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!
This unbelievable microscopic image taken by Hans Kerp is of an early land plant from ~409 million years ago. Exquisite preservation in Scottish sandstone (Rhynie Chert) reveals sperm cells (upper right) released on a fateful day by the “antheridium.” The paper: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Gift link to the article:
wapo.st/3OONwh6
Images of the new genus Daturodendron showing its giant erect flowers and tree habit.
So you know Datura, the jimsonweeds, with the fancy erect flowers and the scary coat of knives on the outside of the fruit? Meet Daturodendron, a TREE version of Datura, discovered and described by my amazing Solanologist colleagues. onlinelibrary-wiley-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1002/...
I'm hiring a postdoc (start date flexible) and a PhD student (for Fall 2027) to work in any area of computational phylogenetics! More info here:
mhibbins.github.io
I will be attending both PEQG and Evolution in June, so please reach out if you want to chat at these meetings!
Postdoc opportunity in plant systematics + phylogenomics 🌿 my lab at the University of Michigan is recruiting for a Research Fellow working on species delimitation in neotropical myrtles. Full details + apply here (deadline April 30) careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...
WANTED: Lead Collections Manager. Smithsonian NMNH Botany is looking for a Supervisory Museum Specialist to manage the United States National Herbarium and a top-notch collections team. For more information, visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications due in two weeks (1 May 2026).
We really only have labor for ~130 regular contributed virtual talks. So, yes! Get those talks in!
Late submissions decided via Thunderdome.
Over 800 abstracts and counting! There's still time to submit and present a talk or poster at #Botany2026 in Tucson.....but write it up quickly and submit in the coming hours. Don't miss out! www.botanyconference.org
A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons
apnews.com/article/type...
#AcademicSky #HigherEd
My friend and fellow scientist with a fantastic radio voice has this great podcast called Science Faire. Here I talk *much* too fast about flower color and plant pigments: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s.... But go check out the other cool episodes! lucybethpohl.wixsite.com/sciencefare-...
A yellow flyer reading "Heights Aid," listing several bands. It's from 4-9 on Saturday at Rail Werks Brewing. The QR code goes to - https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-local-CH-families
Columbia Heights is the suburb where Liam Ramos lives, a small working-class highly diverse community just savaged by ICE during its occupation. There's a mutual aid fund and benefit this Saturday.
1) Please come if you're local. My band is playing a set and we're not bad!
2) Please share & donate.
Insightful summary of an extraordinary person being extraordinarily fired: "you don't silence a woman of color who raised concerns about racism by silencing her...The fingerprints are distributed perfectly across the system." www.linkedin.com/pulse/uclas-...
And now it is out! Even if you haven't been sweating how old tomatoes are, click for some lovely time trees decorated with plant fossils! (or if you're thinking about doing a TED analysis yourself and want to see how we pulled it off :)
academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...
Would it have been so much worse if it had been a nuke? Consider the fact that birth deficiencies and rates of leukemia and cancer in Iraq, post 2003- invasion, are worse than what was observed in Hiroshima. In Japan, rates of leukemia rose by 660% in the years following the bomb. In Falluja, it increased by 2,200%. The toxicity of war has never been greater, and we are in no way reckoning with the scope of the horror that's been unleashed.
The real damage comes years later, with elevated cancer rates, leukemia clusters, respiratory disease, cardiovascular failure, neurological damage, reproductive issues.
This is chemical warfare, with delayed carnage. Worse than radiation sickness.
I am ashamed to be American today.
2/2
holy shit
I love caves, inflatables and science communication. This month is #colorectal cancer awareness month - the disease that has been ruining me the last 20 months. Get a colonoscopy folks. It’s not as fun as what I’m doing here but it ain’t that bad either.
A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".
2026 basically
The seed fossil record of Solanaceae revisited is out!
Using morphometrics and micro-CT data from 110 fossils and 354 extant taxa, we described 6 new genera and 6 new species, doubling fossil diversity for the nightshades!
🔗 doi.org/10.1002/tax....
@iochromaland.bsky.social
today.
❤️
Screenshot of an X.com post by The Associated Press (@AP) stating that dozens of immigrant families protested for better treatment behind fences at a Texas detention facility, where a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent after being detained in Minnesota. Below is a video thumbnail showing a crowd gathered outdoors along a fenced walkway; many people wear bright blue or red outerwear, and some hold signs.
After being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.
Systematic Biology’s January 2026 issue (75.1) is out! It launches our 75th anniversary series, debuts the new Invited Review article category, features a Tillandsia Spotlight, along with a nice mix of empirical & methods papers. Check it out: academic.oup.com/sysbio/issue...
@systbiol.bsky.social
Thank you so much, David!
Do you care about the future of the US NSF and science in general? The agency is seeking feedback on the draft Strategic Plan. www.nsf.gov/od/updates/n...
Join @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social for the first webinar in our 2026 series: "Taxonomy: What is it good for?"
Free to all! Join us to hear @sandyknapp.bsky.social's "Of course taxonomy matters! The story of the mega-genus Solanum (Solanaceae)"
Pls register & share:
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
