🧊 Icebergs can sometimes suddenly flip over. But why does that happen? ✍🏽 New for @physicsmagazine.bsky.social: A new experiment recreating iceberg flips in the lab suggests that changes in shape due to melting determine if and how an iceberg tips over. 🧪 physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

Wind turbines kill a massive number of bats. These animals seem to be unusually attracted to turbines, and researchers have long puzzled over why. 🦇🧪 For @science.org, I wrote about a new study that suggests they might be responding to a visual cue. www.science.org/content/arti...

Are you a materials scientist or engineer working on optical material sensors? Have some ideas on how they could power the sports wearable of the future? If so, I'm looking to speak with you for an article in Photonics Focus. #JournoRequest

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Researchers studied recordings of cicadas to discover that the insects’ singing is synchronized with the Sun's position in the sky. The rapid rise in volume suggests that each cicada starts singing in response to both the light level and its neighbors' behavior.

🧪 Often, in a counterintuitive phenomenon called Parrondo’s paradox, two losing strategies can be combined into a winning one. ✍🏽 For @physicsmagazine.bsky.social, I wrote about a new study on harnessing this paradox for cancer treatment. physics.aps.org/articles/v18... #MathOnco

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community. reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

Companies that broker and facilitate scientific fraud are large, resilient, and growing rapidly, according to a new study. cen.acs.org/policy/publi... #chemsky 🧪

We have reams of evidence - including this new paper - that obesity is much more about food than exercise. Calories in matters way more than calories out. www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Many densely packed systems have a hidden structure. They seem random, but become uniform as you zoom out. Conversely, variation increases with scale in hyperdisorder. 🌌 🧪 ✍🏽 New for Physics Magazine: A new study reports the first example of hyperdisorder in biology. physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

Physics Magazine writes about our research on hyperdisordered patterns. Thanks @sachinxr.bsky.social for the article and @davidbrueckner.bsky.social for the quotes!

The only problem is that the citations go to papers that don't actually exist.

I wrote about how irritated I am by the latest Colossal misrepresentation. defector.com/colossal-bio...

No AI, this is a real photo taken by Percy’s engineering cameras of astronomical twilight on #Mars! You can see Deimos in the sky too. I worked pretty hard to plan, execute, and analyze this image, and it came out beautifully! A bit noisy, but it was very dark out after all. #astro #planetary

Speaking of "AI" (since that's all we talk about anymore), my latest article on "AI" in medical imaging is up! When hospitals push this tech on doctors, it can lead to misdiagnoses or diagnoses on entirely wrong criteria: www.siam.org/publications...

If you stop collecting weather & climate data it does not have an impact on rising GHGs. They will still continue to grow if we continue to burn fossil fuels. And it certainly won't end droughts, floods, or extreme weather events. It will just make us less prepared for those disasters. 🧪🌊🔌💡☀️💨🔋

🧪 The world has a seemingly insatiable appetite for fats and lipids but this high demand comes at a massive ecological cost. ✍🏽 For @synbiobeta.bsky.social, I wrote about sustainable, synthetic biology-based fat alternatives www.synbiobeta.com/read/halting...

🫀 As we age, heart muscle cells thicken and lose elasticity. Cellular damage marks cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disorders, fibrosis, etc. 🧪 ✍️🏽 New for @synbiobeta.bsky.social: Regenerative cell therapies could reverse the damage, rejuvenating organs. www.synbiobeta.com/read/change-...

📌 New paper alert!!! 1/5 How is the spread of epidemics shaped by both random walks and commuting? We answer this question in this paper appeard in Physical Review E by @pvalganon.bsky.social, A Brotons, @sorianopanos.bsky.social & @gomezgardenes.bsky.social 👇

#MathArtMarch Day 25 Chaos. In 2018, Julia and I crocheted twin Lorenz Manifolds from the pattern by Hinke Osinga. Not only is this a stable manifold in the Lorenz system, mounting them resulted in chaos of the colloquial kind. 80 hours of crochet, and countless hours of wrangling.

🚀 Growing food in situ will be critical for long-term space travel. Synthetic biology could enable resource-efficient and sustainable food production in space. 🧪 New for @synbiobeta.bsky.social. www.synbiobeta.com/read/galacti...

🧪 Decentralized science platforms are changing how scientists fund, conduct, and publish research. ✍️🏾 For @synbiobeta.bsky.social, I write about what that means for building with #SyntheticBiology. www.synbiobeta.com/read/decentr...

Participants in clinical trials have been abandoned in the middle of clinical trials because of a Trump order. The stop-work order on USAID-funded research has left thousands w/ experimental drugs & devices in their bodies w/ no access to monitoring or care www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

New article by @synbiobeta.bsky.social and Sachin Rawat on the advances in synthetic biology driving innovation in climate resilient crop improvement. Interviews with myself, Claire Grierson (Univ. Bristol), Todd Michael (Salk, Cquesta), Karsten Temme (Pivotbio). www.synbiobeta.com/read/enginee...

🧪🫚 Plants use roots to find water and nutrients, interact with soil microbes, and withstand environmental stresses. For @synbiobeta.bsky.social, I wrote about how engineering roots to upgrade these functions could make crops climate resilient. www.synbiobeta.com/read/enginee...

🧪 Interview request: I'm looking to interview a #PublicHealth researcher who could speak on how street-level weather forecasts can be used for urban public health. My DMs are open!

🧪 New for @physicsmagazine.bsky.social: Multiple chromosome sets dilute the impact of a single mutation. However, redundancy also allows for the gain of new functions. Does polyploidy speed up or slow down #evolution? ✍️🏽 I write about a new study on this puzzle. physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

🧪 Interview request: I'm looking to interview a #PublicHealth researcher who could speak on how street-level weather forecasts can be used for urban public health. My DMs are open!

🧪 If you cannot eat a particular food item, no matter how hard you try, it’s likely that your negative expectations, more than the taste itself, determine that outcome. 🥗 I wrote about how expectations influence our subjective experience of food. bigthink.com/neuropsych/y...

🧪 Hello Bluesky! I'm a freelance science writer. For an article, I'm looking to speak with a (theoretical, computational, evolutionary, etc) biologist who could comment on this new study on #polyploidy and #evolution. My DMs are open if that's you! journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

What are the limits to engineering multicellular systems? Can we invent new organs or synthetic behaviour? We discuss these and other ideas in our latest paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social @jgojalvo.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social & cols www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧪 Hello Bluesky! I'm a freelance science writer. For an article, I'm looking to speak with a (theoretical, computational, evolutionary, etc) biologist who could comment on this new study on #polyploidy and #evolution. My DMs are open if that's you! journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

📄 RNA dynamically folds into secondary structures that can be put together into more complex shapes. ✍🏽 My latest for synbiobeta.bsky.social looks at how researchers are folding RNA into custom nanostructures with therapeutics and gene editing applications. www.synbiobeta.com/read/fabrica...

Materials for #bioelectronic interfaces are either too rigid to be paired with living tissues or have poor electrical performance. Now researchers have created a hydrogel semiconductor that hits the sweet spot. physics.aps.org/articles/v17... ✍️ My first article for @physicsmagazine.bsky.social.

Implantable devices such as glucose monitors for diabetics and pacemakers for heart patients need interfaces that are both electronically capable and biocompatible. Researchers have now found a new material that fits the bill: a hydrogel semiconductor.