A group of Ecuadorian fishermen survived a US drone strike, were detained at gunpoint, phones wiped, ship blown up, disappeared to El Salvador, then released without charge. “They knew we were fishermen. Even the Salvadorian authorities said things had been handled very badly.”
“Temperature anomalies shape U.S. migration patterns, with older adults exhibiting greater net migration in warmer, rural counties, while working-age adults exhibit lower net migration.”
New paper by Shuai Zhou, Guangqing Chi & Chuan Liao:
📄 www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...
Percentage of adults with a Ph.D.
Welp, my day is ruined.
@NWS probabilistic heat risk just got released today.
Soliciting for Public Comments through September 30, 2026
www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/heatrisk/pro...
New OA paper in POEN led by @valmuellerasu.bsky.social w/Ashu Handa! We show that receipt of cash transfers in Kenya buffered households against cold-induced migrant trapping:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had simmered for years with such resentment and jealousy over a colleague that he poisoned the man’s water with chloroform, a common and toxic chemical that's accessible in the lab where both men worked, local authorities said.
Next up: T grants
These support grad student and post doc training programs at certain institutions.
# of new grants issued through April 15 in
FY2024 (the last “normal” year): 70
FY2025: 23
FY2026: 2
In a partially divided vote, UNC-Chapel Hill faculty have adopted two resolutions formalizing their concerns about the university's School of Civic Life and Leadership.
www.wunc.org/education/20...
From Malthus to planetary boundaries: the genealogy of ‘carrying capacity’ as a political technology Vicky Kluzik ABSTRACT How much is too much? The concept ‘carrying capacity’, believed to be first employed in the context of shipping in the nineteenth century, became a key element of Neo-Malthusianism of the 1960s and 1970s, which aimed to curb surplus populations against the backdrop of looming ecological collapse. Adopting an approach that merges a Foucauldian governmentality perspective with Science and Technology Studies (STS) sensitivities, the article investigates the lively genealogy of how ecologists and economists approached the ‘population problem’ through ‘capacity thinking’ to envisage, model, and predict planetary futures. By examining several discursive constellations from the 1920s to the 2000s, the paper illuminates the ascendancy of ‘carrying capacity’ as a ‘fixed ideal’ and a ‘political technology’ that traverses scientific disciplines and societal discourses. This exploration unfolds the presumably simultaneous economization of the environment vis-à-vis the environmentalization of economics, cautioning against claims of a hybridization of these interlinked yet distinct processes. This retro- and prospective analysis unfolds both the ascendancy and the persistence of ‘carrying thinking’ by illuminating how contemporary rationalities of ‘capacity thinking’ are echoed in conceptions of planetary boundaries, circular economy, as well as right-wing and techno-libertarian visions of economic and ecological futures.
Recently published in @jcultecon.bsky.social: @vkluzik.bsky.social on the genealogy of the concept of "carrying capacity" and how it was seized and shaped by both ecologists and economists. Must read for anyone interested in the links between population and the environment.
doi.org/10.1080/1753...
IPUMS DHS has released standard variables from 112 new samples, including 34 new countries and recent samples from 12 countries previously represented. The release includes data from the women, household members, births, and children units of analysis. https://www.idhsdata.org/idhs/
📢 We’re looking for a writer to join our team at Our World in Data!
What we’re looking for is quite unique: someone who writes excellent narrative articles on large global problems, finds memorable framings to make hard ideas easier to understand, while being genuinely obsessed w/ technical details
New paper published in PNAS today!
Joint work with Jeffrey Shrader, Stephan Thies, Derek Lemoine, and Laura Bakkensen: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Picture of a unicorn labeled demographer and a horse with a plunger on its head labeled data scientist
You can try to be one of us, but...
Super Typhoon Sinlaku.
Sheesh.
And now Shreeya has won an NSF GRFP!! 😁
Plot showing GRFP awards by directorate shows a big dip last year and major increases for engineering and biology (though this only brings it back to parity with 2024).
The NSF GRFP is now out! There are 2,599 awardees, which is the most ever—and a big shift from last year which initially halved awardees (1,000 awardees + an additional 500).
I've thrown together a plot to break down the changes by field.
www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...
Congrats to Shreeya Patel for successfully defending her honors thesis for UNC GEOG!
NSF HEGS no longer has an active solicitation...
A downward spiral - climate change lowers agricultural productivity, leading to cropland expansion and deforestation, and thus more climate change.
www.nber.org/papers/w3502...
WIP finds long-term probability of completing primary education in Peru ⬇️ after in-utero exposure
to the 1982-1983 El Niño floods
muchinbazan.github.i...
Photo focusing on two related lichens. The larger lichen is cream coloured, roughly square in shape and centred in the middle of the photo. It has numerous orange discs growing on the main body. A smaller, cream coloured lichen is growing over the top part of the larger lichen. This smaller lichen has grey-green discs growing on it.
A green rock posy lichen rudely growing over an orange rock posy lichen. Northwest Territories, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends
Examining the dramatic growth and evolving role of postdoctoral researchers in the US scientific workforce from 1979 to 2023, showing a fourfold increase in postdoc numbers that outpaced growth in graduate students and faculty, from Ginther and @jlrosenbloom.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w35014
We've been waiting on the RFA for our NICHD pop center grant renewal for nearly two years. On year 7 of a 5-year grant, in our second no-cost extension, and there's still no RFA. 💀
India began counting its population this week, setting off a yearlong process of tallying some 1.4 billion people. The census, its first since 2011, will shape how wealth and power is distributed and inform policies around castes and women in the world’s most populous nation.
All but three (!) of the 1,651 refugees admitted into the United States in the three most recent months we have data are white South Africans.
For comparison, in 2024, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees. It's an explicit white supremacist project.
www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...
"Students in SCLL 230 must go on a date, plan their own weddings and organize a ball...Guest speakers last fall included an activist against gender treatment for minors and a former White House bioethics adviser who warned about the dangers of premarital sex." 💩🔥
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/u...
"Abundance from Abroad: Migrant Income and Long-Run Economic Development"
American Economic Review, April 2026
With @econgaurav.bsky.social (Gaurav Khanna), Emir Murathanoglu, and Caroline Theoharides
doi.org/10.1257/aer....
Earlier tonight I drove through a dust devil, except it was made of pollen. A pollen devil.
#BirdOfTheDay theme is #blue. Kind of screams out for some fairy wrens! This is a Splendid Fairywren.
