To mark the death of James Watson, please read this 2023 piece about Rosalind Franklin's role in the discovery of the double helix www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Edinburgh University is closing the Institute for Academic Development. Download these student resources while you can. Making notes, reading strategies, time management, dissertations and so on. CC licenses. Pdf and text only versions. #HE 🗃️ institute-academic-development.ed.ac.uk/study-hub/le...

This week's column is on Billionaire Brain: the condition which seems to prevent extremely rich people from perceiving the utterly bleeding obvious. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Nice story Nell G-B, but contrary to the headline he was making racist and misogynist remarks from the beginning of his career, but the fields degree of toleration and the profile of these remarks finally hit a tipping point

Hey folks, as news of Watson's demise spreads, please don't set aside his weighty legacy of misogyny and racism. He was truly among the worst of us. www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18...

We are pleased to announce that @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social has won the Young Investigator Award by the Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists. The award ceremony and the recipient's lecture will take place at the next Tokyo Annual Meeting on 14 March 2026. buff.ly/pemelQu

It's irritating that they describe the effects of his racism as limited to causing controversy within science and reputational consequences for himself rather than giving an immeasurable boost, false veneer of legitimacy, and idiot-friendly prestige to modern scientific racism and eugenics.

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp.... genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

*CACKLES LOUDLY* *IMMEDIATELY SENDS TO STUDENTS*

I hope he lived long enough to change his mind on some topics. If nothing else, his life showed that even the deepest legacies of science & discovery do not overcome personal accountability in word and deed.

☀️ SPECIAL ISSUE REVIEW ☀️ González-Delgado et al review how plants sense photoperiod, how humans have profited from manipulating the genetic factors controlling photoperiod, and the benefits & drawbacks such manipulations can have for agriculture 🚜 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

Football Chant Therapy For Men (With @misterabk.bsky.social @bigdirtyfry.bsky.social @seanburkeshow.bsky.social @samlakecomedy.bsky.social @wsebag.bsky.social @bjalborough.bsky.social @cbthorburn.bsky.social and Chris Weir) www.youtube.com/shorts/V20uv...

A #Micronaut in a prior #microbiology #Bio350 course at @univpugetsound.bsky.social made this for me a couple of years ago. I will miss working with students very much. @asmicrobiology @microbe.tv

To put this in scale, Elon Musk's salary from Tesla alone could fund the SNAP program for the entire country into 2034.

878 billion. Can fund NSF (check math) for 87 years. Yeah wrap your head around that.

Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3… rdcu.be/eNEf4 A short thread:

every year, the purple wedge gets bigger

There has been a resurgence in Tripodfish interest, so let's check them out! #LetsChangeThat

What a glorious day--waking up to see this lovely preprint that does it all--a comprehensive scRNAseq atlas of leaf development, hints at the txn of new cell types, and great hypotheses about how GRNs may differ among related TFs (and in other news, some hope for American Democracy)

1/ Preprint alert:
 🌾 The developing leaf of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon at single-cell resolution
 👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025... A 70k-cell single-cell RNA-seq atlas of the developing grass leaf—from the shoot meristem to mature leaf tissues. @cerealcell.bsky.social @lbmountain.bsky.social

Statistical thinking is a core part of solid biological results. However, many studies still include insufficient sample sizes, have poor experimental design, or select incorrect statistical tests. Here, the authors present ten statistical tips for cell biology www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#parenthood 100% by @lizclimo.bsky.social

How do people around the world encounter science, and what shapes those encounters? Our new global study found that social media now carries much of the world’s science content, but local culture, infrastructure, and curiosity still determine how people engage. #ScienceSky #scicomm

'You're adopted' ---------- (For the non-palaeo folks, this is in light of a newly published paper re-establishing that #Nanotyrannus, previously understood to be a juvenile #T.rex, is indeed its own genus after all.)

