Lab-created ‘SpudCell’ marks ‘stunning’ step toward building life from scratch | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

While we gaze at distant galaxies, just think of the amazing biology unfolding on our own planet. Duke grew specialized retinal cells from iPSCs, restoring vision in mice. Earth truly is astonishing.

🧪 A 68-country survey of 72k people shows the global average trust in science is quite high at 3.6 out of 5. The real fracture isn't universal; it's heavily localized and political. In the US, Republican confidence dropped from 85% to 65% since 2020, while remaining stable on the left. #AcademicSky

I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be joining Reed College @reed.edu in the winter of 2027 as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Biology Department! My lab will continue to work on understanding and characterizing cnidarian-algal symbioses across various taxa. Contact me for collabs!

Entomologist heaven . Out of all the things humanity has invented . Nature still has us beat by far . 😍

-From Quarks to Quasars 1/ Fired government scientists just launched a new site to keep climate data public.The site is called Climate.us & it was created by former staffers behind Climate.gov, the NOAA-run website long used by many for trusted climate information."

🆕 NEW! Ritual and belief lay at the heart of ancient #Mesoamerican worlds. This new free-access collection from #AncientMesoamerica spotlights recent scholarship on sacred practices and symbolic systems across time and place. 🔗 https://cup.org/4vyE2H6 #archaeology

“We’ve only had 114 years to do something, let our kids sort it out!”

Nothing else to say.

This has got to be the weirdest human evolution story I've ever covered. I'm still baffled -- yes, baffled -- by these results. 🏺🧪

Gunhild Carling is a Swedish jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist rockin'🎶'Bagpipe Swing' #bluesmusic

Twenty years ago, this June marks the when the first HPV vaccine was FDA approved. The data is strong. A recent UK study showed that: Children vaccinated at age 12–13 against HPV have close to ZERO risk of dying from cervical cancer before the age of 30. 🧪 www.bbc.com/news/article...

🧪 The decimation of U.S.A. federal science funding grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0...

There's sentiment that "education is too expensive & not worth it anymore" this is a lie, education is worth it, sciences and arts are a common societal good, not a scarce luxury for the privileged few. Education has been privatised & commodified, turned to product rather than a societal necessity.

Here's another I wrote for @newscientist.com. The frozen droppings of mammoth-eating rodents have unveiled hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary history in the Arctic... There's a sentence I never thought I would write. 🧪

Ancient squirrel poop preserved in the Yukon permafrost, spanning from the Holocene to Middle Pleistocene, contains megafauna DNA: horses, bison, mammoths, and even big cats! This genetic time capsule suggests that these rodents may have been avid scavengers! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In this week's #FossilFiles podcast, we FINALLY discuss Prototaxites, the giant phallic Devonian life-form that might be a totally unknown branch of the tree of life. This is one of the coolest papers we've ever done. Listen here or wherever you get your pods: fossils.libsyn.com/the-mysterio...

Lignin was once thought of as an intriguing material with little commercial value. But by modifying lignin, UPM is making it useful for a range of new applications. #chemsky 🧪

🧪 NEW STUDY: Reproductive toxicants (eg microplastics & PFAS forever chemicals) + climate change are likely driving plummeting global fertility rates ACROSS THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. [Anyone expressing glee about rising human infertility will be blocked] 1/2 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

I'm almost certain that there is content on this platform that I would be interested in, but right now it kind of looks like trying to find a panda in New York without knowing where the zoo is! And nobody has a map.

I'll try something a little more specific: Would anyone like to discuss the rapid advances in genetics? Especially the (to me) nearly intractable mess that is plant genetics. Also, the differential trajectories of pre-and-post Cambrian animal vs plant evolution.

New to Bluesky. Hoping to initiate the kind of dialogue and sharing I used to enjoy on Facebook without the draconian oversight and technological hurdles. Always seeking friends with common interests.