Jeremy Kamil

News Literacy Project The News Literacy Project works with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust.

I couldn’t possibly speculate, as someone once said. But I would like to point you towards the non-partisan News Literacy Project, which I have supported for more than a decade, which aims to help students become discerning consumers of both news and what pretends to be news.

newslit.org

Hypermutable hotspot enables the rapid evolution of self/non-self recognition genes in Dictyostelium Cells require highly polymorphic receptors to perform accurate self/non-self recognition. In the amoeba Dicytostelium discoideum, polymorphic TgrB1 & TgrC1 proteins are used to bind sister cells and e...

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

‘Congress has your back’: US senators tell scientists they want to protect NIH budget Senate budget bill includes small increase for the health-research agency — but faces a long road before being signed into law. Senate budget bill includes small increase for the health-research agency — but faces a long road before being signed into law.

“To the scientists wondering if there will even be an NIH by the end of this administration, this committee’s resounding message is: ‘Yes, Congress has your back’,” said @murray.senate.gov

We’re not near the finish line yet - but this is a strong step in the right direction.

zurl.co/AzSK7

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic The COVID pandemic likely began when the virus jumped from animals to humans, and didn’t start in a lab. But false narratives continue to circulate.

Our research has been engulfed by an endless torrent of lab leak conspiracy theories about the origin of the pandemic - even as the evidence for zoonosis has only grown stronger.

This fuels anti-science agendas and erodes public trust.

Now, we respond 👇

theconversation.com/how-conspira...

The Uncertain Science Behind What We Understand As ‘Truth’ In a new book mathematician Adam Kucharski traces our relationship to truth from the ancient Greeks to our AI reality.

In his new book "Proof," mathematician @adamjkucharski.bsky.social explores our complicated history of separating fact from fiction.

buff.ly/joJHPeh

Congrats, Saloni. Best wishes for the next chapter!

My department @utoronto.ca (www.utm.utoronto.ca/biology/) is hiring a molecular biologist in any field (e.g., ecology, evolutionary biology, etc.). Please encourage any excellent finishing PhD students, postdocs or assistant professor to apply here:
jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Mississa...

Trump administration halts, then releases, NIH research funding The decision temporarily froze $15 billion in federal funding, according to one senator. It came as Trump officials wrestle over federal spending levels.

A senior leader at one NIH institute said: “At my level we are legitimately trying to figure out how to keep funding high-impact science given what we expect will happen.”
The senior leader added: “Our grants people are barely holding it together because they are at the center of this chaos.”

On Oct 5 1988, the campus newspaper at Kent State University in Ohio issued an unusual report. Six students had been diagnosed with measles over the prior two weeks. Over the course of a typical year, the student health center generally saw one or two measles cases, making this cluster noteworthy. These six were the earliest sign of a campus outbreak that would last for more than six months and involve 380 cases. Dr. Tara C. Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist, has (continued in next pic)

...revisited the Kent State measles outbreak using contemporary news reporting and university records. Smith's analysis provides a detailed look at one of the largest college outbreaks at the leading edge of a nationwide measles surge.

Picture of "Booster shots" book.

Oh, hey. Reading "Booster Shots" by @adamratnermd.bsky.social (highly recommended) and page 129-130 discusses a paper I wrote detailing Kent State's large #measles outbreak in 1989. /1

My policy on this app is to follow as many scientists as possible. I want a robust, highly varied network of people to discuss all biological research. Especially students

Stephen Buranyi · Folding and Unfolding: Protein to Prion How and why do proteins, which are produced by our body to build structures (such as skin and muscle) or carry out tasks...

'The basic logic of the prion – a protein that can radically change its structure and function, and force that change onto other proteins too – may turn out to be so common that it ranks among the vital biological processes.'
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

CIG- UNIL

Become our colleague! Tenure-track Assistant Professor position at The Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. unil.ch/cig/en/home....
More details for how to apply are here:
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

From a time when childhood vaccines were just a figment of imagination.

Row after row of baby headstones.

That’s our paper! @jfgomes.bsky.social. Thanks for sharing @owasow.bsky.social

I once spent a summer working (and living) on Plum Island. I can tell you that our time travel program was unparalleled.

