In @quantamagazine.bsky.social today! a nice highlight of our work on chloroplast dynamics and packing inside plant cells. Thanks @maxlevy.bsky.social :)

Our work on chloroplast packing was featured by @quantamagazine.bsky.social in @maxlevy.bsky.social's article. It was a fun colab with @mazi1.bsky.social and Eric Weeks during my PhD that led to this work. Article: www.quantamagazine.org/the-hidden-m... Paper in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Chloroplasts move. 🌱 “Light is the best friend and worst enemy of chloroplasts,” biophysicist Mazi Jalaal told me. “They need it for photosynthesis. But the moment the light intensity goes too high, they have to run away from it.” @quantamagazine.bsky.social

Journey with writer @maxlevy.bsky.social and a team of researchers through the Arctic tundra as they sample some of Earth’s rarest and most restricted fungal species — underground wisps that govern life aboveground. www.quantamagazine.org/an-arctic-ro...

"There’s a reason we describe artists who operate outside of the mainstream as “underground.” We’re surface dwellers biased toward the aboveground world. Like underground artists, mycorrhizal fungi steadily influence your world." - @maxlevy.bsky.social www.quantamagazine.org/an-arctic-ro...

On Alaska’s North Slope, SPUN’s team recoded 253 ectomycorrhizal fungal species not previously documented, revealing an incredible biodiversity under the seemingly barren landscape. Thank you @maxlevy.bsky.social & @quantamagazine.bsky.social 🔗 buff.ly/u5D9ciX #mycorrhizalfungi #fungi #alaska

Excited to finally share this story Last year with support from @pulitzercenter.org, I went to the Arctic to follow scientists yanking soil on a journey down Alaska's tundra. Looking for what? Undiscovered species of fungi that form unique partnerships with plants. @quantamagazine.bsky.social

And now: It's been nominated for an ASME for Best News and Information Design! 💫 Don't sleep on visiting this jewel box of a special issue with design by @markabelan.bsky.social and art director Samuel Velasco!

Elizabeth is a Columbia Heights fourth-grader who loves volleyball, learning English and giggling in the halls with her friends. She's been held in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center for nearly a month, and she and her mom have both fallen ill. sahanjournal.com/education/co...

It's been quite a year for Quanta biology! In this year-end post I highlighted some favorite stories by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social @theuniverse.bsky.social @peterbrannen.bsky.social @mollyherring.bsky.social and Ariel Bleicher - and I want to share more of our great work from the year below!

Here's why yesterday's @nytimes.com article on rusting rivers misses the boat. For Nat Geo earlier this fall, I reported on how thawing permafrost is exposing bedrock, releasing sulfuric acid and oxidizing iron into a toxic cocktail remarkably similar to acid rock drainage.

SAPIENS was my dream job, but it didn't pay enough. I worked nights/weekends as a Lecturer & freelance writer so that I could afford to work full time days at SAPIENS. On my last day, I'm in tears reviewing the 60 some stories I developed as editor. Every story was an adventure. A sample below...

Bioelectricity is a potent lever for controlling health. What would it look like to treat the body electrically, rather than chemically? My latest for DDN, featuring scientists who study vagus nerves. www.drugdiscoverynews.com/a-more-elect...

Congratulations @maxlevy.bsky.social for winning the Gold award in the Magazine category of the International @aaas.org Kavli Science Journalism Awards! 🎉 Max was a #MassMediaFellow at @wired.com in 2020, sponsored by the @apsphysics.bsky.social. Check out the award winning piece: bit.ly/3Y9qrGW

So freaking proud of @maxlevy.bsky.social for his AAAS Kavli Gold 🏆 award for his feature about electrostatic ecology — how small creatures interact with electrostatic forces. Quanta's first Kavli Gold! Thanks to the whole team! www.quantamagazine.org/the-hidden-w...

A million billion trillion thanks to @hanner.bsky.social for editing and truly helping craft this piece with me from the ground up. We published this in 2024 and it remains one of my personal favorites 💗

Quanta contributing writer @maxlevy.bsky.social has received a Kavli Gold Award from @aaas.org and @kavlifoundation.org for “The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology,” a detailed account of how small organisms use static electricity to their advantage. www.quantamagazine.org/quantanews/q...

Happy pub day to this year’s edition of Best American Science & Nature Writing, out now from @marinerbooks.bsky.social. Thanks to editors extraordinaire Susan Orlean and @jaimealyse.bsky.social for including my @smithsonianmag.bsky.social feature on the art and science of wildlife tracking.

And to submit work to be considered for next year's anthology, go to jaimegreen.net/basn

Wrote a bit about this year's edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing - and posted the Notables jaimealyse.beehiiv.com/p/basnw25

It's pub day!! The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2025 is out. I'm thrilled to appear with @sequencermag.bsky.social alongside many talented writers whose work I revere. Including the pieces in this anthology Get a copy from an indie store to support the series bookshop.org/a/114150/978...

