Colin Sweeney, Ph.D.

Europe Needs to Learn Its Lesson: Stop Relying on Imported Energy Growing reliance on American gas looks foolish given how unpredictable the White House has become.

I did not expect to see this in the WSJ:

"Reducing reliance on fossil fuels looks like Europe’s best shot at saving its domestic manufacturing and stopping other governments from pushing it around"

Agreed!

Comic. [2x2 chart. Top left quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of dinosaurs stegosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus, velociraptor, and long-neck dinosaur. Top right quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of mosasaur, quetzalcoatlus, dimetrodon, plesiosaur, and pteranodon. Bottom left quadrant: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of penguin, egret, ostrich, pigeon, falcon. Bottom right: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of squirrel, stapler, plant, person, and bicycle.]

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs

xkcd.com/3204/

An image showing 15 illustrations of birds paired with dinosaur skulls. Below each reads the words "Dinosaurs Survived!" with the geological formations and locations of each.

Dinosaurs Survived!

All 15 designs so far.

www.emmalerae.com/store.html

Manager, Restoration Ecology & Forest Resilience - Ecological Restoration Institute Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute seeks field technicians for wildfire and forest health research. Ideal candidates have forestry experience, plant identification skills, ...

We're hiring!
eri.nau.edu/manager-rest...

The Restoration Ecology & Forest Resilience Program Manager leads projects that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk, coordinating research, partners, and staff to advance resilient landscapes and communities.

My hope is that all of us can have the bravery of Liam and his dad. Just pure models of bravery amid extremely horrible cruel intent from the federal government.

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)

Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

A line graph of the number of NSF awards for 2021-2026 for the Directorate of Biological Sciences.

2/9

Share your comments on NCAR with NSF Tell NSF the future that you want for NCAR by 13 March

AGU has an easy-to-use toolkit set for public feedback to proposed government actions. Now is a great time to respond to NSF’s proposed shuttering of NCAR. agu.quorum.us/campaign/154...

Nothing wrong with being anthropocentric! I think (as with all science), we have a bias towards what is easy to measure. My only argument is we should couch our findings in the knowledge that we will miss ecosystem functions simply because we don’t measure for them (yet)

service as it is that there might be a non-linear relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services (which is very possible and a great thing to look at more!!) 3/3

quantify animal behavioral traits. I also will suggest that we as humans are bad at knowing what a species is doing for us because we don't fully understand species interaction pathways. I'd urge some caution because this is as much of a issue of us lacking the methods to link function to... 2/n

This is a really good discussion! As someone who does a lot of functional ecology on animals, I'll just weigh in and say that the observation in the post that most services are measured with plants and that the animal literature is more mixed is expected, not least because it is much harder to.. 1/n

I genuinely love how geologists are always ready to show off their rocks! ❤️

I am no longer in the business of defending those books because of who the author became, but I will say that wasn't why those books were so important to my generation. HP books captured the feel of being those ages in a way that few others did and that is comparable to catcher and the rye

In case anyone wants a little break, here are a few of my favorite facts that I learned in 2025, in no particular order.

Some trees benefit from, and may even encourage, getting struck by lightning because it kills their nearby competitors nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

IMAGE SHOWS GRAPHIC OF CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY PHYLOGENY EXPLORER TOOL.

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...

Honestly I kind of love that!

First mistake is trying to put grasses in a box in the first place haha (I am very thankful I am not a taxonomist)

You can tell a fossil scientist wrote this

This is a great point. I wonder if an inventory of key scientific infrastructure and their open source equivalents are out there. Could also be a way to identify where we still need to make new platforms to fill a niche that isn't open source yet.

Ooo, if it doesn't exist someone should!

But I do agree that would be best!

Unfortunately there really isn't a mechanism for an interim government in the US constitution. It would Vance next, then the speaker of the house.

Three tips for scientific writing: a guide for graduate students Do you struggle with the blank page? These strategies could help.

Writing is a big part of being a researcher, but grad students are rarely trained to do it well. Three researchers who double as writing instructors share their strategies for making the process more productive than painful: spklr.io/633238aIlD

#AcademicSky #SciWri #AcademicWriting

This is honestly an embarrassing thing for him to have said on the record with a straight face.....

Congrats on the good results!! 🎉

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce.

Trump has been in office for one year. We at @nature.com did a deep dive looking at the administration's disruption of science in numbers.

Take a look—the numbers are staggering. By me, @dangaristo.bsky.social, Jeff Tollefson, @kimay.bsky.social, & help from @noamross.net @scott-delaney.bsky.social

Your relationship with your advisor matters more than how cool the project is. Ask about the advisor's mentoring style, editing turnaround time, opinion on collaborations, and grad student expectations up front. Ask the grad students if the PI is respectful towards their students, (cont)