“When the study launched in 2013, ‘people literally laughed at us’…. Menstrual blood was messy, it was imprecise, it was difficult to collect…Why bother when the disease could be diagnosed with surgery?”🧪 *WHY BOTHER* discovering a NON-SURGICAL diagnostic method??? Because nope icky period blood

The findings “suggest that medical AI tools powered by LLMs have a tendency to not reflect the severity of symptoms among female patients, while also displaying less ‘empathy’ towards Black and Asian ones.”

A history of different ways of thinking about (semi-)public land in England, from medieval serfs’ branch gathering to modern parks and wilderness preservation

American soybean farmers are heading into harvest season without a single order from China, historically their largest customer, raising alarm bells about the agricultural sector’s stability and broader implications for the U.S. economy. fortune.com/2025/09/09/s...

This is a great idea! 🧪 laist.com/news/educati...

The School of Planning, Policy, and Environmental Studies at San José State University is hiring an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. We welcome applicants from all fields of environmental studies who apply an environmental justice lens to their work. jobs.sjsu.edu/sj/en-us/job...

People don’t like it when I say it, but the main place you’ll be pressured to participate in fascism is work. Especially if you work in a battleground space like government or academia. None of your weekend organizing can ever make up for active participation in the fascist project at your day job.

Seems like a good time to remind ourselves that in 1931, when Mussolini forced academics to sign an oath of allegiance to the fascist regime, only twelve refused.

@SentientMedia.Org reports on shocking conditions at an Iowa pork plant: “The floor is lined with so many decomposed hogs that wooden walkways were placed over their bodies for employees to get across.” Republished and available on Floodlight's website:

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

Mentors matter—especially in challenging times. The latest #EGU special issue Women in #Hydrology shines a light on women who’ve broken ground in hydrological sciences, & the mentees following their path. Essential reads on equity, inclusion, & resilience. Check 👇 blogs.egu.eu/divisions/hs...

Physical infrastructure brings additional climate problems: the world’s ditches and canals emit 333Tg CO₂e (i.e. greenhouse gases). This is nearly equivalent to the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 (379Tg CO) theconversation.com/ditches-and-...

I just passed my 50,000th identification on @inaturalist.bsky.social! Identifying is a huge but often ignored part of the #iNaturalist community and dataset so I wanted to share why and how I identify. 1/14 🧪 #ecology #taxonomy #botany #CommunityScience

It so was hard to imagine having successful career in science as a disabled PhD student that eventually I just left. Who could have guessed that years later I would help create a magazine issue dedicated to highlighting Trailblazing disabled chemists! cen.acs.org/people/profi... #DisabledInSTEM

I've enjoyed these accounts by #disabled ecologists and evolutionary biologists of their experiences and advice on improving accessibility and inclusion for folks #disabledinSTEM. 🧪 🧵, some favorite quotes:

Have had multiple conversations with a few of my favorite academics this week, and all are considering leaving academia. Sigh.

In England and Wales:

"The convention of genocide was not created to help historians feel confident about their assessments long after genocide has ceased. It was created to compel people to act in the moment to stop it." -Mohammad el-Kurd www.npr.org/2025/09/17/n...

"She always got mad at him every time he came home in the middle of the morning with his pant legs wet. She knew he had fallen in the ditch again." -Ofelia Zepeda www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53450/...

Fred Ingrams, March 2024., Burn, Caithness

Art of the day. Artist: Anchor Drove ditch, March 2017 Fred Ingrams www.fredingrams.com

"Bleak employment prospects have helped tank young Americans’ views on the economy, to levels hardly seen since a prominent monthly survey began in the 1970s."

Extreme weather wreaks havoc worldwide. Only half of countries report being able to alert citizens of hazardous weather — with even lower coverage in the least developed countries & Small Island States. See why #EarlyWarningForAll is essential: www.unep.org/topics/clima...

Shout out to everyone else who has to be taught to worship men who would hate you and harm you if they knew you

Community query: If you attend intense conferences/summits, how long does it take you to recover, and do you use a ratio to determine recovery time? Three day conference = three recovery days etc. Because I adored the Stanford Neurodiversity Conference, and also I am beyond exhausted. -SR

We're hiring! We have an open search for an Assistant Professor in physics of the ocean and/or atmosphere in Columbia's Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Please circulate this information to good candidates, and apply yourself if you are one! Ad & link to apply: apply.interfolio.com/173819

“The cost of racism and sexism are not just limited to or localized to the people who are targets of it, but rather it diffuses into society to make things much, much worse for everybody else.”

