omearabrian.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

We shouldn’t use amount of funding as a standard for tenure, especially now, and we should clearly communicate that as written policy. Blog post: brianomeara.info/posts/fundin... #AcademicSky

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Unexpected news out of UF news.ufl.edu/2025/05/anno...

submitted 12 hours ago • 3 comments

Want to learn more about all of the amazing work that has been part of #DisabledInSTEM? Check out this recent @natureecoevo.bsky.social interview with Alyssa Paparella to see the insights of starting this platform while being a graduate student! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

The Merlin Bird ID app wouldn’t exist #WithoutNSF. 🪶

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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?"

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I got the NSF GRFP notification at 2am. I remember crying because it was the first hint that I might actually belong in science. That fellowship carried me through grad school and made my NIH policy internship possible. I wouldn’t be here without it. #WithoutNSF

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California manroot (Marah fabacea, a relative of cucumber) has exploding seedpods. We found some last week and the kids had fun watching how quickly they changed as they dried.

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Spring is really lovely time in East Tennessee. Photo from Foothills Parkway last week. Note the white flowering dogwood at bottom.

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In 1995, divers near the Ryukyu Islands off Japan spotted these elaborate mandala-like art in the sand of the ocean's floor. They were elaborate 2 meter wide sculptures with fluting, shell ornaments placed at ridges, sand sorted by granularity, both consistent in design & unique. (📷: BBC Earth)

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

Absolutely not. Every time someone tries this, I point out how it biases against Black speech. Every. Time. 🤷🏿‍♂️ Also from the launch of the Perspective API and its "toxicity" score. Police don't kill too many Black kids." Score: Not toxic.🤦🏿‍♂️ "Police kill too many Black kids. Score: 80.28% toxic.😮

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📖Published📖 Rivas et al. introduce Rthoptera, an open-source R package designed for robust analysis of insect acoustic signals 🐜 🌎 🧪 buff.ly/nsZ8LgA

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I continue to reflect on my career in this moment of transition. I love basic research and I always thought it would be the main thrust of my career forever. But over the last few years I’ve come to see teaching as my primary motivator, and now think it’ll be so indefinitely (1/x)

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

⏰ Only 2 Days Left! ⏰ This is it: your last chance to submit your abstract for hashtag#ESEB2025! Don’t miss the opportunity to showcase your research and be part of one of the most important events in Evolutionary Biology. 📬 Submit now: https://eseb2025.com/call-for-abstracts/

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I’m loving #WithoutNSF - it embodies the ethos of the McClintock Letters, an initiative to take this discussion to the public, far beyond social media echo chambers. We are on track to reach over a million people. Sign up to share your story!!! Share this!! blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-...

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SaveNSF is a coalition of concerned scientists and allies who are working to save funding for scientific grants through the NSF. The mission is to support and advocate for the continuation of vital research and innovation. Join: www.savensf.com

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For your slides on species concepts

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✴️ Request for proposals! ✴️ @navigation.org is funding focused gatherings to tackle key challenges in Open Science. We support meetings that define solvable problems and quickly move ideas toward implementation. Deadline: June 15, 2025 os.nav.fund/meeting-fund #OpenScience

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Here are the links to folks who are tracking grant cancellations at both NIH and NSF censoring science. This team is tracking terminations to organize and advocate. Please report your terminated grants: NIH: forms.gle/J2znQ7y7YpeP... NSF: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni... w/ @noamross.net

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The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants. www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

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So in terms of productivity, this means Harvard University Press is more similar to a new prof who publishes their first book than it is to other university presses.

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NEW: Starting May 5, NSF will implement an across-the-board 15% indirect cost rate (mirroring policies at DOE, NIH) Also, NSF staff expect 341 additional terminations today, bringing the total number of terminations to ~1,380.

submitted 2 days ago • 13 comments

Now that this #InverteFest is done, here's a tree of everyone's observations in the iNaturalist project (and the subset of my own observations). I have a few updates of this code on my to-do list, but didn't find time before this session, maybe next time?

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

My pet gar that I donated to Shedd Aquarium would recognize me and swim over to say hi when I visited her exhibit ❤️🐠 A rare hybrid gar, I raised her since she was 2 inches long, and had to re-home her when I moved to Chicago. I was happy I could visit her in her new home! TO BE CONTINUED…

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And really nice press release by @reginafairbanks.bsky.social www.amnat.org/an/newpapers...

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Australia’s common brushtail possum has long been neglected in terms of its taxonomy. My amazing PhD student Shelby Middleton along with a stellar supervisor team has attempted to resolve this species. Check it here: academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Happy to share my new article on how morphological diversification proceeds during evolutionary radiations: "The diffused evolutionary dynamics of morphological novelty" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵 1/12

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So proud of my student Sheila Rodriguez Machado who overcame so much to defend her PhD dissertation. We met in Cuba 🇨🇺 in 2018 and she has grown into a powerhouse of an ichthyologist. She worked on the systematics and biogeography of poeciliids (livebearers). She is going on to a postdoc at Yale.

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None of this exists #WithoutNSF. Nor my salary for nearly a decade. Nor training 8+ students and 2 postdocs, some of who moved onto medical school, drug discovery, teaching. Nor grant funded teaching of >1000 students. Their impact paying it forward to the community is incalculable.

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10

submitted 3 days ago • 23 comments

#WithoutNSF I wouldn't be a scientist. NSF grants funded my undergrad research experiences, graduate and postdoctoral projects, and years of work in my own lab. The funding freezes and cuts we're seeing mean my students probably won't have similar opportunities lancasteronline.com/opinion/colu...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Thanks for this reporting, @dangaristo.bsky.social . Important to get this info. Possibly worth noting that the estimate of 1,040 terminated grants is an underestimate (it's presumably from self-reporting to grant-watch.us: not everyone reports, but I don't know how to figure out corrected number)

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

If efficiency were a value for the people driving NSF current practice, they'd actually announce these changes. Why waste everyone's time with proposals that have zero chance of funding [despite being aligned with congressional mandates and national interest]. 🧪

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Had so much fun at the SystAssn-SRUK/CERU Bayesian Phylogenetics Workshop! 💫 Hope that everyone who attended this event enjoyed the two-day journey on theory, methods, and applications of Bayesian Phylogenetics and... Hopefully see you all again soon in future events! 💻🧬

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Microsoft is spending about 6x the annual budget of the entire NSF on building more server farms.

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Research saves lives. US NSF funds support this

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From a reliable source: NSF’s budget cuts will be worse than they could ever have expected, and that almost all broadening participation programs will be killed. NSF is moving everything to standard grants only, with remaining budgets to paying down the mortgage from each program. 1/5

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New paper: The past, present and future of Megalosaurus bucklandii in paleoart. I review the #paleoart history of this oft-depicted #dinosaur, consider its fluctuating status as a subject of artistic interest, and review what we know of its anatomy. #sciart meridian.allenpress.com/esh/article-...

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

So has Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, which is at real long-term risk. Did you get an SBE grant? What impact did it have? I'll start. My first book, based on research funded by the NSF STS program, informed AMP v. Myriad, US Supreme Court litigation that prohibited human gene patents.

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments