US higher education was a crown jewel, generating knowledge, wealth, prestige, and power unrivaled by anyone. And the US is throwing it away, because Americans elected a govt ideologically opposed to truth, science, merit, and racial/gender equality, preferring to weaken the country to reduce that.

Here's the data:

The @asm.org statement in response to the changes in the childhood immunization schedule: asm.org/press-releas...

New paper out in Current Opinion in Microbiology: MCR-encoding (potentially methanogenic) Thermoproteota are widespread and transcriptionally active in diverse anoxic ecosystems! @dr-zj.bsky.social, Matthew Kellom & @emileyeloe-fadrosh.bsky.social. Funded by DOE BER program. tinyurl.com/2fsyxswj 🦠🧪

The Nocardioidaceae: obscure bacteria that could be key to cleaning up some of the world's worst pollution. varietyoflife.net/nocardioidac...

It took 9 years and 3 billion miles to get this shot. Pluto’s icy Mountains. Thankyou NASA ☺️

Higher levels of antibiotic resistance are less competitive: the hidden ecological cost of no-metabolic cost resistance bioRxiv from Peter Yunker www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Mouth of the Eel River, northern California, morning of Dec 22. Peak flow at Scotia, off this image to the south of the marker, was early on the morning of the 22nd, though it's currently rising again. Sentinel 2 image. I believe the Eel R basin still has highest measured sediment yield in the US.

some good climate/energy news: * 96% of new US power capacity was carbon-free in 2024 (56 gigawatts!) * 2025 included the first month ever when 51% of power on the U.S. grid was carbon-free * The golbal trend is overwhelming: The world is now investing more $ in clean energy than fossil fuels

On a recent walk in Ossining 🤨

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

Archaeasalutations!! Archaea Power Hour is back tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10 AM EST / 4 PM CET!! Check your email for the Zoom link or sign up to join our mailing list here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…. Check out the two exciting talks we have planned for you:

The Department of Biology at @eastcarolinauniv.bsky.social seeks to fill a tenure-track faculty at the Assistant Professor level with expertise in evolutionary Biology! Come join us! ecu.peopleadmin.com/postings/89839

I am extremely happy to share our latest manuscript "Widely-distributed freshwater microorganisms with streamlined genomes co-occur in cohorts with high abundance". This project started back in 2021-2022 and after a long time, it sees the light today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

UMass Amherst Microbiology is hiring a tenure-track virologist. Come work with me! 🦠🧪 careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u...

New week-new episode of the #MattersMicrobial podcast!! Dr. Roxanne Beinart of the University of Rhode Island joins the #QualityQuorum to chat about the work her group does on deep sea chemoautrophic communities & symbioses! Please spread the #GoodMicrobialWord? youtu.be/mERRJOuEsB4?...

Wow it’s been a busy few months. I live in New Paltz now! And work in Kingston! It’s the first fall in 7 years where I’m not panic-prepping courses! I love undergrads and miss some parts of academia, but not others. And I’m super excited about my Riverkeeper projects (both new and continuing)!

Global Patterns and Environmental Drives of Nitrite/Nitrate‐Dependent Anaerobic Methane Oxidation Across Natural Ecosystems 🔗 buff.ly/Q8O6xbM

A novel mobile genetic element with virus-like characteristics is widespread in the world's oceans www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨4yr Technical Assistant Position on #Microbial Activities in #Marine #N-Cycling🦠🧪👩‍🎓🔬 Join me @univie.ac.at @dome-vienna.bsky.social Part of our ERC Synergy #RECLESS looking at microbes in marine oxygen minimum zones Apply by Oct 15, start March 2026! -> ucloud.univie.ac.at/index.php/s/...

Just out: metagenomics with internal standards yields phylogenetically resolved genome ("~cell") counts of bacteria, archaea, and photosynthetic eukaryotes per L of seawater, over the AMT29 Atlantic transect, via "single copy" genes (recA, radA, psbO). Compares with microscopy and flow cytometry.

In my latest blog post I lay out some things we as faculty can do to ensure that higher education remains an incubator that prepares future generations for a multiracial democracy as opposed to an incubator for Trump's fascist agenda. Check it out! educationallinguist.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/a...

Congratulations 🎉 now on line at @isme-microbes.bsky.social : Comparative genome analysis reveals broad phylogenetic and functional diversity within the order #Nitrospirales Linnea Kop et al #microbiology @ribesresearch.bsky.social (RIBES) icw @univie.ac.at academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Love this new minireview in J. Bacteriology by @archaeal.bsky.social and colleagues: "Laboratory-based studies must be grounded in nature, not the other way around." And we should focus on members of Earth's dominant microbes from key environments as models. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Green Bank Observatory, one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, is facing an apocalyptic budget cut request (-70%, and the NSF recommends shutting it down). Here's how you can help save this miracle of science and engineering: www.gogreenbankobservatory.org/take-action/

US Friends! The Green Bank Observatory (GBO) is a vital instrument in the global #RadioAstronomy network (incl. pulsar science), and it is under threat with the proposed funding cuts. Please take action to keep it open: www.gogreenbankobservatory.org/take-action/ Pls share! 🔭📡🧪 📸 GBO/AUI/NSF

I have spent the last 24 hours looking at media reports and social media posts about the Texas Hill County tragedy and being appalled by the level of misinformation I am seeing. I have tried to put together an updated, more reasoned summary I hope you'll read. open.substack.com/pub/balanced...

