then act.

“Call your senators. Call your representative. Not next week or later. Now.

Tell them this is not a reorganization — it’s the destruction of a federal agency by executive fiat and that Congress must intervene.”

#SaveUSFS

Why do anglerfish have glowing lures? It might be sex Species proliferated after evolving bioluminescence, possibly because mates could find each other more easily

The glowing lures of anglerfish in the deep sea may help in finding mates, not just catching prey.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/4eoJFBE

Sharkmer: repurposing PCR primers for targeted genome assembly using in silico PCR AbstractSummary. We introduce an in silico PCR (sPCR) method for the assembly of specific genomic regions spanned by PCR primers using raw sequence reads.

Ever wanted to assemble specific genes out of raw sequence reads? Try sharkmer, a tool for in silico PCR (sPCR) developed with @shchurch.bsky.social - academic.oup.com/bioinformati.... Feed it raw reads and primer sequences, it gives you amplicon sequences. Can work on a laptop in minutes.

😱 Super excited to be named as a Guggenheim Fellow!! 😱