🧪⚛️ The proposal by the administration to restrict F1 student visas to four years and get rid of occupational practical training could devastate international doctoral studies in the US. PhDs almost always take 5-6 years. The claim that extensions for good students won't be an issue is...dubious.

🧪⚛️ The Rice Advanced Materials Institute 2026 postdoctoral fellowship competition is ramping up, and I'd be happy to talk about opportunities in my group. To get started, I'd need a CV. See here for details of this highly competitive opportunity: rami.rice.edu/rami-postdoc...

Hey @jaketapper.bsky.social , do you have any concerns about the mental wellbeing of the president, and whether his advisers are feeding him wildly inaccurate information? Please look at this now, not in retrospect in a future book deal!

🧪⚛️ The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics - a brief writeup about what is meant here by macroscopic quantum tunneling. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/10/2025...

🧪⚛️ Now with blog link goodness: ACS Webinar about plasmonics and "Illuminating the Nano Frontier" this coming Thursday. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/10/acs-...

Structural color = nanoscience all around you, all the time.

🧪⚛️ This coming Thursday October 9 I will be giving a talk as part of the @acs.org American Chemical Society's Nanotechnology Day events. All are welcome! www.acs.org/acs-webinars...

Here is the text of the administration's would-be compact on higher education. When reading this, remember the context, that this is being put forward in an environment when a single student complaint resulted in multiple job changes within a day at TAMU. www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/u...

😡 #AcademicSky

🧪⚛️ Nobel prizes next week - time again for the annual speculation thread. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/annu...

@jaketapper.bsky.social , when are you going to start questioning potus’s mental fitness? Just in the last two days we had the weird AI q-anon medbed video and the claim that Portland is literally in flames. What does it take?

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🧪⚛️ A very pretty demonstration of fluid dynamics in electrons in graphene - a hydraulic jump! nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/flui...

🧪⚛️. Come on, NSF leadership!

@orinkerr.bsky.social , some 4th amendment thoughts?

🧪⚛️ Nothing like visas and immigration policy and their impact on academic research to spur a calm, rational discussion, I'm sure. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/h-1b...

🧪⚛️. Stand back, folks! A lunar 3He mining startup just got the backing of “Big Dil Fridge”! gizmodo.com/moon-helium-...

How will Texas A&M operate administratively from now on? Following the complaint of a single student about course content, within less than a day: a faculty member was terminated, the department chair was removed from that role, and the dean of arts and sciences was removed from that role.

Highlights of the last half-day of the DOE Experimental Condensed Matter Physics PI Meeting 2025: nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/doe-...

🧪⚛️ Day 2 highlights of the DOE experimental condensed matter physics PI meeting 2025. Remember, "The glovebox is always the problem." nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/doe-...

🧪⚛️ DOE Experimental Condensed Matter PI meeting 2025, highlights from day 1: nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/doe-...

🧪⚛️ A couple of news items, and upcoming highlights from the 2025 DOE Experimental Condensed Matter Physics PI meeting. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/09/doe-...

The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents. In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.

Anyone recording zoom whiteboard using an ipad + pencil: How can I minimize lag in the recording? I get instant response on my screen when I write, but it takes seconds to show up in the recording. The network connection is fine, and everything is up to date.

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Potassium-40 had been a background in my dark matter experiments a thousand times and I had suffered quietly. But then I learned that he decohered my superconducting qubits. I promised myself that I would make him pay for this -- that I would have revenge.

Super annoying to see the widely expected and predicted consequences of the OSTP's and NIH's inability to rationally plan to cover the costs of their policies depicted as a failure of the market rather than one of poorly-planned policies based on wishful thinking www.chronicle.com/article/maki...

🧪⚛️ It’s the 25th anniversary of Nano Letters! It was great fun working with my fellow editors to put together this editorial/road map for the next 25 years of nanoscience and nanotechnology. go.acs.org/d4p

🧪⚛️ In an era of AI and LLMs, why do we still need to learn and to teach? nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/08/lear...

Truly it is the end times. An article from the Stanford Review that was informative and objective.

🧪. Sharing this for my science friends and colleagues, and I hope to convey this to the students in my class this fall. What is said here about writing is equally true about science and its practice.

@ellecordova.bsky.social is reliably on point! m.youtube.com/shorts/ilry6...

New York Times reporters repeatedly witnessed bribes being passed out to Chinese-language reporters at Adams campaign events, but said nothing until another outlet broke the story of one of their reporters being offered a bribe. Why? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/n...

Avi is still writing new and clearly incorrect things about 3I/ATLAS.

Of course “critics call it extortion”. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...

The people who are *still* making a massive deal about having to go to the doctor and get a shot think historians made too big a deal out of **slavery**

Right, because expertise is meaningless and journalists are never suckered by smooth talkers.

🧪 Very well said.

From Sarah Stevenson: In today’s classic 1956 paper, the authors measure a stellar diameter and kick off a debate about the quantum nature of light! 🔭✨☄️ astrobites.org/2025/08/14/h...

🧪⚛️ Twenty years (!) of blogging about condensed matter, materials, and nanoscale physics, + two interesting items to read. nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/08/20-y...

Avi Loeb Is Entertaining Not Sciencing medium.com/@steve.desch...

🧪⚛️ Materials folks: Anyone out there hear anything definitive yet about the present DMREF call?

The president does not get to dictate what museums say. This should not be a controversial statement, and the media should not look at these events and say absurdly sane-washing, kow-towing things like, POTUS takes bold, new stance on museum exhibits.

New super-long physics blog post: Maxwell invents a demon, people get angry (1879). 🧪 skullsinthestars.com/2025/08/12/m...

Truly this is dystopian.

Loeb’s bad science flies out faster than any one of us should have to deal with it. For a nice explanation of what’s wrong with many of his claims I have not addressed, see @hectorsocas.bsky.social ’s work here: tinieblasyestrellas.blogspot.com/2025/08/3iat...

Excellent article by scientist turned science writer, Elizabeth Finkel: from Trump to the philosophy of science #SciComm #Science 🧪 theconversation.com/friday-essay...

The Trump administration’s pressure on universities echoes past authoritarian efforts in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. A comparative and international education expert explains: buff.ly/zSTmtwz By @isilova.bsky.social, Arizona State 🗃️ #highered #edusky