Beaded #sciart by Ruth Cuthand for Indigenous Peoples Day www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/05/ruth...

Demonstrating linear dichroism in a synthetic sapphire #optics #polarizedlight #stem

A chiral nematic liquid crystal in transmitted and reflected light. #liquid #sciart #liquidcrystal #moodring

Acetaminophen crystals viewed by polarized microscopy. #tylenol #science

Excited for the first day of grade 49!

The night garden. My mint plant during the day and the same leaves at night under UV light. The red color is chlorophyll fluorescence. #fluorescent

Suspended stone circle II by Ken Unsworth at the AGNSW

At the AGNSW #sydney #art

Blue Spring walkway #freshwaterspring #aquatic #nature #newzealand #putaruru

Today from New Zealand; bird butts of Rotorua! #swan #swallow #fantail #swamhen #birds #wildlife

Craters of the Moon, NZ. #steam #steamvents #newzealand

Trump quietly shutters the only federal agency that investigates industrial chemical explosions. Hazardous chemical accidents happen in the U.S. about every other day. Who will investigate them now? grist.org/energy/trump... #Politics #Environment #Chemicals #Pollution #Policy #Industry

A coalition of organizations representing educators and researchers (including the @aapthq.bsky.social) has filed a legal challenge to the recent mass termination of grants by the National Science Foundation (NSF). 🎢 🧪 🍎 👩‍🔬 #AcademicSky

Taking some time to appreciate the New Zealand wildlife! #kaka #wellington

Last day for submissions to this year's ChemiSTEAM competition! For more information and a link, please find details among the #CSC2025 signature events: www.cheminst.ca/conference/c...

Making mood rings in the lab. I should lay off the coffee before filming time lapse photos.

The deadline has been extended to 11:59 PM on Monday, June 9!

Mass Spec xkcd.com/3094/

This is so stupid.

Exercise your right to vote today, Canadians! Own your democracy! 🇨🇦🗳️

Chiral landscape. With teaching over for the year I can turn my attention to research! This polarized microscopy image was captured as part of a study into stimuli responsive chiral liquid crystals #sciart

Signs of spring!

First day of advanced voting! Casting my vote early.

In the wake of the ongoing disasters with funding streams, I'm seeing lots of folks suggest that scientists turn to social media crowdfunding to fund their research. For about a decade I held the record for the social media crowdfunded project that got the most funding. I received about $9,000.

New blog post: Nicol invents a polarizing prism (1828) 🧪 skullsinthestars.com/2025/04/12/n...

This would have a huge impact on particle physics research. ⚛️ 🧪

“It turns out you can’t buy gummy bears because you can’t buy chips from Taiwan”

By Attacking Science, Poilievre Takes a Page from Trump's Playbook via @thetyee.ca thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025...

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die. Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

I stood in line for more than 3 hours yesterday to vote in a municipal by election. As frustrating as the wait was, the turn out gave me hope. Democracy is fragile and needs constant nurturing.

Between hummingbirds and the #handsoff movement, I feel a glimmer of joy for the first time in a while!

Happy 10th anniversary to the SFU Trottier observatory!

I'm making sure this gets the profiling it needs for the upcoming Canadian Election. The Conservative Party of Canada is using the US-WhiteHouse playbook instead of coming up with a better way to ensure Canadian science shines. www.caut.ca/latest/2025/...

Two weeks ago, I visited several of the Smithsonian museums in DC. The art was inspiring and often subversive. It is no surprise that an authoritarian regime would find this work threatening, which is precisely why we need to fight to preserve art that speaks truth to power.

Notwithstanding, the world spins and spring arrives.

Recently visited DC; likely my last trip to the US for the foreseeable future.

Teaching wins can take many forms. Today, it was getting through only two slides in 50 minutes. Dialogue > monologue.

With a heavy heart, I've decided to suspend all academic travel to the USA for me and my lab. Given the escalation of tensions and uncertainties, it seems to be the wisest move. To our US colleagues, please be certain that we will continue to do what we can to support you. Science is global.

Share with US students who had their offers of admission withdrawn for PhD programs: Apply to Canada. Check out Canadian professors, and contact us. Our system works differently here, and we are all still, technically, able to accept students for Fall 2025.

On the hunt for crystals big enough for X-ray.

The Guano Islands Act of 1856 enabled Americans to steal bird poo from nearby countries en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_I...

Office hours at SFU

To any of my American colleagues…

You mean the business where you harvest professors' course content without consent and sell it back to students? 😢 www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Do you know (or are you) a senior scientist in the USA who might like to move to Canada in the near future? The 2026 call for CERCs (Canada Excellence Research Chairs) was posted last month: 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭 🇨🇦

Benzamide crystals. In 1832, Liebig and Wöhler described the transformation of benzamide crystals grown from solution into a different form. This was the first report of polymorphism! #sciart #ochem #crystals #historyofscience

Tomorrow in my industrial chemistry class: vanillin! A natural product or a petrochemical derivative? Does it matter? #crystals #sciart #chemistry

With my industrial chemistry course underway, I decided to photograph ammonium nitrate under the microscope! Haber-Bosch: most important invention of the 20th century? #fertilizer #ammonia #nitrogen #chemistry

Deeply saddened to hear yesterday about Sir Fraser Stoddart passing away. For me, from Sheffield to the streets of Chicago, across 35 years, it was always an adventure (though mostly with much less snow). Fraser was a force of nature and leaves an enormous legacy. He will be sorely missed.