This is a great and thoughtful thread on the issue of why students are disengaged. I agree- covid made it worse and so did AI not those are not the reasons. I think it's attention spans w cell phones plus *struggling* being removed as an essential student skill starting with pre-K.
Are you the less lucky of the co-first or co-last authors? @shougroup.bsky.social makes the case for changes to the way that equal contribution information is sent to indexing sites such as #PubMed.
🧪 #AcademicSky #publishing
Could the #ribosome be a selfish element? @mkrupovic.bsky.social & Eugene Koonin propose that the #evolution of life can viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources.
🧪 #OriginsOfLife
'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...
Top notch and terrifying piece about this in the @newyorker.com Unbelievable what was allowed BEFORE MAHA
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
One of the best pieces of editing advice, ever, comes from Spooky Grandpa: your new draft is your old draft minus 10% of the word count.
It's hard, but it really does transform things
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%!
"Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail"
"About 422 indie bookshops opened in 2025, up 31%, defying predictions of retail consolidation"
A line graph of new and competitive renewal grants for fiscal years 2015 through 2026. The curve for 2026 lies well below that for previous fiscal years.
The story includes a funding curve graph showing the delay in making new and competitive renewal grants.
2/8
Imagine if the government spent $1 billion per day on stuff like this rather than losing wars.
The one week of spring in Ny is something special to behold
How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism:
merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...
I am so excited to share our new findings with you! We provide the structural evidence for a direct protein-to-DNA information pathway, showing how a bacterial enzyme 'reads' its own structure to 'write' DNA. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit
Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here
Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse
Media and universities: AI is here to stay
Out in @natmethods.nature.com: More dyes. They work. Quite well. And blink. Pick the one that fits your target, your technique, and your labeling density. With too many collaborators and institutes to list, but anchored at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Let me know a song you listen to that you think is perfect.
What I mean is: the lyrics and melody, sure, but also the performance, the arrangement, literally everything about the recording. Like, even if you could you wouldn't have the artist(s) change a thing.
One of mine: Graceland by Paul Simon
Very proud of my daughter’s writings. In her 4 years as opinion writer & editor for the Vermont Cynic at UVM, she has not shied away from controversy with courage, candor and intellectual rigor. I feel this one about contraceptive misinformation is among her best!!!
vtcynic.com/opinion/stop...
and no more spoilers! Check it out to see how we found that RhoGAP15B locally suppresses RhoA-Myosin at the front of the cluster, creating a relaxed zone that promotes protrusive activity, letting leader cells move forward while the cluster stays coordinated.
Median survival went from 6 months to 13 months. It may not sound like much, but for metastatic pancreatic cancer, this is big, IMO. We finally have something solid to build on in this field.
Excited to share a new collaborative paper with Lena Koslover's team, fueled by @chanzuckerberg.bsky.social Metabolism Across Scales Program 🧪 1/
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
At a glance, 2599 recipients - I think the highest total ever? And quite a few in the Life Sciences, which I know was a concern for many - Evolutionary Biology had twice as many recipients (38) as last year (19).
Good 🧵
I highly recommend that everyone follow artists. If you do, your feed is filled with art every day. Real, original art. It's bonkers that you can even have this. Amazing. Undeniably cool.
And then support those artists, when you can, because that helps the delight continue.
🚨 Why can’t mammals regenerate limbs like frog tadpoles or salamanders?
In our new paper in @science.org , we show that species-specific oxygen sensing acts as a gatekeeper for initiating limb regeneration 🐭🐸
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #EvoDevo
I will move to NYC for this
Love this thread — awesome science and great photography of some of nature’s most amazing critters.
Bloody hell. Researchers invented a disease, published two fake papers to see if LLM’s would ingest them and kick them up as fact — and then it broke containment and all the major AI’s bought in. Information pollution.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