University of Minnesota Duluth’s research vessel grows a mysterious goo, and when the captain finds it during repairs, he scoops up a glob of it and takes it back for analysis. “Hey, we work for scientists. We have people who do things,” he says. BIG VIBES.

Best conference camp every summer! #NEMPET25

We are accepting applications for the GeoFutures program. The program provides mentoring & travel support for geoscience undergrads attending the 2025 @sacnas.bsky.social conference. Priority app deadline 06-16-25 @cientificolatino.com @official-bweems.bsky.social environment.uw.edu/about/inclus...

Based on a story first reported by @forbetterscience.bsky.social here: forbetterscience.com/2025/05/19/a...

Inside a Scientific Paper Mill @dereklowe.bsky.social writes about how Csaba Szabo was contacted by a paper mill and offered money if he could help them write more junk papers. www.science.org/content/blog...

Predicting gene distribution in ammonia-oxidizing archaea using phylogenetic signals academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs

Did you know that the female #microbiome is unique in many ways, and antibiotic resistance in the gut microbiome varies between genders? See npj Biofilms and Microbiomes special issue, Women and their microbes, to learn more! www.nature.com/collections/...

Come work with us! We are currently hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in marine microbial environmental genomics, to focus on microorganisms that produce and consume greenhouse gases and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the coastal Baltic Sea. Apply before 22 June! su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Our new paper on MGEs in Vibrio cholerae is now out in Genome Biology and Evolution @genomebiolevol.bsky.social Huge congrats to former PhD student Natália Drebes Dörr @nataliadrebesdorr.bsky.social 🎉🍾🥳 for the great work & thx to Alexandre Lemopoulos for bioinformatics support shorturl.at/0LveK

Very excited to present the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database (GBR-MGD), a comprehensive DB of 1000s of high-quality prokaryote, virus, plasmid, and chromosome-level eukaryote MAGs using Nanopore long reads. Subthreads incoming. Please share widely. 🙂 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

All technical statistics books should start like this! @rmcelreath.bsky.social 👏🏼

PARASOL biostats leads Abigail Smith and Margaret Helmuth gave a guest lecture today in @mesohaline.bsky.social’s #HamiltonCollege BIO 202 Biostatistics class - Nice examples of statistical methods & considerations in longitudinal studies and clinical trials & real life impact of biostats work

Excited to share new research led by our very own @lingdong-shi.bsky.social showing that many archaeal 23S rRNAs are circularized in active ribosomes. Check out the preprint below.

There are only around 140 coal plants still operating, with hundreds of retirements in recent years. Keeping them running costs more than actually building new solar and wind power — in 99 percent of cases. Oh and also coal killed half a million people in the US between 1999 and 2020.

Made this with ChatGPT for my biostats lecture slides. Definitely enough hilarity to use!

The longer I teach, the more I am convinced that the most important part of teaching is Vibes Management.

Very interesting finding: photochemical formation of N2O in freshwater and marine waters. The N cycle gets more complex. 🧐 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Job Alert at @ucdavis.bsky.social The Coastal & Marine Sciences Institute is searching for a Professor & Director. This work spans from the Davis campus to the Bodega Marine Laboratory & beyond. View the full position description & apply by the next review date, April 27th, here: lnkd.in/gKubcJSB

Our study ‘The global human impact on biodiversity’ is out in Nature! Through an unprecedented synthesis (2133 studies!) we show that humans are not only shrinking species numbers—but reshaping entire communities across the planet. 🌍🌐🐟🌿🪲 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are hiring a postdoctoral scholar to join us in the sometime in the next ~6 months. oliveriolab.org with a focus on microbial eukaryotes in extreme environments. Please email w/CV if you'd like to chat. Official ad soon. #MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky #ProtistsOnSky

Does genome streamlining influence the prevalence and abundance of freshwater prokaryotes? Does metabolic interdependencies influence the co-occurrence of prokaryotes in freshwater ecosytems? ⬇️ We examine the answer to these questions in our new pre-print ⬇️

Our paper, Pangenomes suggest ecological-evolutionary responses to experimental soil warming, is published! Led by @malladapted.bsky.social, this study of 91 isolate genomes shows lineage specific trends climate adaptation. Thanks to the many reviewers who helped make this a stronger publication. 🧪

Lungfish xkcd.com/3064