Adriana Darielle Mejía Briscoe

Leaving Michoacán: My Family’s Migration Ahead of the Mexican Revolution Abstract. The author reflects on her great-grandmother’s migration from a hacienda in Michoacán, Mexico, in the early 1900s to an ethnically segregated Mexican American community within the city of Co...

For Latinx Heritage month, a new article from me that considers the political and economic forces that drove my family to migrate to the U.S. Please email me for a pdf. Leaving Michoacán: My Family’s Migration Ahead of the Mexican Revolution url: read.dukeupress.edu/meridians/ar...

A master class from MIT in responding to authoritarian overreach:

Your “premise … is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.
… America’s leadership in science & innovation depends on independent thinking & open competition for excellence.

Commentary: Former bracero doesn't want the program to return. 'People will be treated like slaves' I wanted to hear Alvarado’s insights at a time where farmers are pleading with President Trump to stop his deportation tsunami because crops are rotting in the fields.

👀
www.latimes.com/california/s...

Lauren Greenfield on the Sad, Dark Kingdom of the Rich

Fascinating profile of the daughter of my favorite doctor. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/s...

The Bookseller: Stories Stories

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Between Memory and Oblivion Check out Between Memory and Oblivion - <p>Michael Ashe, a young antiquarian bookseller in Los Angeles, must confront the fact that his once-thriving business is collapsing. Even librarians have turne...

Tomorrow, Saturday, Oct 11 at the Inlandia, Riverside Book Fair, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Riverside Main Library, I will be helping my dad sell signed copies of his fantastic new book, BETWEEN MEMORY AND OBLIVION, and his short story collection, THE BOOKSELLER. Come join us! bookshop.org/p/books/betw...

Native author Tommy Orange among 22 artists, scientists and authors to receive $800,000 MacArthur ‘genius grant' - ICT The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2025 class of fellows on Wednesday

Happy to see Tommy Orange recognized for his powerful depictions of urban Indians and the complex landscape of their lives. ictnews.org/arts-enterta...

Banished Citizens — Harvard University Press A moving portrait of a grim period in American immigration history, when approximately one million ethnic Mexicans—mostly women and children who were US citizens—were forced to relocate across the sou...

Marla Ramírez has written an important new book—BANISHED CITIZENS—about the hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent, 60% U.S. citizens, who were banished from the U.S. during the last major episode of Mexican scapegoating in the 1920s and 1930s. www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Amazing story, Márcio!

As forests are cut down, butterflies are losing their colours The insects’ brilliant hues evolved in lush ecosystems to help them survive. Now they are becoming more muted to adapt to degraded landscapes – and they are not the only things dulling down

Today´s Guardian has an article about our study on butterfly colors, where we compare butterfly colors in native forest to those in eucalyptus plantations. This is study is a partnership between labs from Denmark, Spain, and Brazil.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Two full-time positions | Bioinformatician (m/f/d) + Applications Specialist (m/f/d) - Molecular Biology The Genome Facility at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön is seeking to fill two positions (full time) to support and expand our core facility services.

Two new positions are available at the MPI for Evolutionary Biology to support development of our genomics facility. Both stand to become permanent. Both offer a ton of opportunity to engage in a wide range of creative science.

Pls repost 🙏

www.evolbio.mpg.de/3838377/job_...

Big Changes to the NSF’s Graduate Fellowship Mean Big Problems In this bite, the authors discuss recent changes to the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship, their impact, and what you can do to help.

In this bite, the Astrobites authors discuss recent changes to the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship, their impact, and what you can do to help. 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/10/04/n...

A ubiquitous flower in LA is a reminder of homeland for a Salvadoran chef At this time of year, the flor de izote blooms in Los Angeles. The Salvadoran-American chef Karla Tatiana Vasquez says the flowers are both a delicacy and a connection to her identity.

"Growing up in Los Angeles, Karla Tatiana Vasquez says it was always a thrill seeing flor de izote in the kitchen — the delicate, cream-colored blossoms of the giant yucca." www.npr.org/2025/09/29/n...

This tiny butterfly has the most chromosomes of any animal on Earth Scientists have confirmed that the Atlas blue butterfly carries the most chromosomes of any animal, with 229 pairs. Unlike duplication, its chromosomes split apart, reshaping its genome in surprising ...

Homie got 229 pairs of chromosomes

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

Global selection on insect antipredator coloration Natural selection has repeatedly led to the evolution of two alternative antipredator color strategies—camouflage to avoid detection and aposematism to advertise unprofitability—but we lack understand...

A global experiment looking at how birds respond to 15,000 paper “moths” reveals that no color-changing strategy to deter predators is universally effective; both camouflage and warning coloration succeed under different ecological conditions, the Science study shows. https://scim.ag/46vqVwf

My department at Emory is a hiring a tenure-track neuroscientist!