It's pub day for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2025, and the whole Best American series. I'm so proud of this book and all the brilliant, beautiful writing @susanorlean.bsky.social selected for it. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

🧪Hello friends! I'm working on a piece about putting together the best tenure/promotion package, and I'd love to hear from STEM folks who have recently done this or have experience evaluating these types of proposals. Please RT for reach, and feel free to reach out with any Qs!

Today on the site we have three new pieces all about wolves, led by an essay from @maxlevy.bsky.social that weaves together two notable books. www.sequencermag.com/what-we-lear...

Next, an interview with Adam Weymouth, author of Lone Wolf "It was quite clearly a love story. If it were about two people, it would be two people that defied odds and walked across the continent and somehow found each other in thousands of square miles" www.sequencermag.com/the-eerily-f...

And an excerpt from L. David Mech's The Ellesmere Wolves, about a surprisingly tame population of High Arctic wolves Mech studied for decades. "Greeted by seven barking and howling wolves, elated that I had finally located an active den"

WE DEPEND ON YOUR SUPPORT TO DO OUR WORK. 🎁Subscribe today 🎁 www.sequencermag.com/what-we-lear...

Honored to have made it into this always fantastic anthology as a "Notable" for my piece in Hakai Magazine (one of the last features the magazine published) about cold-water coral research in Chile. @pulitzercenter.org @biographic.bsky.social

Hi! Today @quantamagazine.bsky.social published a special issue on climate science, featuring stories about how Earth's climate fundamentally works that I needed to read after covering climate impacts for so many years. I hope you'll check it out! <3 www.quantamagazine.org/how-we-came-...

NY subway platforms feel hot as hell in the summer. Meet Jack Klein, the guy who stealthily collects data about New York’s hottest days underground. 🚇New in @sequencermag.bsky.social www.sequencermag.com/the-covert-p...

@sequencermag.bsky.social is on Ghost! They're a writer-owned publication run by science journalists @goesbykim.bsky.social, @maxlevy.bsky.social, @dsamorod.bsky.social, and @maddiebender.bsky.social www.sequencermag.com

I'd love to recommend and follow more science newsletters and publications run with @ghost.org  — especially now that they've implemented ActivityPub to put Ghost newsletters on the social web. So give me your recommendations and shameless self promotions! I know of a few already:

"A couple months ago, while I was thumbing through old magazines at a record shop, I landed on a gem. “Learning To Love the Computer” emblazoned the cover of Nutshell magazine, a now-defunct periodical for college students," writes @maxlevy.bsky.social www.sequencermag.com/ai-critical-...

The flip flopping continues: NIH director Jay Bhattacharya tweeted today that all agency staff will have full access to all scientific journals including those published by Springer Nature. I've gone back to the WH, HHS, NASA, DOE, USDA to understand what the heck is going on. I am lost.

If the next pandemic starts tomorrow, with the current risk landscape, I think it's still much more likely to be H5N1 - with a spillover somewhere in the southeast or the middle of the continent, just like the 1918 Spanish Flu - than anything else. Trump's actions have paved the way for it. 1/2

I went on TV to talk about my book with Rev. Al Sharpton, a sentence that I cannot believe is true www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/...

Good blog! www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

This is a catastrophe in the making gizmodo.com/rfk-jr-says-...

It's not about eggs. Please RT!

not sure who needs to hear this today but: you don't hate getting older, you hate how society treats older people

Clouds play an important role regulating the climate. To incorporate clouds into climate models scientists are learning more about the *biology* of clouds: studies of plants, plankton & organics flung up by sea spray. Major thanks @joespring.bsky.social for edits on this tinyurl.com/388ncr38

A growing class of scientists is learning how plants, plankton and sea spray release elements that can shape giant features like clouds. @maxlevy.bsky.social profiles their work, and shares how it will help other researchers more accurately predict climate. www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

SVP: "What has been most satisfying that you gave this team along the way?... Is there one thing you'll take great satisfaction in from this run?" Jalen Williams: "Nothing is more precious than time..." 🏀📺🎙️ #NBA

I hope this is making national & global news, not just here in Los Angeles where I am. The federal govt sending in the National Guard and LAPD, seemingly complicit in the ICE raids should worry everyone. While Bass and Newsome claim nothing to do with it, why arern't they protecting LA residents?

Now that people are talking to/about AI as if they're people, is the internet going to have to switch to serif fonts? Lower case "L" and capital "I" look identical. And people use chatbots for therapy and itineraries. "I asked AI for advice" Alex? Claude? Albert? ChatGPT????

In true Sequencer fashion, I wrote something about something that seems silly but really isn't that silly IMO!! Maybe season 3 of The Rehearsal can be in an operating room... Read a report from my little field trip here: www.sequencermag.com/the-innovati...

NEW: "If you then read in a newspaper about human rights abuses happening in Nauru, you're implicated against your will... Your body is a part of that story." @maxlevy.bsky.social speaks with Jack Lohmann about his book, WHITE LIGHT www.sequencermag.com/on-fear-deat...

Check it out for a snippet of audio. Writing nerds and chemistry dorks (@maxlevy.bsky.social included), this is a fun one you won't wanna miss.

playoff basketball might just be the only good thing about 2025 omg