Starting spooky season with a corpse flower blooming on campus 🥀

yep. You can't make a 'better case' that convinces tyranny of the value of science since knowledge is tyranny's kryptonite.

I realize many people don’t quite get that not every single professor in every single university teaches computer science and might actually be trained in and invested in teaching other things, like let’s say, history? Or poetry. Or sociology. It is not our job to teach students how to use AI.

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

One of the reasons I believe strongly in open access is that my R1 university doesn't have subscriptions to many key journals in my field. If I can barely get these articles, it's even harder for folks at PUIs, journalists, students who know less about inter-library loan options, etc. 🧪

This is particularly galling when federal workers experience retaliation under claims of violating the Hatch Act for lawfully exercising their first amendment rights while off duty.

This timeline is exhausting. Trying to be an empathetic, reasonable, functional adult while seeing stuff like this is exhausting. So unserious.

That's quite the chart annotation. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I think the R01 is basically a non-starter at NIGMS now. Data from NIH Reporter for new and competing awards, comparing number of R01s issued relative to R35s (MIRA). This has major ramifications for basic science and basic science investigators that are not yet in the MIRA pool

And please also thank the grants management specialists (GMS) who handle the business, non-programmatic matters of awarding grants!

We are very happy to share that our paper on Comparative Transcriptomics of Zymoseptoria tritici during host and non-host interactions was accepted for publication in @mpmijournal.bsky.social journal and was just released in the first look section! doi.org/10.1094/MPMI...

Comment period ends on Monday for a proposed rule change that would terminate student visas after 4 years. It also puts limits on exchange visitors and reps of foreign media, and shortens the length of time at the end of the visa from 60 days to 30 days. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Found this beautiful fungus on my walk this morning. ❤️ fungi

Another year using @kitchensjn.bsky.social + @gcbias.bsky.social's intuitive circle plots to discuss human genetic variation in my undergrad genetics class james-kitchens.com/blog/visuali...

When I was a postdoc, I knew there was no possibility that anyone cared about what I said and so outing that shit on social media was the best thing to do But as a professor? You're always guessing, and your word carries further (publicly, barely so internally)

I hate this for the second years who had already been working on applications. Also the USDA fellowship RFA has still not been issued for this year. It is harder and harder to find fellowships to support the newest generation of scientists. 🧪 We are shortchanging our future.

NSF GRFP solicitation out. App deadlines now in November. As others noted, eligibility rules for current graduate students now exclude 2nd year grad students. See the solicitation - they’ve emphasized “first year” and “less than one academic year” in grad program. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Who needs a panda cam, when you can have a corpse flower cam!? Love this from the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens - their newest bloom in the beautiful McMillan greenhouse. 👃🌹 #PlantSci 🧪 www.youtube.com/live/a8o3Pxh...

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

New: There was an "emergency" all-hands meeting inside part of NOAA today basically to tell people they have no idea what to expect re a potential shutdown. "Even less than usual," per one source. There is no guidance yet available and no info on what specifically the OMB memo means. So that's cool.

Who needs a panda cam, when you can have a corpse flower cam!? Love this from the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens - their newest bloom in the beautiful McMillan greenhouse. 👃🌹 #PlantSci 🧪 www.youtube.com/live/a8o3Pxh...

For their first project, my Kids and Society students have to create an infographic clarifying a common misconception about "kids these days." I'd prefer that they not use AI to create their projects, so I made my own infographic explaining why : )

It turns out you need people to run basic government functions. DOGE laid people off, paid them to do nothing for 7 months, and now has to reinstate staff because the GSA needs people to run it. All of which boils down to a giant waste of taxpayer dollars www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/p...

Did the very first thing have to be "Embrace AI Products"? 🙄Blech. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Man, wicked part II is going to hit so hard in this current era. 😬 from the first moments of Thank Goodness

It feels like the statement "I want to get this in before the gov shutdown" should be more rare than it has been in my life. #NewPI #AcademicSky

🚨Update: Acting USDA ERS administrator among those placed on indefinite leave over the termination of the food insecurity/hunger survey. This was reported by Agri-Pulse and has since been confirmed to me by an internal source. www.agri-pulse.com/articles/234...

