Three CIRES researchers are listed as 2025 Clarivate "Highly Cited Researchers 2025." The annual list celebrates researchers with significant and broad influence: Jennifer Balch, Noah Fierer, and Jose Jimenez! @cu-esiil.bsky.social @clarivate.com @noahfierer.bsky.social @jljcolorado.bsky.social

PhD candidate @colorado.edu Rebecca Mesburis is going to give a Town Talk in #Nederland on Thursday. The town of Ned had a devastating fire recently in their town shopping center. Support #Ned and learn about mitigating indoor air quality impacts from #smoke! @jljcolorado.bsky.social

Also see the great study by Mesburis et al. (@jljcolorado.bsky.social and @gouwlab.bsky.social), which used some different approaches but arrived at the same conclusions. Air cleaners (legit ones) work, and enable other technologies (like GUV) to be used more safely. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

NYT: The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan.

The article claiming that SARS-CoV-2 remains infectious in the air for 16 hours has been making the rounds on social media again. I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss it, what it shows, what it doesn’t, and why I think it shouldn’t be taken seriously. A thread.

A victory for the federal scientific workforce! We could not stand by while this irreparable harm continues at NSF, NOAA and all our scientific agencies. TODAY the judge granted our request to temporarily HALT the mass firings at federal agencies under Trump’s Executive Order.

There is no need for this suffering. The solutions are here, work well, way cheaper in the long term and magnitude better for our wellbeing. -Electrify all homes including rentals and social housing. -Ban gas connection to new homes. -Plan the end of the residential gas network

Nice: 49% strongly oppose withholding funds from universities, 23% strongly support www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A new article estimates that even a 10% DECLINE in MMR vax coverage in the US could lead to 11 MILLION US measles cases over 25 years. IF instead MMR coverage INCREASES by 5%, cases would falled to <10K. Given infectiousness of Measlies, it's VITAL to ⬆️ MMR vax rates. Measles info below 1/2

Last month, the CDC Division of Viral Hepatitis found the source of a Hepatitis C outbreak in Florida that state officials had been unable to solve since December. Now the entire Division has been fired, leaving investigations of outbreaks in OR, PA, MA, NM, WI, WV and GA, unsolved in addition to FL

Last one for Tax Day – NOAA 🌊 The average U.S. taxpayer contributes $21/year to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 💡 NOAA turns science into safety — for coasts, communities, & the climate. It helps safeguard lives, property, and ecosystems from rising seas and extreme weather.

Canadian academics warned against travel to the US "Given the rapidly evolving political landscape and reports of individuals encountering difficulties crossing the border, CAUT strongly recommends that academic staff travel to the US only if essential and necessary" www.caut.ca/latest/2025/...

The Trump administration is quietly carrying out a plan that aims to kill hundreds of bans on highly toxic “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds in consumer goods www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A good article explaining the senseless destuction of one of the US's most critical research institutions www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/o...

Some good news. Let’s accelerate this! www.reuters.com/business/ene...

Very pleased to see this from the UK PROTECT study published. There’s still gaps on translation to humans, infectious dose etc, but it adds further evidence that covid can transmit by airborne routes academic.oup.com/ofid/advance...

📃 Facts and myths about #measles “Measles is a ‘canary in the coalmine’ for under-vaccination [...] knowing the facts about measles information and disinformation is key.” Read and share the @thelancetinfdis.bsky.social’s April Editorial ➡️ hubs.ly/Q03g26gH0

A second child has died in the current US measles outbreak: An entirely avoidable tragedy and one more sign that this outbreak is probably much larger than reported numbers suggest and not going anywhere soon... #IDsky 🧪

Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer "Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure" www.theguardian.com/environment/...

7/6 We've added a page to the guide to point out further resources: those of @ukhadds.bsky.social , Andre Henriques & Al, and the World Health Organization. Our guide can be downloaded from letsair.org#mediation

NEW | Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the first month on record 🇺🇸 Among all the turmoil, some positive news from the latest @ember-energy.org data for March 2025: 🏆↘️ The share of fossil fuels fell to a record low of 49.2% 🏆↗️ Wind and solar power hit a new record high of 24.4%

Colleagues are cancelling their US work trips. I worry that international colleagues in the US are at risk if they collaborate with us on certain topics. I've written a new post about the increasing danger of being a foreign scientist in the US. christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-att...

