💔 the Senate just passed that awful cruel budget bill, but it’s not over yet. Now it goes back to the House to vote. If you have a Republican member of Congress: Call, email, comment on all their social posts, @ them. Tell them to vote NO. Get your friends to do it too. ☎️: (202) 224-3121

Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

🚨HISTORIC MOMENT ALERT🚨 The W is leveling UP — three new teams, three new cities, one unstoppable future. ⭐ Say hello to our newest expansion teams: 🟣 Cleveland- coming 2028 🔵 Detroit - coming 2029 🔴 Philadelphia - coming 2030 New energy. New legacies. New era. #WelcometotheW

I will be teaching a summer course starting tomorrow, and while I have taught the course several times, it is my first time teaching it aynchronously. Would love any hot tips!

Spent Friday at an event to celebrate PennPORT, Penn's IRACDA program that, along with all of the other IRACDA programs, had their funding terminated. IRACDA programs bring together early career folks passionate about teaching & research, providing community, education, & experience. What a loss.

Love seeing Lehigh go deep in the women's tournament in the governor's bracket. Hoping for a repeat upset of a #2 seeded Duke team by a #15 seeded Lehigh! Let's go #LehighWBB!

#EduSky join @scifri.bsky.social today from 2-4 pm ET for great science stories. 🧪 Excited to hear the interview with @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social about his book, "Everything is Tuberculosis." 🦠 I'm a total fan! Of John, not TB. Just to be clear. Learn more at www.sciencefriday.com/episodes/mar...

Just got pretty jazzed reading my students’ proposals for their #scicomm projects on a topic within disease ecology and evolution. Podcasts, videos, children’s books, and even an escape room! Should be fun!

Excited to share our data paper on fungal diseases in tall fescue! Fun and useful experience having our data peer reviewed for usability and clarity. @fletcher-h.bsky.social @kokeeffe12.bsky.social @esajournals.bsky.social esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Amazing speech by @sarahmackattack.bsky.social inspiring us to be "bad" for the greater good - Embrace chaos and break the right rules. #StandUpForScience2025 #Philadelphia

At #StandUpForScience, let’s also stand up for the next generation of STEM leaders by pushing for *increased* NSF EDU funding. Here’s a crazy idea: What if we urged Congress to fund at a level that…Congress itself previously said the nation needed? Green line is the bipartisan CHIPS & Science Act:

I usually listen to news/political podcasts on my commute, but I think to not start my day in an acute state of dread, I need to change it up. Any non-political podcast recommendations??

Hey PA folks, if you have been calling your reps about all the things, looks like it would be good to not just urge them to vote a certain way but you know, actually show up and vote at all. 🤦‍♀️

Hi! We're Skype a Scientist! We're a free program that matches scientists with classrooms, scout troops, libraries, & other groups for Q&As all about science. Get matched with a scientist for a virtual conversation! We have 30+ types of scientist & match weekly. www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

Any talk you hear from the current administration about making the US more competitive in science and technology is utter bullshit. What they are doing is sabotaging our country for years if not decades to come.

Hi greater Philly area folks, here's the link to the local site for this action. It will be 3/7 at 11am at City Hall. An important opportunity to make it clear that science in the US as we know it is in danger! Science is for everyone and benefits everyone. standupforscience2025.org/philadelphia...

The AMS is temporarily opening its career services to all who need them, regardless of membership status, and offering dues waivers and meeting registration fee reductions for those impacted by job loss due to changes in the government. Read more: bit.ly/4gRiHAk

GO BIRDS!!!

not paying indirect costs for research is like only paying the players in the Super Bowl. can't have a Super Bowl without coaches, referees, security, janitors, announcers, stadium staff, and a stadium - and you can't have research without supporting people and facilities

Besides being cruel, anticipatory obedience doesn’t work www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/scie...

I'm connected with mostly academic here, but here's a helpful tool to use for calling reps/chatting about impacts of slashing indirects w/ your community. The dollars from NIH grants support life-saving research AND support even more dollars of economic activity. This hurts our communities.

In case folks are interested in contacting their congresspeople about the NIH indirect cuts with some estimates of what they would mean for institutions in their state, here are some estimates based on published F&A rates and funding ... let me know if you want a particular state

It is ALL so devastating. For science, for inclusion, for medicine, for security, for higher education, for all of us.

Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania has indirect rate of 70%, but they probably didn’t want to list that atop Harvard because defunding a children’s hospital might be perceived as problematic. This is devastating

Hey -- @fetterman.senate.gov USAID funds Pennsylvanians. If you support Pennsylvanians, you should support USAID.

