We are advertising a new postdoc in Socioecological Outcomes and Monitoring of Restoration in Dryland Ecosystems based at Penn State & supervised by the amazing @idad.bsky.social. psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

NEW: A serious staffing shortage — of the Trump admin's own making — is delaying the agency's ability to send billions to universities around the country, leaving labs reeling in the meantime. “I thought we were at rock bottom”, a senior NIH official said. “We are below rock bottom now.”

The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA

Rainfall intensity matters as much as how much rain falls. New in Nature: Corey Lesk and I show that daily-scale concentration of precipitation dries the land over the long-run, an effect as strong as total precipitation is climatological wetting. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

interesting new fellowship for people studying child development, available for early-career folk (10 years since PhD, US$300K over 3 years, worldwide eligibility)

#NowReading: Cash transfers relax climate-induced mobility constraints in Kenya 🖋️ Valerie Mueller, Clark Gray, and Sudhanshu Handa 📝 doi.org/10.1007/s11111-025-00515-5 @cgiar.org#NowReading#OpenAccess

"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

The Population Investigation Committee is recruiting for an Editor-in-Chief or team of Editors-in-Chief for Population Studies: A journal of demography. files.taylorandfrancis.com/rpst-call-fo...

The season of awards and announcements!: My 5th year PhD student Sara was featured in the UNC GEOG newsletter and will be spending the summer in Vienna with the IIASA Young Scientist program, and my 4th year PhD student Georgina passed her comps and proposal defense 🙂

There's a strong split showing up everywhere in AI usage: if you can setup a reliable and deterministic verification loop, agents can solve the task successfully, in no time. Without it, especially if nuanced judgement is needed, they can produce convincing garbage in no time.

Looking forward to Seattle for #PAA2027! @popassocamerica.bsky.social @burgards.bsky.social

…For those who weren’t there, something I didn’t post about (because we pivoted from policy to pop centers and I wanted to listen closely) was Bhattacharya’s absolutely astonishing claim that research evaluating the health effects of public policy is out of scope for NIH-funded research.

First two #PAA2026 program appearances in the books! Of course they were at the same time 🙃

🧵 A surprising wildlife trend is emerging that could be a sign of the future: large mammals are making a massive comeback in parts of Europe and Japan. The driver? Human depopulation in rural areas. New paper: 🔗 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Nearing $5,000 for OA fees for entirely pedestrian journals. I still do not understand how NIH and Universities got played so hard on this. My U has a negotiated fee offset and it just seems like the publisher just added that to the charge to grants for no net reduction to the PI’s books.

In May 2016, I graduated with my PhD. 10 years, 2 postdocs, 2 tenure track jobs, and 2 kids later, I GOT TENURE!!!!!!!

unc is paying a lawyer $900 an hour to read my stories

Canvas calling their grading function "speed grader" feels like violence at the end of every semester.

New article by our group in @pnas.org 📄🌳 We often focus on stopping deforestation —but what about forest degradation? Are existing deforestation policies offering any protection against this problem? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #Amazon #Deforestation #ClimatePolicy #Conservation

Relying on emigration as a growth strategy in this global climate risky, but also true of trade. And as the rich world ages, not convinced it will be harder to find a new place to move than a new place to export. One opportunity is expanding in aggregate, the other shrinking.

This mine would be located where I do my research in Brazil—a region already impacted by the massive Belo Monte Dam. “Belo Sun says it plans to extract 6.3 metric tons of gold every year for roughly 17 years, and build a dam to hold…enough [mine waste] to fill 14,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

The IPUMS Global Health Student Award goes to Kathryn McMahon for "Does humidity matter? Prenatal heat and child health in South Asia" (doi.org/10.1126/scia...).

IPUMS Spatial Published Award goes to Itzchak Tzachi Raz for "Soil Heterogeneity, Social Learning, and the Formation of Close-Knit Communities" (doi.org/10.1086/735506).

“Estimates of Under-Five Mortality From a Mobile Phone Survey”: This study by Julio Romero-Prieto et al. represents “one of the first attempts to collect survival data via mobile phones and to randomize different survey instruments.” @lshtm.bsky.social read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

So happy to see our paper with @anamibanez.bsky.social , Juliana Quigua Chinchilla, and @jimenaromero.bsky.social published in the AEJ: Economic Policy @aeajournals.bsky.social!