Anyone who's talked to me in the last 4 years knows I cannot say enough good things about my dept and the neuroscience community here. My colleagues are so wonderfully supportive. Postdocs, please apply!

apply.interfolio.com/174371

Giving myself permission today to finally recycle a field shirt I wore in graduate school.

Graded opsin co-expression along the butterfly retina fine tunes the spectral sensitivity of a colour-opponent cell across the visual field - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Compound eyes deliver a vast stream of information to the tiny insect brains. To maximize the information content and minimize the redundancy of neural signals, insect eyes are built so to encode the relevant and filter out the unimportant elements of the visual environment. Terrestrial habitats have a predictable spatio-spectral structure, which can be matched by the distribution of photoreceptors with different spectral sensitivities across the retina. Here, we investigate the retinal organization of the nymphalid butterfly Heliconius melpomene using single-cell recordings, immunohistochemistry and eye shine imaging. The ventral retina is enriched with ommatidia, which contain red screening pigments that shape the spectral sensitivity of basal red receptors R9, while their long visual fibre photoreceptors R1&2, expressing a long-wavelength (L) opsin, are synaptically inhibited by R9 and directly participate in colour vision. These G + R– receptors frequently co-express the L opsin with the blue (B) or ultraviolet (U) opsin. U&L opsin-co-expressing R1&2 are scarce, while B&L co-expression is frequent in the ventral ommatidia and gradually diminishes towards the eye equator, where G + R– receptors express the L opsin only. In this region, G + R– receptors are further inhibited by blue-sensitive receptors. With electrophysiology matching immunohistochemistry, we reveal the fine tuning of spectral sensitivity of a single photoreceptor class across the dorso-ventral axis of the butterfly compound eye. Similar tuning is found in other nymphalid butterflies across the phylogeny, suggesting that this adaptation is ancestral and confers an advantage to those diurnal nymphalids, equipped with the cellular toolkit for colour vision in the red.

It's always a happy day when your PhD student, in this case, Andrew Dang, publishes another paper from their #dissertation. This paper describes an astonishing 15 different ommatidial types in this butterfly eye. Well-done Andy and team! #vision #colsci link.springer.com/article/10.1...

For birds, flocks promise safety – especially if you’re faster than your neighbor Birds can seem amazingly social as they fly and roost together. But why do they really hang out? Let’s take a closer look at the social lives of birds.

For birds, flocks promise safety – especially if you’re faster than your neighbor
theconversation.com/for-birds-fl...

'The original slow food people': Why this California tribe spent $500,000 on a global food gathering Sacramento this week will host Terra Madre Americas, an international food event affiliated with the "slow food" movement, which originated in Italy.

I wish I could taste the acorn soup these Indigenous women are serving up in Sacramento this weekend. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Opinion | They Came for the Oil. They Took Everything.

An Indigenous community in Veracruz devastated by the environmental disaster of oil extraction.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/o...

‘They’re Small but They’re Mighty.’ Meet the Wisconsin Sisters Healing the Land.

Glad these wonderful ladies are on the job. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/c...

When Trees Testify How the Word Is Passed meets Braiding Sweetgrass in a cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery, shared through the stor...

Beronda, I just wanted to say I saw your post about your new book WHEN TREES TESTIFY and I am so joyful for you and can't wait to read it. us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

My host for this #Latinx Heritage Month event is Emmy award-winning journalist Ricardo Vela. I'm excited to have the opportunity to speak with Ricardo: ucanr.edu/people/ricar...

“Despedida”: My great great grandfather’s corrido about the Mexican repatriation - Latino Studies Latino Studies -

doi.org/10.1057/s412...

For #Hispanic Heritage Month this week I am honored to be speaking to the UC Agricultural and Natural Resources Outreach program and the Latinx & Friends Employee Resource Group about the 1930s deportation corrido written by my ancestor. ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/employee-new...

I agree with everything you say, Márcio, #NPR is a both a national and an international treasure which is why I now am a national NPR and local (LA-area) NPR subscriber. Their content is priceless and I am grateful they exist.

Native public radio braces for ‘devastating and catastrophic’ Trump budget cuts Indigenous broadcasters scramble to maintain weather alerts, language programs and local news

"Public radio offers a critical lifeline for rural Indigenous communities, many of whom lack access to landlines or cellular service. Native stations provide local news, emergency alerts about the weather, and language preservation." www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

In Guatemala, young Kaqchikel Maya protect their sacred forest with open mapping SAN JOSÉ POAQUIL, Guatemala — The last rays of daylight filter through the trees as Andres “Tata” López, 56, the local Maya mayor, greets his neighbors coming to source water in the communal forest…

The Indigenous community of San José Poaquil is using technology to monitor the health and integrity of their ancestral forest.

Locals have created online maps for their forest, which have allowed them to keep track of wildfires, deforestation and other illicit activities that threaten the area.