📣 Don't miss out on this week's #webinar, 'Nature's Litter, Nature's Treasure'. 📅 Wednesday, 1 April ⏰ 3pm AEST International experts tackle the challenge of how do we take vastly different processes & create coherent national models that actually work. Register: buff.ly/TiRHSGg

Calling all Australian science writers! The submission deadline for The Best Australian Science Writing 2026 (and the UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing 2026) is 31st March (tomorrow!) so make sure you send in your entries. See link below for details.

Calling all Australian science writers! Entries are still open for The Best Australian Science Writing 2026 and the UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing 2026. I’m delighted to be editing this year’s anthology!

Evidence here of an ancestral intrigue. Nature is *mostly* curvy, bendy, opaque, generally wonky and not especially shiny. Crystals seem to elicit a kind of primal ‘wtf?!’ www.frontiersin.org/news/2026/03...

Word of the Day: Rewiggling Restoring the natural curves and bends of a river or creek in order to slow the flow of water and reduce soil erosion and flooding. #Rewilding #Conservation

Writing about eDNA (environmental DNA) and did a quick search for helpful imagery google presented me with several hundred variations on this. I have only myself to blame.

I love how humans invent new ways to record things. We're a scrapbooking species. From carving letters into stone, to grooves in wax cylinders to record the vibrations created by the human voice or a musical instrument. Here's a constructed video of how a phonograph stylus moves across a record.

As I get ready for another cozy weekend of Olympics watching, I'm seeing lots of chatter about ice quality for different sports. As a Minnesotan and a science journalist, just wanted to reshare this video about why ice temps matter!

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon. Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

Calling all Australian science writers! Entries are still open for The Best Australian Science Writing 2026 and the UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing 2026. I’m delighted to be editing this year’s anthology!

Breaking: Washington Post gutting its climate team. The Post sent layoff notices to at least 14 #climate journalists. open.substack.com/pub/climatec...

I almost made it to work on time…. But there was a dog and he wanted scritchie-scratchies

I’m looking forward to hosting today’s webinar on the importance of oases, springs, and groundwater in dryland biodiversity 🌴 Register via the link below to join us! 👇

An email I received today from a Fox "News" "reporter"

🎨 The Forest Art Intelligence project is a unique art-science initiative by experimental artist Keith Armstrong, in collaboration with a team of scientists and science educators from QUT and TERN. Read more: buff.ly/UqXgQAU #ArtScience #NatureArt #EnvironmentalEducation

What's ridiculous is that it's become a marker in the first place. People with zero understanding of punctuation decided the presence of the em dash is statistically significant, then proceeded to make it a universal rule that its presence proves the text is generative slop. em-dash-appreciation.org

Sunflower justifiably unsure about 2026, and will not be making any solid commitments at this time

Pleased to report that after a great deal of wildly unsubtle hinting, I scored a beautiful illustrated edition of Alchemy by @philipcball.bsky.social 😍

‘The goodly nose-cartilage glittered and glowed’…

🏔 Happy #WorldMountainDay! Check out our latest article on @scienceanu.bsky.social students using AMRF's Mobile Laboratory, purchased with support from TERN, that's now a central part of ANU’s Advanced Field Studies in Functional Ecology course. Read more: www.tern.org.au/news/reachin...

Puffins have returned to Northern Ireland’s Isle of Muck (seriously, that’s its name) for the first time in at least 25 years. Tales of puffins on the island “felt more like folklore,” said nature reserves manager Andy Crory, but now they’re coming back. buff.ly/oBQlH6r #ShareGoodNewsToo

One morning, during isolation, an entire chorus of birds showed up and started making a huge ruckus — kookaburras, currawongs, crows, butcher birds, a long list. I looked out the window and saw that an owl had landed in the backyard. I brought my daughter to the window to watch.

The future's green for turtles. Once on the brink of extinction, green sea turtles are making a comeback in the Pacific: nest counts on Australia’s Heron Island have risen tenfold since the 1970s, and populations across the Pacific now meet IUCN recovery thresholds. https://f.mtr.cool/uzimhivdld

Bafflingly there are still people out there in the world who think being passionate about nature is “kind of weird”. or “a niche interest”. These people have it all wrong. Nature isn’t some quirky sideline to the main business. It IS the main business.

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

“science is bad for tyrants, and always has been”

Rest in peace, Dr. Jane Goodall💚

Apparently, they have also banned the word ‘green’

Footpath emoji

🏆 A huge milestone! The TERN team surveyed our 1000th field plot—a huge achievement in our mission to support ecosystem science across Australia.This occured in WA during a GEO-TREES field campaign, which provides high-accuracy ground data for satellite-derived biomass mapping.

Work in progress… pretty sure moss grows faster than I paint but I’m ok with that

Lunar eclipse fans, there's a total lunar eclipse this weekend! All of Australia (and a bunch of other countries) will be able to see all the best bits. The eclipse will be in the evening of Sunday the 7th or the morning of Monday the 8th of September 🧪🔭🌝 www.abc.net.au/news/science...

There are interdimensional portals all over the British countryside. You just have to look.

The recent DOE climate science report misrepresents the work of many researchers. Carbon Brief asked those cited to review the parts of the report where their work was used, and we collectively found 100+ misleading or false statements: interactive.carbonbr...

180 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel in Gaza. @withmeaa.bsky.social members remember them. Stop killing journalists.

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Two new studies in @antiquity.ac.uk show that people with mixed ancestry lived in early medieval south England. 🏺🧪

Good morning lovely people #nature #wetlands #keepgoing

Persistent mysteries of the universe: 1) what did the Big Bang expand into? 2) where the he’ll did I just put my coffee?

Over 120 mRNA cancer trials are now at risk as the Trump admin cuts funding & tells researchers to scrub “mRNA” from grant proposals. What started as COVID fearmongering is now derailing life-saving cancer research. Hope remains - but scientists say time is running out. zurl.co/YBGNy

Geology folks, what’s going on here? I took these photos recently in Port Hacking (coastline south of Sydney, Australia). Mostly sandstone and is that shale wedged between layers? What story does this tell? #geologysky

INNOCENT

Good things can have tipping points, too.

One of the reasons I love this piece is that, in clearly showing why the administration’s attacks on medical research funding are so devastating, it also makes one of the clearest cases for why that funding has always mattered. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding. It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Influencers plead that they are raising awareness. “Raising awareness of incorrect information is called lying”, @whysharksmatter.bsky.social reminds us at #ssp2025 while talking about the importance of clear messaging around science

As a political economist and historian, I know how powerful fossil capital is. I know we're going to blow past our COP targets. I know that liberal net zero politics is insufficient. I know that there is a huge global fossil fuel production gap. But its still a gut punch to see it play out.

The fact that antihistamines can be used to relieve itches and also as sleep aids has led me to the conclusion that Consciousness is a Form of Itch

Genuinely delighted that @unbreaking.org is now doing our work in public. I cannot tell you what it means to be a part of it, or how much its already helped me. If my Meeting the Moment newsletter has helped you, Unbreaking is going to bowl you over. So much more ambitious and helpful. Join us!

99.9% of Americans won’t hear that Trump killed this program. And at 2,000 additional dead kids or so each year, most people will have no idea what was lost.