EPA Solidarity walks are happening TOMORROW, May 25th in cities across the United States! ☀️🌎💧 Check out the link below to learn more, join a walk, or find more information about how to advocate for the EPA. Clean water and air are human rights. linktr.ee/EPAsolidarity #scienceforall

“The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said a sharp drop in outside funding, spurred by a broad shutdown in most foreign aid by the Trump administration, will lead to two million to four million more deaths each year” www.cidrap.umn.edu/mpox/african...

The Great Barrington Declaration, but for chickens. RFK Jr. is truly the stupidest motherfucker.

mRNA is at the forefront of cancer research, as well as vaccines National Institutes of Health officials have now told scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccines from their grant applications. This means that all research in the field will be stopped and abandoned.

"Hospital staff are scrambling with damage control efforts implementing emergency masking policies and giving babies as young as 3 days old injections of immunoglobulin, an antibody that helps their fragile immune system try to fight off #measles." www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Just thinking about what the US looked like before the EPA existed

🧵Censor, purge, defund - how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science & universities. This isn't chaos - it's deliberate & well-established methods. I've mapped 40 actions into 3 categories covering attacks on science, attacks on universities and international collaboration. 1/16

The thing is, EPA can’t just change many of these regulations by decree. They are legally mandated to provide the underlying science. So this is like a coach publishing the playbook before the Super Bowl and declaring victory. It doesn’t work that way, and now the other side can plan its defense.

As long as I live, I will never understand how “it should be easier for multi-billion-dollar corporations to dump poison in the water my children drink” became popular politics with half the country. www.nbcnews.com/science/envi... 🌎🧪

Cartoon by @paulnoth.bsky.social

In “Air-Borne” Carl Zimmer uncovers the mysteries filling our lungs www.nytimes.com/2025/03/08/b... "The Covid‑19 pandemic made the ocean of gases surrounding us visible,” Zimmer writes.

Just got my copy of @carlzimmer.com's book, looking forward to reading this evening :-)

The bloodbath at NOAA apparently included meteorologists with the National Weather Service; scientists inside what’s simply known as NOAA Research, or the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) more formally; technicians that keep up the country’s weather instrumentation;

"The US May Start Vaccinating Chickens Against Bird Flu." But under RFK Jr., people are shit outta luck.

Large demonstration at Tesla in Superior, CO against Elon Musk and the Trump administration

Yup, this would have brought together experts to share the latest findings on respiratory virus transmission. The meeting is canceled, but the continuing spread and evolution of H5N1 and other respiratory pathogens is not. In the middle of the game, the defense is walking off the field.

That Colorado guy being diplomatic all over again! 😂 Looking forward to reading the book!

AIR-BORNE, @carlzimmer.com's new book, is an enthralling deep dive into airborne diseases. The colossal failure to recognize that #COVIDisAirborne is thoroughly reviewed. Our podcast erictopol.substack.com/p/carl-zimme... Open-access, with transcript and full video, + relevant links

Measles can cause immune amnesia so catching measles might mean that you would have to get every vaccine you've ever gotten over again and every cold, flu and infection your body has already learned to fight off it would forget. Except for measles itself.

Sharing these numbers because I wasn't aware of them myself. In the US: * 1 in 5 unvaccinated people who get measles are hospitalized * 1 in 20 children with measles get pneumonia * 1 to 3 in 1000 die If you're not immune, close contact with an infected person gives you measles 90% of the time

A deeper look at NSF's recent layoffs and what that could mean for US science: cen.acs.org/careers/Impa... According to sources, this is one of several workforce reductions NSF plans to do.

The head of the food division at the US Food and Drug Administration has quit in protest over sweeping staff cuts that he warns will hamper the agency’s ability to protect public health. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that, over the weekend, it accidentally fired "several" agency employees who are working on the federal government's response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak. The agency said it is now trying to quickly reverse the firings.”

On hold at the CDC: An analysis suggesting that flu cases *may* be at a record high. That could mean a surge of deaths comes next. The CDC is delaying analyses to inform the situation & has cut off usual communication w/hospital networks & WHO. My latest: kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

"Anyone who has studied science under the Nazis...cannot fail to be dismayed and alarmed at the parallels in the response so far of scientific institutions and academies to the purges and abuses of power following Trump’s executive orders" 🧪 #scicomm www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/scie...

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...