Saw this earlier in the responses & I want to re-up the idea of filling one's calendar with a recurring 24/7 event. I don't use my Google Calendar, so my event reads "My schedule is not up to date - please contact me for availability." Nobody has scheduled events for me on top of it so far (5+ yrs)

Ok preprint aficionados, what are your experiences with manuscript formatting requirements (e.g. biorxiv) - strict or relaxed? If I wanted, can I preprint laid out as a journal article (inline figures, multicolumn, etc.)?

I've been wondering about this since a post that said authors have something to hide if they don't preprint. I have nothing to hide & don't preprint bc I'm always the one writing the paper, and by the time I get it done I submit it to a journal, when I see no benefit of preprinting. Change my mind?

To: or Cc: on email? TIL: though nobody looks to see if they were a To or Cc recipient, some set up filters to handle Cc differently (e.g. send to trash!) & on Gmail at least, multiple To: recipients all receive a Reply w/o using Reply All (but to include Ccs you must use Reply All). TMYK.

Look, these are the sorts of manuscript titles we just can't be using anymore. Imagine what all the billionaire right-wingers are going to be doing next? Either complaining this got funded or starting to look into whether this also works in humans!

I would like to think @wyomingwormboy.bsky.social for describing the Sledgehammer Approach (to research) in WormBook. It is invaluable advice that I share with every trainee.

This paper raises a question for me: how short can a Discussion be? One 1 hand, the Intro is full of citations & this is a description of novel gene. On the other, I've never seen a Discussion w/only 2 citations. There must be more context to explore?

Editing my "Image manipulation" slides for research ethics class. Here's my AI-generated (Firefly) cover image, since it will be Groundhog's Day. Crowdsourcing what I should add to this topic in the AI era: I've got the famous rat phallus from a couple(?) of years ago; other egregious examples?

Because of technical issues with the SciENcv website, NIH is extending a period of leniency accepting old format biosketches through May 2026 (see FAQ #5): grants.nih.gov/faqs#/common...

I have so many questions…"Columbia [Sportswear] sent people into the woods to collect American Black Bear scat, which was then introduced to brewing water at Breakside Brewing. Breakside then made the water safe to drink and turned it into a beer." www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-wor...

Just submitted my lab's abstract to #PEQG26 @genetics-gsa.bsky.social "Increased male frequency in C. briggsae intra-species hybrids occurs by genetic incompatibility that produces X nondisjunction" - & we're abstract #72, which means I hope many more will be submitting by the 2/5 deadline!

This is cool, & I 🫶 Micropubs & their use as a way to get course-based research out into the world! When the one allowed figure has 13 panels, is it really a Micropublication? Quick review and short format is nice, & there's also something to be said for expansive written support for this much data.

Super excited to discover what's up (genetically) with the multigenerational hybrid replicate lines that undergrad Alyssa cryopreserved Friday & will be isolating DNA from soon! Long time since the lab used this many cryovials at once. 5 vials/line: 1 to test thaw, 2 for -80 and 2 for liquid N.

Wish me luck - time to SciENcv…

Cold carpenter bee in the backyard yesterday. These big ones are fun to watch lumbering (ha!) around in the air - though I don't appreciate their boring into timber that is part of my house…

A 2025 Christmas nematOde: Twas the night before Christmas, and up in my lab I propagated some worms by moving a slab of NGM agar from one plate to another and set up some crosses between a herm and its brother (1/9)

In 2011, I penned a Christmas nematOde, reproduced here. A 2025 version follows in my next post. On the day before Christmas, twixt my house and the lab not a creature was stirring, not even a cab; I was heading in early to make preparations so I could enjoy the next day's celebrations (1/8)

Not often you see (almost) the entire state of California under some sort of severe weather advisory/watch/warning. Merry Christmas and stay safe out there!

Further, the Tuskegee study is often not referred to as an experiment for ethical reasons…same as the current situation

Very excited to share this work led by Austin Link, a graduate student in our lab. We have discovered a novel, fig-associated microbe that promotes reproductive success via variable life history mechanisms in two nematode species. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

13 years in & proctoring exams is still one of my least favorite parts of professing. I get so nervous for the students, remembering how stressful it is to take undergrad final exams, however long ago that was for me… Maybe someday when I don't have a class of 105 I'll do an alternative exam

Cool stuff! (& also no citations of my group's work on mitonuclear epistasis in C. briggsae…)

It has been a really remarkable couple of weeks. Central CA barely ever seeing the sun is shocking. My drives over Pacheco Pass have also been through pretty dense clouds.

Last yr I nominated a staff member for a univ-wide award & she got it. This yr I nominated a jr prof for a college award & she got it. Now thinking about who to nominate for what next year. Peers: please make time to make nominations. Great for them; good for you too - shine a light on great people!

If you don't think peer review is worth doing, don't give it to AI; just decline to review. I'd rather not publish than have anonymous scientists feed my work to brain-atrophying ecological disasters. I'm happily declining reviews from journals that allow AI review. AI is a slippery slope here!

Some days have great highs & unexpected lows. The low: an incubator malfunctioned overnight & cooled too much (hope the worms survived!) & then it defrosted onto the lab floor. Thanks Facilities for moving it outside! & congrats to former undergrad Adrianna who was accepted into med school! 🎉🎉🎉

A toxic professor trait is my undying hope/belief that I can use exams to reinforce important connections & essential conclusions. But, if my students are like I was, they're just stressed & trying to get through the test - & not thinking that they can actually be learning during an exam. Can they?

Not claiming to be a great P0, but when F1.2 browses the CD collection and asks to borrow OK Computer, I feel very happy

Also not a fan of using the phrase "beliefs of language models" - language models don't have "beliefs" do they? Even AI knows that AI can't have beliefs:

This sums up the 2000s quite nicely IMO (& sorry to hear about your woes Dana!)

Fun to see @ericshaag.bsky.social quoted in a CNN piece on exactly what I was hoping to see about the concept of "reverse evolution" - it is problematic language to use, and I hope science educators will grab this research paper & CNN story to help spread the word! www.cnn.com/2025/10/30/s...

Had an advising appointment with the parent of a toddler today, so I rolled out the handy dandy cart of kid entertainments. (It could be a basic backpack or duffel in the department office, too.)

New preprint! We unexpectedly discovered that some Caenorhabditis species delete parts of their somatic genome early in development, which fragments their chromosomes and eliminates key germline genes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest this bizarre process was present in the ancestors of C. elegans

Anyone looking for an undergrad research assistant this coming summer? I have a truly phenomenal undergrad with expertise in genetic mapping, long read sequencing & bioinformatics who wants experience in another lab before grad school. She has been in our lab for 3 years & writing her first paper!

Yeah no kidding - that's a view of the WH from the south looking north…which would make that a renovation of the West Wing (goodbye Oval Office…)

Socrative is also down! 😫 and this is why we have backup plans. You've got this, teachers 💪

Heads up W coast faculty (I assume all other time zones already discovered this…). Now to check my other platforms and see if my dry erase marker is not dried out.

Trying to do some fluorescence microscopy work today and lamp wouldn't turn on - it is super-corroded. Fortunately, I have a replacement mercury lamp, but I dropped and broke it taking it out of the box. $600 💰🚽. How's your day going? #PIlife

Ok California legislature: now more fully fund us so we can serve these students!

Nice to see some snow up in the Sierra Nevada (Mammoth, here) for the first time this season!

Excited for PEQG 2026! Asilomar…and then I can drive around Monterey Bay to pick up my F1 from UCSC at the end of finals week. Great scheduling, GSA! (Also the keynote choices look great, too!)

What might academia (esp. STEM, maybe?) do differently to populate itself not only with professors who not only excel at their own research/scholarly activity interests…but also who are willing (even happy?) to devote time to serve the interest of the collective (Dept, Univ, society…)?

Ok…I just updated some software, and I have to say…I'm not a fan of losing whatever search history had previously been helping customize my search results. They've clearly lost track of the fact that I'm a geneticist. Who know there could be multiple meanings of "blunt cutter" 🧐

CA Biology job alert My unit at the CA Dep of Fish and Wildlife is hiring a permanent position to write 5 year reviews for species listed under the CA Endangered Species Act. Based in West Sacramento, currently 2x week in office. I am happy to answer questions calcareers.ca.gov/CalHrPublic/...

Curious: do science supply vendors still do vendor shows at universities? I was just reminiscing about ~2005, when several vendors would show up and booth at my institution - samples, freebies, pamphlets, etc. Obvs the $ landscape has shifted recently, but is this still a thing at R1s?

WTF is going on…now I'm seeing internet ads for methylene blue (and not for use in research). Please tell me people aren't randomly buying and dosing themselves?

My summary of the California State University system's new Strategic Plan: distance learning and ed tech FTW eduproffer.blogspot.com/2025/09/impa...

As usual, the word "may" is doing quite a bit of work in a news headline about a research study. Pay "may" its due.

Thanks for flashback: I loved restriction mapping genomic (BAC, ~300 kb) clones. After electrophoresing digests (this was NotI, I think) thru 0.8% agarose overnight at low V in a recirculating refrigerated buffer, I'd get gels like this and identify how adjacent clones overlapped. Miss it a bit.

Just triggered so: #scicomm rant. Genetics pet peeve incoming: "Carrying two copies of <gene name> gene" is always bad wording. Most of us have 2 copies of each gene. No, most people don't know/care about alleles; neither does the wording help advance public understanding www.cnn.com/2025/08/25/h...