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

This is direct political interference in science and medicine and will lead to deaths. “At some point, science must win out over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” Evergreen.

submitted 2 hours ago • 8 comments

My NSF PRFB on the genetics of female polymorphism in hummingbirds was terminated yesterday. I don't have much to say, I'm just sad. We've discovered so much, and could have gone so much further. If anyone else is in the same boat, esp postdocs, please reach out, it would be good to connect.

submitted 16 hours ago • 68 comments

It's not just Columbia, it's not just DEI, and it's not just biomedical research: Trump's war on universities has frozen crucial science at institutions like Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern, and more. Our @nature.com team spoke to some of the affected scientists: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

A massive explosion at a port in southern Iran on Saturday killed at least four people and injured more than 500, according to state media.

submitted 13 hours ago • 5 comments

Just to be clear, we reached the arresting-judges-and-deporting-US-citizens-without-due-process stage of the slide into authoritarianism today. And the citizens in question included a toddler and a child with cancer who needs treatment in the US.

submitted 1 day ago • 12 comments

They've already reinstated the WHI. They are unable to defend against all the pushback, folks. Now do it for the pro-Pal protestors and the bombs going to Israel. www.npr.org/sections/sho...

submitted 15 hours ago • 1 comment

Good explanation in this article about how rice agricultural practices can raise the level of inorganic arsenic in the rice (and how climate change will drive those numbers up) #chemsky 🧪⚗️ www.bbc.com/future/artic...

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

Blunt letter to the editor on ACS: "If ACS won’t stand up now, it should stand down." cen.acs.org/business/Rea... #chemsky 🧪⚗️

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

ATTENTION: NSF GRANT RECIPIENTS We received a heads up from a trusted source that you should proactively download/print/screen shot any documentation on research.gov pertaining to your NSF awards, both those that are current and any that have closed in the last 5-6 years. 1/n

submitted 2 days ago • 24 comments

Sigh

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

In Gaza, World Central Kitchen @wck.org is among the last organizations still able to cook meals. The IDF has shut all crossings to shipments, including humanitarian relief. We are now nearing the end of our supplies—and the limits of what’s possible. mailchi.mp/wck/4-23-25-...

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

The Trump administration is ending federal civil rights enforcement, including in higher education. The regulations being repealed here are the basis for the withdrawn science funding at Columbia & Harvard. They specifically accused them of Title VI violations. 🧪 www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

submitted 3 days ago • 28 comments

wrote about the importance of ambition and political leadership

submitted 3 days ago • 69 comments

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

The feeling when Reviewer 2 is an absolute delight and helps you make your paper better, but Reviewer 3 chooses violence, questioning basically the validity of using Maxwell's equations, by calling your work "just optics" and "not an established method" but also simultaneously trivial!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

SCOOP — The US sent Iraqi refugee Omar Ameen to Rwanda via new diplomatic relationship in which they've agreed to act as a "third country" for deportees unable to be safely returned to their country of origin, per cables reviewed by me. This is first reported instance. Cable indicates more to come.

submitted 4 days ago • 155 comments

wow even columbia is on it now

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

🧪 Brand new details on DOGE’s infiltration at NSF ““The Office of Management and Budget recently instructed some NSF staff that all funding opportunities needed approval from DOGE, OMB, or the Office of the Director, a document viewed by FedScoop indicated.” ‼️‼️

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

The First Amendment has been one of the best parts of the US political system for me as an immigrant. I wish the Democrats would protect it with the same energy as the Republicans protect the 2nd Amendment, because it is practically dead. This should worry every single American.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

The gobsmacking grift of the $239M slush fund that Team Trump created around the inauguration should have been Page 1 news, but too many are too numb to such corruption Join me on a tour of sold ambassadorships, sleazy corporate favors, and more! My new column www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...

submitted 4 days ago • 26 comments

🧵

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

This is a really important story.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

"almost every night since Oct 2023, even during his hospitalization, Pope Francis made a daily phone call to the only Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip to check on their safety and offer words of prayer and support. His last public act, the day before he died, was to call for a ceasefire in Gaza."

submitted 5 days ago • 77 comments

This won't be limited to just autism. They're building the panopticon to track anyone with any "undesirable" illness. This is eugenics, full stop.

submitted 5 days ago • 47 comments

Also. That quote y’all love to post about “first they came for_____” That’s happening in real time RIGHT NOW. Autism will not be the only thing monitored by that earth worm heading the Health and Human Services

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

Indiana University Professor Ben Robinson--who was also arrested and sanctioned re: last spring's protests--is now being investigated under the state's "intellectual diversity" law. It started with an anonymous internal complaint, which the university escalated. Now, his tenure is in jeopardy.

submitted 7 days ago • 32 comments

The report with the underlying data for the Washington Post story about firings of disproportionate numbers of women and underrepresented minorities from NIH Boards of Scientific Counselors. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I've only read the first part so far, but Harvard's lawsuit is very readable And obviously going to be relevant to a much broader community of universities www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

You are going to see an obituary that I wrote a few months ago for Pope Francis. I really had the toughest time writing it. He was a complicated Pope. We are never going to see another Jesuit Pope in this lifetime, and maybe never again in the Catholic church.

submitted 5 days ago • 28 comments

"Indian student Krish Lal Isserdasani is breathing much easier now. His student visa was about to be terminated just a month before his graduation, when attorneys…moved the United States District Court…and got a temporary restraining order. He is now back on track for his graduation in early May."

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

DHS has admitted in court it doesn’t have authority to terminate student non-immigrant status, even when it changes or terminates their SEVIS status, contrary to the info provided by unis to affected students. This admission, a tactic to evade a lawsuit, is grounds for schools to defend students.

submitted 6 days ago • 5 comments

Unbelievably low stuff here. No excuse for this stuff, if you are in a position to be writing these things you are a doctor of one kind or another, do your fuckin job my God

submitted 5 days ago • 4 comments

Flying cars, self driving cars, one drop of blood to diagnose everything, Oh, and that $10 m funding to cure all cancer a few years ago, we have it all. We will have this too

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

Serious question: what do you use for your occupation if you are an engineer or a faculty in engineering school when applying for US citizenship? Nothing in engineering or any of its subcategories are listed. 🤯

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

The amount of energy people at universities are spending trying to deal with this administration is just huge - and not just Harvard, everywhere. Imagine all the things we could be doing instead. This is part of their strategy of course.

submitted 8 days ago • 15 comments

Peter Stern was born in Nuremberg in 1936, a German Jew. His father died in the Holocaust; he and his brother somehow survived Bergen-Belsen. Today he's protesting what's happening in America. "I came to say that something as nasty as that can happen again, and it can, without me saying something."

submitted 7 days ago • 29 comments

Neil deGrasse Tyson went on Rogan which is a huge bummer but the good news is that there are lots of cool Black 🔭 #scicomm out there and @blackinastro.bsky.social even made a starter pack! 🧪https://go.bsky.app/6nFQdRC

submitted 7 days ago • 53 comments