This is a great time to check-in with your international post-docs, students, and staff. This picture of our wheat plants has nothing to do with the post, but I felt like I needed some cheering up.

We have an open Assistant Professor position in Evolutionary Cell and Molecular Biology in the @weillinstitute.bsky.social at Cornell University. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30607

Anyone else having a really hard time talking to students about careers in science? I talked to an undergrad, technician, & grad student about careers today & floundered when comparing industry to govt to academic positions, how to prep for any of them, or what those jobs will look like in 5 years

This is what happens when you remove the wall from plant cells. They become perfectly spherical and are called protoplasts. These protoplasts were isolated from Arabidopsis and transformed with a vector to express cytosolic GFP (in orange). The chloroplast autofluorescence is in grey. #microscopy

My department at UC Davis is hiring a mycologist, broadly interpreted. Please repost, share, and consider applying. recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07339

3 cheers for NIH grant staff! Regardless of everything else, they are heros!

Gram-positive bacterial MAMP sensed by a plant cysteine rich receptor kinase. I've been waiting for this preprint to drop. Nice story! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The tech didn't work today (laptop decided to update it's firmware) so I got to actually live one of these nightmares 😵‍💫

Bombshell from Sandy @SandyKnapp : Solanaceae are way older than we thought at ~98 million years! 🌍🍆🌶️🍅 #SolRub2025

Universities. Rural hospitals. Tech companies. Several sectors are going to be profoundly hurt by this. Not to mention the chaos of the moment as current H1-B owners scramble to get back to the U.S., cancel travel, etc. due to the uncertainty. An absolute mess. As intended.

Good news for those who got NIH NOAs + $$ in August. Terrible for those whose proposals scored really well in peer review but have not been funded. Demoralizing. Also means that the next rounds of funding in 2026 are going to be even more competitive.... assuming that the PIs still have open labs

LMAO: “Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed. For example, ChatGPT Plus had a fondness for using the word ‘groundbreaking.‘”

Please check out our updated version of this preprint - now with even more transposable elements! 🧬🦠 No really, we added in a few more analyses about TEs and further compared Mycetohabitans to related bacteria, plus other treats. @bhuwanabbot.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Have you ever looked at some differentially occurring gene clusters in a microbial #pangenome and thought to yourself "I wonder if they contribute to any metabolic modules"? With the most recent changes, the answer is a few clicks away in #anvio 😇

"With 2 weeks left before the end of this fiscal year, USDA’s [NIFA] had awarded just 558 competitive grants ... 68% fewer than during the prior fiscal year—and $741 million less in competitively awarded research funds" Don't forget #PlantSci and ag research, folks. www.science.org/content/arti...

In honour of "Postdoc Appreciation Week", a plug for a paper I was involved in 5 years ago (w/ @bjmjarrett.bsky.social, @muriellealund.bsky.social and others) in which we highlighted how academia could better support postdocs. There is much here that remains relevant! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Paper from 2024: We found Genus species present, strain Y, type 1.B, verified by Smith et al. (2021), Li et al. (2022), and Singh et al. (2023)(accessible on GenBank via these numbers). Paper from 1980: Frank said he found it one time (pers. comm.).

but yes conservatives who want to spend ten years in grad school to teach a 5:5 load for $45K a year and yes you do have to pay for parking should have the same opportunities as liberals to do so, and largely do.

Truth 💯

Getting a campus safety alert about possible gunfire hits so hard now - these are too normalized.😞

Pangeneric analyses reveal the divergent genome evolution and ecologies between morels and truffles in the Morchellaceae published in @currentbiology.bsky.social 1/n Photo: M. Vulgaris (Ph Clowez)

Please check out our updated version of this preprint - now with even more transposable elements! 🧬🦠 No really, we added in a few more analyses about TEs and further compared Mycetohabitans to related bacteria, plus other treats. @bhuwanabbot.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Have also heard this point made in a reference to what we are teaching 🫠