A wheat NLR conferring broad-spectrum resistance against powdery mildew by recognizing two structurally diverse AVR effectors. Interested? Check out our newest preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The most colorful #squid I’ve ever seen! And such a cooperative poser too! #🦑 #cephalopod #chromatophores #calamari #underwater #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #blackwaterphotography #blackwatervideo #kumeisland #kumejima #okinawa #chrisgug #gugunderwater #gug

😢 "Perhaps the most striking findings is that the British public vastly overestimates the cost getting to net zero by almost 14,000%, fueling scepticism & a reluctance to pay. On average, they estimate it will need 28% of GDP by 2050, compared to @thecccuk.bsky.social forecast of just 0.2%"

As someone who likes LLMs and is excited about technical opportunities, the way some people outsource their people-ness to them is straight-up disappointing. Be a Mensch!

If successful, the ViTaL-D Study would be a step towards using biofortified tomatoes to overcome a growing global problem of vitamin D deficiency 🌎 This step forward is of particular interest to people who follow a plant-based diet because vegan sources of vitamin D are nearly non-existent 🌿

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

My new Emmy Noether Group is recruiting! 🔬 Two PhD positions in plant pathogen evolution 🧬 Start: April 2026 (flexible) 📍 Dept. of Phytopathology & Plant Protection @rstam.bsky.social @uni-kiel.de ⏰ Apply by 15 Dec 2025 🔗 More info: www.uni-kiel.de/personal/de/... Do get in touch or share 😊

Very, very few comic book creators can survive on just the money they make from comics. It is an inherently unstable job and it is only getting worse as time goes on. Don't ever be embarrassed or ashamed of needing another job so that you can keep making comics.

Thanks @javicheztin.bsky.social for hosting me. It's been a pleasure to go back to my dear @usaloficial.bsky.social and know more about the ongoing projects at #CIALE. Thanks for the lively scientific discussions on Trichoderma, MPMI and Marchantia, including 26 min of Q&A 😎

Thanks a lot Isa @isabelmonte.bsky.social👩‍🔬for accepting our invitation🤩. Such a terrific talk, opening up new research lines hand-in-hand with #Trichoderma. MPMI in its purest state!!! Special thanks to @agrienvironcyl.bsky.social for funding the visit, and many more yet to come. 🌿🧫🦠🧬

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Postdoc position in my lab in Cologne starting early next year or latest in spring to get this exciting project started. jobportal.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun...

My F2 runner bean population seems to be producing six color classes. I still have many pods left to process as they dry before I can estimate the ratios of the different seed colors needed to estimate the genetics ratios.

"it is striking how many of the key players we have looked into — the people who have gone out of their way to put up hundreds of flags — seem anything but ordinary." manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-...

Who did this?!

Did you know that submarine cables on the deep ocean floor literally connect our world? This map reveals the fragile & mostly unseen infrastructure carrying 99% of Earth's data traffic & providing internet access everywhere. www.maps.com/submarine-ca... 🧪 🌊 ⚒️ 🌍 🌎 🌏 #gischat @seabed2030.bsky.social

🧬🌱Research Specialist Position Open🌱🧬 -Please spread the words HHMI, UT Austin. NGS-based analyses/single cell biology to investigate environmental and hormonal control of plant stem cell differentiation. Requires both wet lab and bioinformatic skills. hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

A better shot of the Beelzebub bee-eater fly, Mallophora leschenaulti.

Halloween logicals, still the best 10/31 venn

Years ago, I attempted a self-assessment of my potential gender biases in an academic research setting: ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2016/04/subt... Today, I happened on a very nice summary of how to avoid such biases in letters of recommendation, which provides an comprehensive outline. Check it out

'The night the sky showered us with stars" by Sarah Morgan, contemporary artist and printmaker #WomensArt

Golden Promise-rapid, a fast-cycling barley genotype with high transformation efficiency https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.31.685778v1

Paul Nurse describing the main job of a PI (From ‘The Thinking Game’, 2024)