Fellow Clevelanders will have seen @neorsd.org's update on the end of their Shaker Dam engineering work. I have some technical-detail thoughts about this, as an engineering-adjacent STEM person and a fan of the lake and brook. Keep reading for a summary (incl. links to slides and video): 1/8

Out in @natbiotech.nature.com: Metagenome taxonomy profilers usually ignore unknown species. SingleM is an accurate profiler which doesn't, even detecting phyla with no MAGs. Profiles of 700,000 metagenomes at sandpiper.qut.edu.au. A 🧵

NEBRASKA CROWD: “TAX THE RICH! TAX THE RICH!” @USRepMikeFlood: “So your proposal to solve (the debt) is tax the rich?” NEBRASKA CROWD: *CHEERS WILDLY* (not sure this went quite as he planned 😬)

No PhD students or severely reduced # of admits -> *undergraduates* looking now to start the next phase of their career in support of research & discovery will be stuck without an option. This is far from the only place in a similar situation, whether announced publicly yet or not.

Medicaid is not for sale. NASA is not for sale. The Post Office is not for sale. America is not for sale. We have an obligation to resist kings. We outnumber them. And they can be overwhelmed.

NIH indirects case update: Hearing ongoing now, and I'll try to live tweet some notable exchanges. Prior to more detailed arguments, Judge Kelley starts off with a few point questions to both sides: (I'm paraphrasing here)

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

I know that all these institutions know how to push back because when Obama directed them to enforce pre-existing Title IX law, universities said no. They flat out refused until there was a working group and specific guidelines. And even then, they *still* refused.

Everyone, plz share with your stellar undergrads! The UDE program (Undergraduate Diversity at Evolution) pairs students from diverse backgrounds with mentors to attend the Evolution meeting each year. Encourage your undergrads to apply!

Friends, please help spread the word about our microbiology REU program at Montana State University. www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/ Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided. Details in the attached pic--Feb 13 deadline 🧫🧪🦠#microsky

(1/6) Our new short paper on incidental bacterial domestication between patient isolation and creation of frozen stock. Geno/phenotype changes are obscured by rich media and more prevalent than we previously thought. #MicroSky

#phagesky Some partnerships are always fun!! Excited to share one such 🎉 product w Simon Roux, perspectives on our favorite “atypical” phages, for special issue to celebrate my former mentor Carol Gross @ UCSF Tapping the treasure trove of atypical phages www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Microbial people! Especially postdocs and maybe some assistant professors who are feeling antsy ... the University of Montana is doing a search for a microbiologist! This is a great department, in a great place. (I worked there for 10 years, loved it, ping me with Qs) apply.interfolio.com/159494

Ohio friends: consider contacting Gov Dewine to urge him not to sign the "bathroom bill" (SB 104). Educators are in a particularly good position to made the case against this on practical grounds, though I also brought up the specter of conference/business boycotts, as in NC.

Shameless plug: a post on 'writing as thinking' that I wrote for my own students hackingsemantics.xyz/2024/writing/

Our first B. subtilis paper, published at NatureComms. Translation in Bacillus subtilis is spatially and temporally coordinated during sporulation. #subtiwiki #bacillus www.nature.com/articles/s41... Funded by FNP_org_pl and EMBO_YIP

Governor Andy Beshear, in a Trump +30 state, gives advice to Democrats: Do not throw LGBTQ+ people under the bus, it will not work. His advice to dems: Lead on your values. This man ran on a fully inclusive campaign in 2023 and won. He received the same kind of ads Harris did.

We are looking for a dynamic, motivated, interdisciplinary researcher to join our new project RESPECT: Rapid Engagement with Stressed Peatland Environments and Communities in Transformation. Field & lab components working in a cross-disciplinary group. 1/2

My department is looking for an assistant professor in fisheries and conservation: careers.udel.edu/cw/en-us/job... Please repost! #marinesky #oceanography #STEM #fisheries

Excited to share: The inaugural Alma Dal Co School on Collective Behavior is coming to Venice (Sep 29-Oct 4, 2025). This unique school honors Alma (1989-2022), whose brilliant work bridging physics and microbiology revealed how metabolic interactions structure microbial communities. 1/12

n o p e

It's great that turnout here seems high, but a long line is also a sign of voter suppression because Ohio's GOP limited early voting to just 1 site per county regardless of population. Franklin County's 1.3 million people (heavily Dem) & Vinton County's 12,000 people (heavily GOP) each get 1 site

I'm so excited to announce that my department is now hiring TWO ECOLOGISTS at the Assistant Professor Level. We will be really excited to substantially expand research in ecology in our EEOB Department at UCR. Please Repost and share widely! aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF01983

If this is you, you need to request a replacement ballot in case yours was damaged in this MAGA arson. You can request a replacement ballot by: - Calling the auditor's office at (564) 397-2241 - Emailing [email protected] - Visiting this link: clark.wa.gov/elections/ne...

