Before the 1990s, plane crashes caused by microbursts used to kill planeloads of people fairly regularly. Dr. Ted Fujita and NCAR scientists figured out how to detect microbursts and warn pilots about them. Since then? Zero airliner crashes from microbursts.

I had a great time writing this dispatch @currentbiology.bsky.social about Jacob Suissa's recent paper on the link between fern phyllotaxis and vascular architecture. "Evo–devo: Ferns flourished due to developmental covariance between leaves and vasculature" authors.elsevier.com/a/1mH793QW8S...

“Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6km each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, annual carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes. This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.” @euronews.com

Our Science paper is out! Huge congratulations to @huabin-zhou.bsky.social, Mike Rosen, and the brilliant @janhuemar.bsky.social @juliamaristany.bsky.social and @kieran-russell.bsky.social from our group News: bit.ly/4avnkAr and bit.ly/3XBGVHS Great perspective by @vram142.bsky.social +K Zhang

WE GOT FERNS, folks. I hope you like ferns. If you don’t, just listen and you will like ferns. 🌿🌿🌿 Dr. Li is hilarious and charming and you will love him. And ferns. In conclusion: ferns. www.alieward.com/ologies/pter...

In the richest city in the richest country on the planet, the thing we can’t afford is to forget those who are left hungry.

POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success

It is pathetic to see Cornell shrink from one of its foundational principles www.cornellsun.com/article/2025...

Sphagnum moss Imaged live on the FV4000, a new, paradigm shifting, laser scanning confocal microscope from Evident LifeScience (aka Olympus). Green is from the Hyaline Cells and the red from the [chloroplasts in the] Chlorophyllose cells #sciart #microscopes #moss (scale noted in the Alt-text)

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

it’s not enough. i challenge andrew cuomo to a 1v1 in super smash bros. i need to watch him lose something a third time

Here are some “leaf” or phyllid cells from moss Physcomitrium patens gametophore. Cells are expressing a green fluorescence marker that labels the vacuolar membrane. Chloroplasts' autofluorescence is in magenta. Can you spot dividing chloroplasts? #microscopymonday #moss #plantcells

LA: we will fight you. Chicago: we will fight you. PDX: we will make you endure week after week of of improv theater.

Most Portland thing I've ever seen

We really enjoyed putting together this Darwin Review for JXB. Fun to think about how carboxysomes work and why plants don't have them. @jxbotany.bsky.social Function, Evolution, and Future of Carboxysomes url: academic.oup.com/jxb/article-...

Did you know tiny algae can "skate" within Arctic sea ice? ⛸️ Our new study in @pnas.org reveals the secret life of ice diatoms: they are actively gliding to navigate the ice! This adds a new dimension to the sea ice ecosystem, revealing an active, dynamic ecological niche. @prakashlab.bsky.social

Hero jury saves hoagie hurler from legal grinder www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

Jacob Suissa and I wrote a #book about #ferns! It's beautifully illustrated by the amazing artist Laura Silburn. Will be released in May and you can preorder from Amazon. We hope this book could help you forget all the bad things happening on Earth right now. More here: mailchi.mp/btiscience/f...

apprendre plus sur les anthocérotes et leur importance potentielle ? #photosynthese www.pourlascience.fr/sd/biologie-... @fernway.bsky.social @tarobison.bsky.social

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

our recent hornwort phylogenomic paper (> 230 nuclear genes) will get the cover of the journal - One of these photos will be the cover and you may see them around in conferences this year !! academic.oup.com/aob/advance-... - Photos by Juan Larraín, Patagonia, Chile. - Cute hornworts ;) !

No, Overleaf, I don't want to use "AI" No, Outlook, I don't want to use "AI" No, Slack, I don't want to use "AI" No, DuckDuckGo, I don't want to use "AI" No, Samsung, I don't want to use "AI" No, my *fucking oven*, I don't want to use "AI"

Another cool development in Rubisco land www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

70 year old Senator Tommy Tuberville can’t think of the word “triangle”

decided to become the weird conspiracy theory guy at work but only about harmless conspiracies i make up. told my coworker that "elephants don't even eat peanuts bro, look it up" but then i got curious and looked it up and apparently peanuts are bad for elephants. so now i don't know what to think

In case anyone was wondering why the government was so heavily invested in scientific research (pre-DOGE) here is a clear explanation from one of the workers on the chopping block:

Introducing Mpipi-Recharged🔥🔥🔥 Our Mpipi coarse-grained model for biomolecular condensates now includes a pair-specific electrostatic potential that improves its predictions, including for challenging charged systems—all while still treating solvent and ions implicitly pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Heterologous protein over-expression in E. coli is now woke because of 'inclusion bodies'

Here's Twitter's descent since 2022

"One of the United States’ leading funders of science and engineering research is planning to lay off between a quarter and a half of its staff in the next two months, a top National Science Foundation official said Tuesday." www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

Just got word that our Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 3 (IE3) Grant was being canceled. All 100+ institutions. So even private funding is susceptible to this administration’s unraveling of DEI initiatives

Tim Walz privately arguing for Democrats to “be more visible on television presenting an alternate vision of governing — not just complaining about what Mr. Trump is doing.”

It's a hell of a time to be teaching a seminar on "The Long Arc of Fascism." Going to start today's class with this.

The FT reports OpenAI suspects DeepSeek of "a potential breach of intellectual property." As a columnist for NYT, which is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, and the author of nine books OpenAI apparently used to train its model, I couldn't possibly comment. www.ft.com/content/a0df...

I was to give a talk at a big US Attorney's Office next week abt the complicity of German lawyers in the creation of the Nazi state. Yesterday the Justice Department cancelled it. Irony is dead. I've got an op/ed on this I'm looking to place. Help appreciated. #LawSky #Skystorians #Holocaust

If you're a scientist that serves on an NSF panel that got cancelled today, I'd love to talk to you about it for an NPR story. DM, email or reach out on signal.

Rubisco is slow across the tree of life doi.org/10.1101/2025...

I know that it's a crowded field, but this demon is in my opinion the most dangerous politician in the U.S.

In Nazi Germany, some citizens passed on information about their neighbours, family, and friends to the Gestapo . This was called informing. www.theholocaustexplained.org/resistance-r...

I don't know how much clearer it needs to be for any pro-"AI" academics than the collusion of government and tech giants announcing $500b in funding for "AI to cure cancer" while simultaneously preparing to gut the NIH: you are digging your own grave.

This is my opposition party dawg Trump’s serving a third term

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here"

To learn more, please check out my youtube tutorials at www.youtube.com/@oanegros which shows, among others, how to make this video! The data here is a dinoflagellate from Mocaer et al. 2023, hosted publicly at EMPIAR-11399 (also shown in the first post here).

Watch this movie 🔬🍀 In a sugar-deprived condition, a chloroplast bud is released. Beautifully captured using chloroplast stroma marker RBCS-GFP (magenta) and the inner envelope marker KEA1-mRFP (green) An excellent recent article published @elife.bsky.social elifesciences.org/articles/93232