As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people. Read our statement: asm.org/press-releas...

Finally! Translon: A term for the sequence that actually gets translated. ORF or CDS just won't do when you work with viruses that break the rules by frameshifting, readthrough, non-AUG starts, etc. Thank you Pavel Baranov et al! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Virology as a field is facing hard times ahead. I’m grateful to my friend and colleague @shanluliu.bsky.social for stepping up to lead our community as we face this challenge. Lfg, Shan-Lu! 💪🏻✊🏻

Pleased to see that, despite extreme belt-tightening budgets year upon year, my CALS ranks #12 in the world! www.topuniversities.com/university-s...

Didn't know we are still planting elm trees this century. I have a couple healthy old ones in my yard, but park my car right near this one. 😬 www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2RM...

Miller lab Graduate student Jahanara Sonia presenting her first poster at the RNA Society meeting! #RNA25 #RNA2025 on the translation mechanisms of a puzzling new genus of Tombusviruses.

How to win the war against science. Call experts "so-called experts". www.nature.com/articles/d41...

😡 iowastatedaily.com/312789/news/...

Nobel Prize winning science.

In light of the skinny budget (55.8% reduction), 6 past NSF directors and 7 NSB chairs have sent the House Committee on Appropriations a letter advising doubling the NSF budget. "We face a fork in the road. Do we want to win or concede the race for new knowledge and a competitive STEM workforce?"

From the CDC: In the last 6 months in the US, there were: 8-13 million illnesses and 26,000-44,000 deaths from COVID-19. Yet HHS "will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago”. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Enjoyed fantastic seminar on intra/inter cellular communication via plasmodesmata by my academic granddaughter Tessa Burch-Smith, keynote speaker at the student-run Stupka Symposium here at ISU. Her Focused Ion Beam scanning EM images are amazing!

I will miss Ann Palmenberg, my de facto mentor when I was a grad student. I learned so much from her about viruses, how to write a scientific paper, and more. Plus she was a lot of fun. Always enjoyed her presence at ASV meetings. www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituaries/a...

NSF-funded research is used by the private sector in product development. Researchers buy stuff, hire people, & provide financial resources for their institutions. This is bad for universities, bad for university communities, and bad for industry. It’s just bad. www.eenews.net/articles/sci...

From a bunch of unstudied viral sequences gathering digital dust in GeneBank, here's a bizarre new genus of twelve (so far) tombusviruses, from organisms ranging from maize to tuatara. Raise your hand if you know what a tuatara is! www.frontiersin.org/journals/vir...

Why we do basic research. In my lab, grad student Liz Carino showed that MCMV RNA binds eIF4E for cap-independent translation. Who cares? Here's what followed: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...