Hi BlueSky friends! Postdoc(s) available in my lab! Multiple projects on how bacterial genomic and functional diversity impacts microbial interactions & disease. 🦠🧫 See www.thelewinlab.com/join-us/post... for more information. Please RT & share. #Postdoc #Microbiology #OralMicro #VaginalMicro

We're hiring! The Department of Biology at Case Western Reserve University is a welcoming and supportive place for junior faculty. If you work on eukaryotic microbes, especially environment- or host-microbe interactions, we want to hear from you. Deadline 11/18. apply.interfolio.com/155519

New pipeline alert: if you would like to explore what viruses/phages are in your metagenomes or metatransciptomes, but don't know where to start, we have (an) MVP for you now \o/ - journals.asm.org/doi/epub/10.... Welcoming feedback/suggestion of improvement!

🧪📍 🌊 🦑 Applications are now being accepted from undergraduate students, graduate students, post-docs, and early-career scientists to participate in an NSF-funded research cruise aboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth mailchi.mp/ldeo/langset...

We're hiring! The Department of Biology at Case Western Reserve University is a welcoming and supportive place for junior faculty. If you work on eukaryotic microbes, especially environment- or host-microbe interactions, we want to hear from you. Deadline 11/18. apply.interfolio.com/155519

I just took a survey that would have benefited from the modified 2-D Likert scale I just invented

A little over two weeks left to apply!

Me: What about when you get together with someone? 6yo child of scientists: Oh! COLLABORATE!

We're taking registrations for attendees of #ASMicrobe in the ATL! forms.gle/dMgXp8zqU4rS...

A new arXiv preprint from James Zou suggests that quite a few academics are also using ChatGPT to write their peer reviews. I don't have to explain what an utter shitshow this is going to be, do I?

First step in a community project to provide a uniformly assembled, annotated and searchable set of bacterial genomes, our preprint on our initial release of 1.9 million genome assemblies+taxonomic estimates. (figure compares with previous 661k dataset) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky

I think it's now late enough that I can say: SPOILER, Ezersky, jeez

I've had a soft spot for the effects of synonymous mutations ever since learning about cotranslational folding in my first year of grad school---just how extremely like capital-L Life to exploit this channel for information. So this is a fun 🦠 read: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... #microbiomesky

If anyone sees a position for a remote bioinformatics person, ideally in industry or longer term in academia, HMU. I am trying to help someone stay with their family and they are fantastic at science, I give them my highest recommendation. They are based in US.

This is lovely. @baym.lol hits the nail on the head when he talks about how much fun it is to do collaborative science---just a wildly better experience than constant worry about sharp-elbowed competition. Kudos to @relenski.bsky.social for helping make it happen.

The JGI’s Secondary Metabolism Collaboratory, SMC, version 1.0 is released! This is JGI’s database of natural product BGCs. The current version contains BGC info from AntiSMASH 7 and EmeraldBGC for as many bacteria as we could find (~1.3M genomes). smc.jgi.doe.gov or secondarymetabolism.com 1/n 🧪🧬🖥️

Not enough people know about bioicons.com Open source vector graphics. Free alternatives to BioRender.

my name is DALL, and wen i bak i wisk the potper with the vedk. i sift the miilk into the kek. i brek the fear. i pour the eg.

Applications for @emerge-bii.bsky.social's 2024 Summer Program are open! Great chance to learn key tools and foundational science for interdisciplinary ecosystem science. Open to all career levels. drive.google.com/file/d/1UsYA...

Calling all biogeochemists! I am co-chairing this theme at Goldschmidt next year. We are looking for more sessions particularly on metabolisms of new phylogenetic lineages, evolution of microbial traits through time, or habitability and bio signatures in other planetary systems. Reach out! 🧪⚒️🦠

Welcome @emerge-bii.bsky.social emerge-bii.bsky.social! @hhollandmoritz.bsky.social, @adjiep.bsky.social, and @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social are here already too. Any other EMERGEnts around?

Today my 5yo posed a good question (can water stack on water, in layers?) that grew until it was about the universe. Then she decided to make a whole book of key questions arising, and THEN to mail a copy to every scientist everywhere, and that is when I realized she had reinvented the crackpot MO.

I'll be teaming up with sociology and #peatland #microbiome colleagues from EMERGE Biology Integration Institute to offer a Learning Workshop (session SCIWS7) on our toolkit for interdisciplinary team science 🧪 at #AGU2023. Join us! Info: emerge-bii.github.io/workshops/