Screenshot of NSF proposal status page. It has four columns, one with the partial title (CAREER: Characterizing the mechanisms linking bleaching and recovery to), one with the “Awarded” status, one with the status date (today) and one with the submission date (nearly a year ago).

Celebrating this Friday evening!!

After 7 long months I can finally share that I have received an NSF CAREER award to study the link between bleaching and disease in cnidarians!!

Stay tuned for more info about postdoc and graduate student positions!

Nondisruptive inducible labeling of ER-membrane contact sites using the Lamin B receptor ER-membrane contact sites are often distorted by existing labeling methods. This study develops an inducible labeling system called LaBeRing that uses the Lamin B receptor to fluorescently tag a varie...

🎉 Happy to see this work finally out — my last contribution at the Royle Lab. Congrats to the whole team! @uniofwarwick @Warwick_CMCB @ciccancer
#MCM #ER #NewlifePI #ProudPI
Published in @PLOSBiology 👉
plos.io/4lv6gxu

Here's the link: www.fda.gov/news-events/.... Please post a comment about how this would greatly inhibit scientific progress

Illustration of a woman meditating in a cross-legged pose with the ocean and pastel sky at sunset in the background. Bold text on the left reads: “Chasing purpose is more beneficial to your health than stress is harmful.” At the bottom are the name “Silvia Pineda-Munoz, PhD” and the Climate Ages logo.

Chasing purpose is more beneficial to your health than stress is harmful.

That’s what I learned from @kellymcgonigal’s TED talk.

And honestly? It changed how I approach Climate Ages, my #SciComm platform

It’s not the stress that breaks us.
It’s the lack of meaning.

Purpose is medicine
🧪

Virologist and HIV expert Dr. Michael Emerman retires During his 36-year career at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, Michael Emerman, PhD, made fundamental discoveries about HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. He co-founded the field of paleovirology and consi...

www.fredhutch.org/content/www/...

Confessions of a former naturopath.

Repurposed drug battles ‘brain-eating’ amoeba A drug developed to quell urinary tract infections also appears to be a promising treatment for Balamuthia mandrillaris

@aaas.org @science.org covers much of the backstory about the “new” (repurposed) drug here www.science.org/content/arti...

Home - Asieris Pharmaceuticals Improve Human Health to Preserve Patients’ Dignity Leading new drug development for genitourinary tumors & other related diseases Highlights Products Vesique®(APL-1202) | Cevira® (APL-1702) Treatment ...

The article also highlights the role of a Chinese drug company that makes the molecule that saved the girl’s life. asieris.com

Opinion | The free-living bureaucrat Michael Lewis on Heather Stone of the Food and Drug Administration.

🧪 Powerful story about a little girl slowly being killed by a brain eating amoeba (Balamuthia), and how UCSF researchers and a person named Heather Stone at the FDA worked with her parents and her physicians to enable the use of a new drug that saved her life www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int...

The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 called for dismantling the NOAA, which provides warnings of natural disasters, such as the deadly floods in Texas. The irony is that Heritage wanted these cuts because it’s angry that NOAA helps prove the reality of climate change--the thing causing floods.

How Trump’s Cuts to Science Funding Are Derailing Young Scholars’ Careers Budding academics are delaying their graduate studies, continuing them abroad, or forgoing them entirely.

A Lost Generation of Researchers: Cuts to the nation’s science funding are forcing future scholars to delay graduate study, continue it abroad, or forgo it entirely. @mzahneis.bsky.social reports www.chronicle.com/article/a-lo...

Patient Information: West Nile Virus Infection This JAMA Patient Page describes West Nile virus infection and its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention measures.

Excellent patient information on West Nile Virus.
Most cases are asymptomatic but I see a handful of cases every year that are not and need hospital care. Treatment is supportive. With summer heat and more time outdoors DEET insect repellents are your friend.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas

This is a nuanced perspective on the relationship between NWS cuts and the disaster in Texas: NWS got the forecasts right, but lacked staff who could preplan with and warn local officials of the dangers. P
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u...

I am constantly losing my mind when certain people are praised for 'novel thinking' because they pitch to soft and uninformed audiences.

When the foundation of the 'novel' idea is just a FAILURE TO READ THE LITERATURE.

I hope everyone is having a good Fourth of July break. Here is how I ended up spending some of mine...

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