Northern California’s first condor egg in 100 years reported in redwood tree
Who COULDN’T use some good news? ‘ Scientists with the Yurok Tribe say that two of dozens of condors released to the wild in Humboldt County since 2022, to reestablish the endangered birds, have paired up, built a nest in a redwood tree and appear to be tending to an egg.”
#californiacondor
Finally, today's offering! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
This began life as a very different project which failed because we couldn't agree on defining eqtl sharing across cohorts. So two young members of the lab dug deeply into this - first @ijbeasley.bsky.social, then @patrickgibbs.bsky.social
The real problem is that we publish many more papers per scientist than before.
03.03.2026 14:25 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
A two-column status table titled "Stage" and "Start Date" tracks the timeline of a manuscript submission from its preliminary data submission on October 8, 2025, to its eventual withdrawal on March 2, 2026. The log reveals a lengthy and repetitive administrative process, particularly between October 26, 2025, and February 19, 2026, where the status cycled more than ten times between "Contacting Potential Reviewers" and "Waiting for Reviewer Assignment," suggesting significant difficulty in securing peer reviewers. Following these numerous failed attempts to move into the active review phase, the final entry shows the manuscript was officially withdrawn on March 2, 2026, at 09:08:18.
My first paper had to be mailed to Stockholm, Sweden, and then mailed to reviewers around the world. Everything by mail! It was submitted, reviewed, revised, typeset, and published in 3 months. I feel bad for early-career scientists who can't find a single reviewer after 5 months. It's gotta change.
03.03.2026 11:42 — 👍 237 🔁 35 💬 12 📌 11
Pangenomes, really?
Most early “pangenomes” = oligogenomes (oligo, Gr., few).
More recent “pangenomes” generally = poligenomes (polis, Gr., many).
True pangenomes (pas, Gr., every/all) would be rare indeed.
🙏🏼 @zbao.bsky.social for pointing out his review.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
we talk about carcinization, but never about the many, many times plants have invented the “tree.”
Tree is not a kind of plant, it is a thing plats do, and they are by and large unrelated.
Hey - there's a preprint about the bioRxiv preprint server published as a preprint on the bioRxiv preprint server:
bioRxiv: the preprint server for biology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
in honor of a certain surgeon general nominee’s hearing today, here is the story of (among other things) the time I tried to take her advice about milk www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
25.02.2026 16:15 — 👍 408 🔁 126 💬 15 📌 25
Have you ever wondered 🤔... Does phenotypic variance respond to environmental perturbation? Does it have a genetic basis? Are mean and variance regulating loci exposed to different selection pressures? These and more questions are explored in our new preprint 🔥
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Happy Birthday!
I first read about the LTEE in high school in a science magazine my Bio teacher had in the classroom. I don't think I thought "I want to be a microbiologist," but the article planted the seed.
Amazing that it's nearly at "mid life" (by human standards)., excited for what's next!
Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE!
#BOTD in 1988.
Keep on evolving!
#science #evolution #microbiology
obXKCD: xkcd.com/1605/
24.02.2026 17:49 — 👍 14 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0Written English has barely changed in 300 years. If you can read Harry Potter, you can read Robinson Crusoe (1719).
18.02.2026 18:40 — 👍 1879 🔁 543 💬 26 📌 190
If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle.
It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get.
www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...
I'd like to go there, but not sure if I would ask for a glas of tap water.
21.02.2026 19:25 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
The strongest version of this illusion I’ve seen! Absolute head-wrecker!
21.02.2026 16:36 — 👍 384 🔁 123 💬 24 📌 29
More good news on vaccines
A two-in-one mRNA vaccine developed by Moderna targets seasonal influenza & COVID-19. It produced robust and durable immune responses w/o safety concerns in a small mid-stage trial.
mRNA is the future. We can’t afford to lose it.
🧪 www.reuters.com/business/hea...
Exciting! Stanford researchers have developed a UNIVERSAL INTRANASAL vaccine. A study in mouse models shows that vaccinated mice were protected against Covid & other coronaviruses. Still a long way to humans. This study was #NIH funded.
A potential game changer.
🧪 med.stanford.edu/news/all-new...
BREAKING: Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has been convicted of insurrection for declaring martial law in December 2024, and has been sentenced to life in prison.
19.02.2026 07:03 — 👍 5650 🔁 1512 💬 194 📌 557Now, I have thoughts on all this but that’s for elsewhere. What immediately strikes me most is that Dawkins was using a definition of “gene” that he admits (and Stent acknowledges) was taken from George Williams, and which was common in evolutionary biology then and still is now. But…. /9
18.02.2026 10:56 — 👍 14 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
A Shapiro-Wilk test of the response variable concludes very significant deviation of Normality. But residuals of linear model consistent with Normal distribution.
Visual check of the linear model with DHARMa
Periodic reminder that we should avoid testing the Normality of the response variable.
For a linear model, what matters is the Normality of residuals (and not that much). Visual checks better than test. #statistics
Every politician considering slowing down climate solutions, like the renewables, electric vehicle or heat pump rollout, needs to be fully informed what is at stake and what risks they are taking.
It is often compared to a ship sailing into uncharted waters with dangerous rocks below the surface.
Coral background with faint heart illustrations. A glossy male Blackbird with a bright yellow bill faces left. Large title reads: “Birds as bad exes*” Smaller text reads: “*Yes, you read that right.”
Happy Valentine’s Day, from us to you. Tag your exes. Xoxox
14.02.2026 14:20 — 👍 943 🔁 383 💬 20 📌 114The strength
14.02.2026 13:44 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin
12.02.2026 16:31 — 👍 10352 🔁 3082 💬 162 📌 419
Data all the way down: How uncovering the data underlying research findings impacts every aspect of scholarly communication - webinar today at 12 pm ET
events.humanitix.com/love-data-we...
A portrait of Charles Darwin as an older man, with long white beard, balding head, looking to the viewer's right and down, as if contemplating great things. "Estate of LEONARD DARWIN (1850-1943) Portrait of Charles Darwin. Carbon print, the image measuring 4 5/8x3 5/8 inches (11.8x9.2 cm.), the mount 8 1/2x5 1/4 inches (21.6x13.3 cm.), with a printed facsimile signature on mount recto, and notations, in pencil, in an unknown hand, on mount verso. Circa 1884"
Happy Darwin Day 2026! 🧪
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871).
UNESCO international day of women and girls in science. celebrating four largely overlooked pioneers in science
1/ Today is UNESCO’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science #IDWGIS
To mark the occasion, Lisa Thomann and Julie Batut highlight four pioneering biologists whose work shaped developmental biology, electrophysiology, and genetics.
🔗 buff.ly/eVipb6d
Idk I just feel like releasing this on Women and Girls in Science day with the top people being in the Epstein files and only THREE (3) women being in the top FIFTY...is on the nose.
www.forbes.com/sites/alexkn...
Today is United National International Day of Women and Girls in Science. These women made some really important discoveries in chemistry, neuroscience and biochemistry.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
#WomenInScience
🧪 Via @nobelprize.org @eleonorasvanberg.bsky.social