As a longtime @asm.org dues-paying member & American Academy of Microbiology fellow… WTF? Do not undo years of society efforts to improve inclusivity and properly highlight the contributions of diverse microbiologists on an EO whim. Do not contribute to the erasure of scientists and individuals!

I spoke to a talented junior scientist who just got a good faculty job offer in the US and they told me “well I wouldn’t move to 1930s Germany either” so that’s how that’s going

Apply now for funding to attend the AIBS Congressional Visits Day in Washington, DC on April 29-30! Participants will receive communications and advocacy training before meeting with lawmakers. Learn more and apply for funding from SSE here: https://buff.ly/3Wry2QY Deadline Feb. 17!

More from inside NIH: Per a source with knowledge, for all internal research (of which there is like $10 billion worth or so), ALL purchasing shut down as of yesterday. That means gloves, reagents, anything involved with lab work, which means a lot of that work will stop.

“I am hearing the word crisis, and that’s coming from former NIH directors." Report from @mmolteni.bsky.social and Jonathan Wosen on the freeze on research. www.statnews.com/2025/01/24/t...

Just drove past a crossing guard helping kids cross the street decked out in a full Eagle mascot costume. Go birds!

The price of eggs in the US is spiking, mostly due to #H5N1 bird flu. Solving the problem requires urgent, important communications from the CDC & FDA* and rapid development of research by the NIH** * Currently paused by Executive Order ** Grant reviews now all canceled www.kcur.org/news/2025-01...

Woah! I switched up which discussion board website I use for class discussion on papers (from Moodle to Piazza) and engagement went up a ton! 🎉🎉

So excited for this! From what I have read about Unrivaled and what the players themselves have said, Unrivaled sounds like an amazing league that is really supporting female athletes in a new way. And truly...the folks in this league are AMAZING athletes and so fun to watch. Tune in!

Recently learned about this paper: Canning et al. 2022 found syllabus language that signaled a professor had a fixed (v. growth) mindset resulted in students anticipating less belonging, but in female students, it also resulted in decreased academic performance. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🚨The deadline to apply for Lehigh University’s Biological Sciences PhD program is just a few weeks away! Are you (or do you know) an amazing undergrad, post-bac, or master’s student passionate about science & ready to thrive in a supportive, interdisciplinary environment? Apply here!👉bit.ly/3VwZL29

I wrote (ranted) on experimental design as I was frustrated as an editor at how little guidance students were getting. I underestimated the interest in the issue: it has been downloaded 10,000+ times! Clearly it’s something we need to be talking about more. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Teaching your students effective learning strategies doesn’t mean they’ll use them – but they’re more likely to if they understand why the strategies are so effective… Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath explains the concept of 'mechanistic' metacognition in our long read ⬇️

It’s rivalry week at Lehigh! Always enjoy this tradition…the marching band goes around to all the classes. Glad I remembered to not schedule the exam for today 🙃

Earlier this week, it felt like springtime. I just got an email that a meeting I have in the morning will be switched to zoom because of the chance of snow in the forecast. The wacky transition between seasons is officially upon us.

Check out Michael Guo, @pennmedicine.bsky.social, who joined my class yesterday to talk about his experiences both treating & researching #AlzheimersDisease! He discussed the history of Alzheimer's, advances in treatments over the last few years, and risk factors associated with the disease.

Hummingbirds have an extremely fast metabolism (~77x faster than humans’ metabolism) They need to constantly eat sugary nectar every day to maintain it And, like every other living thing, they still need rest in order to digest and repair Just like you Rest isn’t unproductive, it’s vital

Earth did not survive a collision with another planet, hundreds of asteroid and comet impacts, hundreds of millions of years of deadly radiation from space, five mass extinctions, and literally freezing solid for you to give up on her now.

I just did this. 👇🏼 It was easy! All content/bookmarks deleted, account set to private, and profile description edited accordingly. The only thing I can't do is delete DMs, because they exist in other people's inboxes. Twitter's site-wide scraping to train their AI model is unleashed today, FYI.

Large-enrollment course educators...what is your policy on make-up exams? My class has gotten bigger each year and individually proctoring make-up exams is no longer feasible. I would love to hear what others do!

Hey Bluesky! I’ve been here for a while but haven’t been very active. Any suggestions for starter packs related to undergraduate education, scicomm, or ecology? Not sure the best way to search for them. Thanks!

Writing letters to voters is easy to do and easy to pair with other fun activities! Yesterday: Letter writing+Hocus Pocus watch party Today: Letter writing+watching the Liberty (hopefully) win their first WNBA championship! #GetOutTheVote