A small, early trial of a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine (autogene cevumeran by BioNTech) showed that about half of pancreatic cancer patients developed a strong immune response, with most of those still alive 4–6 years later.
That Yale report on what's wrong with U.S. college saw some trees (high cost, unfair admission, etc.) but missed the forest: the 60-year right-wing crusade to undermine higher ed, from slashing budgets to stifling speech
How to really fix college. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/yale...
A kauri tree looking towards the canopy.
PhD opportunity- fully funded with stipend, fees and project costs covered. Explore the role of phosphite in treating kauri dieback disease. Applications due 8th May. Please spread the word!
newzealandecology.org/phd-explorin...
Over the past week, the president posted an image of himself as Jesus, the vice president challenged the pope on Catholic doctrine, and the secretary of defense quoted the speech of a fictional hit man and presented it as scripture.
📋 NY A3030B: Establishes the New York native plants program
Sponsor: Anna Kelles
Status: In Assembly Committee
Link: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2026/A3030B
Twinleaf flowers (Jeffersonia diphylla) who graces us with blooms that last a mere 24 or so hours
Flowers of Allegheny Spurge (Pachysandra procumbens), a wonderful plant for ground cover and their pink, white, red flowers in a terminal spike structure signal they are alive and well and will add new leaves soon
Two of my favorite early Spring flowers: Twinleaf, who hold their petals for all of around 24 hours, and Allegheny Spurge, a native Pachysandra in the eastern US, whose fragrant terminal spikes are another clear sognal that Spring has started
Amidst everything else, the Trump regime has quietly killed off the U.S. Forest Service 🌲
“One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests… just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.”
www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...
An mRNA treatment for PANCREATIC CANCER was in trials, among many other uses. Choosing to end this research is choosing to sentence millions to an early, painful death
Today's average gas price in the U.S. is $4.15 per gallon.
Charging an EV at home is much cheaper - as of today it's a 62% savings.
Not to mention, it's far less polluting. Win win!
New Pub: Identifying hurricane and sea-level rise signatures in coastal oak forests of the Northeastern United States using a multi-parameter approach
Led by Dr. Nicole Davi:
doi.org/10.1016/j.gl...
Here are proceedings from 2000. I’d reach out to Tom Swetnam - i hope i tagged him: @firescar.bsky.social
www.climas.arizona.edu/sites/defaul...
Hi! There is an article in northern woodlands very soon about this paper
@northernwoodlands.bsky.social
Two Promethea moth caterpillars
New paper! If trees are closely related, does it matter where they are from to plant-eating insects? We raised >950 Promethea moth caterpillars on 14 Prunus species to answer that question. Turns out, it matters a lot! Non-native trees = Lower performance
OA paper here: doi.org/10.1002/ecs2...
if you're not sure what to say when you call your reps, Celeste has a script!!
reps.fyi
If you can't get through to, or leave a message, for your electeds in DC (via the Capitol switchboard &/or the direct office numbers you'll find at the above links), find their in-state offices on their websites (google "contact NAME") & keep dialing until you can.
2/
A photo of Whose Tree Is This, a picture book with a cover depicting a child in an oak tree full of critters. The picture book has a small crocheted birthday hat perched on it and is being celebrated with a festively-besprinkled chocolate cupcake.
happy book birthday to Whose Tree Is This, which is full of bugs and bats and oaks! By wishing it a happy birthday you are also wishing a happy birthday to every oak tree, I don't make the rules!! (this was a joy to illustrate and Marilyn Singer is an amazing writer and I can't believe it's real)
call for an investigation into the president's fitness. call for the house to impeach. say you will obstruct every last bit of senate business. call for soldiers to disregard illegal orders. say you will prosecute the people who do this. say you will take their military pensions and benefits.
A new old-growth forest discovered in Maine. Truly great find in a state where old forests seem to less common
news.colby.edu/story/protec...
I wrote about Akshi Singh's wonderful debut and the science of rest for @thetls.bsky.social
www.the-tls.com/science-tech...
If I read this correctly, the proposed cuts are 50% for GEO, 65% for BIO, and 80% ENG?
(To 2x click link in post, then click link for pdf of budget request).
Trump's 2027 budget proposes cuts of:
🔻 $5.8 billion to NIH
🔻 $5.6 billion to NASA
🔻 $4.8 billion to NSF
🔻 $4.6 billion to EPA
🔻 $2.9 billion to CDC
🔻 $1.6 billion to NOAA
If these science cuts pass they will make the US a less healthy and less safe place to live.
Figure 3 from Jong et al. (2026, ERL) showing Northeast extreme precipitation frequency difference (2060-2089 minus 2029-2058) for SSP5-8.5 in the warm and cold season and SSP5-3.4OS in the warm and cold season.
Very excited to share the published form of our new #OpenAccess study: doi.org/10.1088/1748... (led by @bortingjong.bsky.social).
Given significant increases in Northeast U.S. extreme precipitation trends, we then test responses to rapid greenhouse drawdowns using a 25-km resolution climate model.
The Trump administration is attempting to dismantle the U.S. Forest Service. The goal is to cause constant chaos so you can’t follow what’s happening day to day. Here is what’s going on.
BREAKING: The administration just announced a sweeping restructuring and it’s as bad as it sounds.
it's really hard to see all of the space cheerleading right now when this admin sees the moon missions as a stepping stone for space colonization while at the same time it's doing it's best to gut everything that makes the Earth habitable
It’s almost like public education is in a manufactured budget crisis designed to create a scarcity mindset so they can justify closing programs and firing people.
You know what all teams in the men's Final Four (and both women's teams in so far) have in common?
HERBARIA.
UConn is threatening to cut the staff of our nat history collections (plus many other awful budget cuts). If only we cared as much about biodiversity as we do about buzzer beaters!
Patrick Baker gets at extrapolated ages in the Southern Apps in a paper with tropical forest ages in the title. From the 1990s? Very insightful
We’ve done low and high coring on less tolerant trees like Northern Red Oak. Some times 7-12 years were the difference in coring height. Sometimes 30 or so. I recall one being something like 60-80 years
Or so years to near pith.
The oldest Eastern Hemlock often has 100-150 rings packed into the inner radii. We’ve not quantified it. Just observations.
On a suppressed Chestnut Oak elsewhere, we dropped down 0.5m in height and only added a few years to the inner ring date.
However,
100 or more rings could be packed into a small distance to near the pith, an inch or so. The other core, itself, was likely 5-10 rings from pith?
In this population I noticed 2-4 trees where I might have suspected missing the pith by 12-24 rings. The other core from these trees, indicated near 100