Biology Department xkcd.com/3140/

Only half of nitrogen applied as fertilizer is taken up by crops. The rest runs off into waterways as nitrate pollution or is eaten by microbes, some of which turn it into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

Hey everyone, could you please help me make my grandmother's upcoming 90th birthday extra special? Grandma Gail is a retired US postmaster, so she LOVES sending & receiving mail! Would you please drop a birthday card or postcard in the mail for her? I'd like her to see a wide variety of zip codes! 💟

“The BBC has documented at least half a dozen first-hand, devastating accounts in areas where USAID-supported clinics have shut down.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

If you are interested in contributing to the TREE series on Disability in Ecology and Evolution, email me at [email protected] We want hear from as many people as possible. December will be the last in the series, for this issue we will need contributions by c7 October. www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

The “publish or perish” culture in academia creates its own kind of evolutionary pressure. A scholar who studies human behavior through a cultural evolutionary lens explains how the relentless drive to publish can shape – and sometimes undermine – the quality of research. buff.ly/SqnFR4g

Neck is feeling stiff, and I'm kind of hoping it's rigor mortis, it would explain and/or solve a lot of my problems.

In Minnesota, beavers have long been considered a nuisance, thanks to their ability to gnaw trees and construct dams that sometimes clog culverts, raise lake levels or flood roads. But among scientists, there’s a growing recognition that these engineers bring a host of environmental benefits.

Augusta lost its urban tree canopy to Hurricane Helene, raising temperatures. Given a budget shortfall & delayed or canceled federal payments, the city has not funded replanting. Privately, so far, “sometimes it's an opportunity to try something new.” www.gpb.org/news/2025/09...

Red tape. Low reimbursement rates. Delayed payments. We heard from more than 500 psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists who each faced a moment when they decided they had to leave their insurance network. (Published Aug. 2024)

Some relevant resources here from Aotearoa New Zealand. Especially the first one, Drains are Waterways waimaori.maori.nz/resources/

News article from Virginia Institute of Marine Science about our recent ditch paper, with quotes from @ditchontologist.bsky.social, John Connolly, and me. www.vims.edu/newsandevent...

Check it out: www.vims.edu/newsandevent...! @jwcat757.bsky.social at VIMS popularized our article (www.nature.com/articles/s43...)! Enjoy with ditches, folks! 🧪 Not pictured: journal article co-lead @peatymike.bsky.social, section leads @fluitans.bsky.social, @drtatariw.bsky.social, & others...

"These makeshift beaver dams replicate a river's historical conditions from the time before big concrete dams. They slow the current and spread water out sideways as it flows through." 🦫 www.npr.org/2025/08/16/n...

Found this momma ’mander & baby ’manders on land wrecked by past surface mining & logging above Dante, VA today. A reminder that the phrase ”Who cares? It’s just an old surface mine” minimizes natural treasures like these that deserve our respect (& more thoughtful planning for post-mining land use)

Our lab appears in this piece on coalfield solar farms. In brief: VA stripped regs requiring enviro assessments for mineland solar ➡️TNC announced, w/o such assessments, plans to build solar on mines home to at-risk wildlife ➡️we've been trying to undo the damage since. www.whro.org/virginia-cen...

"Mountain chorus frogs and other rare Appalachian amphibians...now breed in shallow puddles left behind when mining companies revegetated enormous mountainous sites after leveling the topography," according to Wally Smith. vcij.org/stories/in-v...

Nature Conservancy's 253,000 acre Cumberland Forest Project in Southwest Virginia tests out a private equity investment approach to restoration. "Some detractors wonder whether TNC is merely mimicking the giant landowners of yore, the coal and timber barons." www.vpm.org/news/2025-06...

AUDIO: Hampton University and Virginia State University canceled all classes and events on Thursday due to threats. Here's the latest from @nickmcnamara.net.

In a new report, EDGI shows the costs of terminating EPA’s environmental justice grants. Economically, cutting these grants removes over $6 billion in benefits, including 65,000 jobs. Read to learn more: envirodatagov.org/publication/...

Somewhere in this wide world of ours your next collaborator is waiting. The Critical Zone Network of Networks can help you find them. Learn more: bit.ly/CZ_NoN_main 🌐🧪

NPR wants to write about what makes travel difficult for people who use wheelchairs--with hotels. Tell us your stories. www.npr.org/2025/09/11/g...

Huge thanks to 21 JLR volunteers who powered through mowing, trimming, and clearing across Tamworth Rd, Fishface, Gallows Wharf steps—and a new stretch near Marsh Lane! Shrubs lifted to make way for the future towpath. #WeDigCanals #Lichfield