One paper published in WD joint w/ @jfmaystadt explores the effect of refugee presence on host populations in Uganda using a distance-based IV, finds that households living close to refugee settlements benefit from this proximity www.sciencedirect.co...

Percent of Residents Living in Their Birth State, by County.

Congrats to new APC Fellow @heatherrandell.bsky.social!

When I went to visit my undergrad professors several years after graduation to discuss applying to PhD programs I got 2 pieces of advice. The first professor told me that I should only do a PhD if studying very intensively for several years was the most fun thing I could imagine doing with my life.

Blog with @JustinSandefur on USAID cuts, the FY2025 data. TLDR: Aggregate spending picture not far off where we predicted a year ago, sectoral and country distribution different, mortality impact likely lower. Below: changes in USAID country disbursements FY2024 to 2025 (thread)

The world is warming. Every country is warming. www.ShowYourStripes.info #ShowYourStripes

“Temperature anomalies shape U.S. migration patterns, with older adults exhibiting greater net migration in warmer, rural counties, while working-age adults exhibit lower net migration.” New paper by Shuai Zhou, Guangqing Chi & Chuan Liao: 📄 www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...

Percentage of adults with a Ph.D.

New OA paper in POEN led by @valmuellerasu.bsky.social w/Ashu Handa! We show that receipt of cash transfers in Kenya buffered households against cold-induced migrant trapping: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Next up: T grants These support grad student and post doc training programs at certain institutions. # of new grants issued through April 15 in FY2024 (the last “normal” year): 70 FY2025: 23 FY2026: 2

In a partially divided vote, UNC-Chapel Hill faculty have adopted two resolutions formalizing their concerns about the university's School of Civic Life and Leadership. www.wunc.org/education/20...

Recently published in @jcultecon.bsky.social: @vkluzik.bsky.social on the genealogy of the concept of "carrying capacity" and how it was seized and shaped by both ecologists and economists. Must read for anyone interested in the links between population and the environment. doi.org/10.1080/1753...

IPUMS DHS has released standard variables from 112 new samples, including 34 new countries and recent samples from 12 countries previously represented. The release includes data from the women, household members, births, and children units of analysis. https://www.idhsdata.org/idhs/

New paper published in PNAS today! Joint work with Jeffrey Shrader, Stephan Thies, Derek Lemoine, and Laura Bakkensen: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The NSF GRFP is now out! There are 2,599 awardees, which is the most ever—and a big shift from last year which initially halved awardees (1,000 awardees + an additional 500). I've thrown together a plot to break down the changes by field. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

Congrats to Shreeya Patel for successfully defending her honors thesis for UNC GEOG!

NSF HEGS no longer has an active solicitation...

A downward spiral - climate change lowers agricultural productivity, leading to cropland expansion and deforestation, and thus more climate change. www.nber.org/papers/w3502...

WIP finds long-term probability of completing primary education in Peru ⬇️ after in-utero exposure to the 1982-1983 El Niño floods muchinbazan.github.i...

A green rock posy lichen rudely growing over an orange rock posy lichen. Northwest Territories, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Examining the dramatic growth and evolving role of postdoctoral researchers in the US scientific workforce from 1979 to 2023, showing a fourfold increase in postdoc numbers that outpaced growth in graduate students and faculty, from Ginther and @jlrosenbloom.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w35014

We've been waiting on the RFA for our NICHD pop center grant renewal for nearly two years. On year 7 of a 5-year grant, in our second no-cost extension, and there's still no RFA. 💀

India began counting its population this week, setting off a yearlong process of tallying some 1.4 billion people.  The census, its first since 2011, will shape how wealth and power is distributed and inform policies around castes and women in the world’s most populous nation.

All but three (!) of the 1,651 refugees admitted into the United States in the three most recent months we have data are white South Africans. For comparison, in 2024, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees. It's an explicit white supremacist project. www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...

"Students in SCLL 230 must go on a date, plan their own weddings and organize a ball...Guest speakers last fall included an activist against gender treatment for minors and a former White House bioethics adviser who warned about the dangers of premarital sex." 💩🔥 www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/u...