Morgan Carter

The federal workers involved in the various dissent declarations weighed the harm to the missions of their agencies and to our chosen form of democratic government against personal risks, including loss of their livelihoods, and decided to stand up for all of us. One of the mantras of these staffers is “Courage is Contagious”; I hope more of this spreads to more of the scientific establishment and soon.

14/14

I have a fabulous undergrad who has a lot of experience with QIIME2 & using R to analyze microbiome data. She is looking for a job starting in January. Would love to learn more bench and field skills (will be getting some in her last 2 months). Open to academic, industry, government jobs in the US.

Returned to the lab for 15 minutes. Fixed a scale and got bleach on my shirt. That checks out.
#NewPI 🧪

Coming soon: Plant Health Rewind! 👀 Couldn’t attend #planthealth2025 or catch every session in Honolulu? Soon you’ll be able to revisit the groundbreaking science, posters, plenaries, and more from the meeting.

Stay tuned! https://bit.ly/3VJKJpv

planthealthrewind

Still available, but why? It can be yours #sciart

There needs to be a term like "brassicanization" for the conceptual opposite of carcinization. One being the tendency of all life, no matter how diverse in origin, to tend towards one shape, the other being the tendency of closely related groups to diversify wildly

As a University of Arizona alumnus, I strongly encourage Arizona’s administration to LISTEN to their wonderful faculty. Don’t give in to the bully!!

Click the video, it is actively open for smelling currently

Starting spooky season with a corpse flower blooming on campus 🥀

yep. You can't make a 'better case' that convinces tyranny of the value of science since knowledge is tyranny's kryptonite.

I realize many people don’t quite get that not every single professor in every single university teaches computer science and might actually be trained in and invested in teaching other things, like let’s say, history? Or poetry.
Or sociology.
It is not our job to teach students how to use AI.

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

We are seeing that students in class mostly cite articles from predatory journals because so many papers are published in them and they are open access!

They come up quickly in their searches and are immediately accessible.

One of the reasons I believe strongly in open access is that my R1 university doesn't have subscriptions to many key journals in my field.
If I can barely get these articles, it's even harder for folks at PUIs, journalists, students who know less about inter-library loan options, etc. 🧪

This is particularly galling when federal workers experience retaliation under claims of violating the Hatch Act for lawfully exercising their first amendment rights while off duty.

I don’t love the reality where I have to carefully consider what I teach to 100 students but these damaging shenanigans happen 🫠

This timeline is exhausting. Trying to be an empathetic, reasonable, functional adult while seeing stuff like this is exhausting. So unserious.

A chart of "Major concerns of PhD candidates." The top text says, "Financial pressures top the list of concerns faced by PhD candidates, but concerns differ among the sexes. Those studying in the United States rank the political landscape as their main worry." The chart shows that in the full survey, political landscape is the biggest concern for about 20% of students (a bit higher for women than men) but there's an annotation saying "In US PhD students, this rose to 64%". Overall, the highest-rated concern was financial pressures at around 40%.

That's quite the chart annotation.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Graph showing total R35+R01 awards issued by NIGMS from 2020 to 2025. R01 in black showing a steep decline. R35 showing an increase. Total awards in 2025 slightly up from 2024 but these years are lower than 2020-2023

I think the R01 is basically a non-starter at NIGMS now. Data from NIH Reporter for new and competing awards, comparing number of R01s issued relative to R35s (MIRA). This has major ramifications for basic science and basic science investigators that are not yet in the MIRA pool

And please also thank the grants management specialists (GMS) who handle the business, non-programmatic matters of awarding grants!

Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis of Zymoseptoria tritici Reveals Interaction-Specific Gene Expression Patterns During Susceptible, Resistant, and Non-Host Interactions | Molecular Plant-Microbe Int... Zymoseptoria tritici causes Septoria tritici blotch which significantly reduces yields of wheat. To investigate infection phase-specific gene expression in the pathogen, we analyzed gene expression du...

We are very happy to share that our paper on Comparative Transcriptomics of Zymoseptoria tritici during host and non-host interactions was accepted for publication in @mpmijournal.bsky.social journal and was just released in the first look section! doi.org/10.1094/MPMI...

Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media Unlike most nonimmigrant classifications, which are admitted for a fixed time period, aliens in the F (academic student), J (exchange visitor), and most I (representatives of foreign information media...

Comment period ends on Monday for a proposed rule change that would terminate student visas after 4 years. It also puts limits on exchange visitors and reps of foreign media, and shortens the length of time at the end of the visa from 60 days to 30 days.

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Beautiful fungus

Found this beautiful fungus on my walk this morning. ❤️ fungi

Visualizing Human Genetic Diversity A key insight from human genetics is that, as a species, we are all very genetically similar to one another and share much of our genetic variation. Our genome can be depicted as a string of letters (...

Another year using @kitchensjn.bsky.social + @gcbias.bsky.social's intuitive circle plots to discuss human genetic variation in my undergrad genetics class james-kitchens.com/blog/visuali...

When I was a postdoc, I knew there was no possibility that anyone cared about what I said and so outing that shit on social media was the best thing to do

But as a professor? You're always guessing, and your word carries further (publicly, barely so internally)

And again, not blaming the career public servants doing their best to support science under chaotic and restrictive guidance. Thanks for what y'all are doing to make science (and research broadly across fields) still happen.

I hate this for the second years who had already been working on applications.

Also the USDA fellowship RFA has still not been issued for this year.

It is harder and harder to find fellowships to support the newest generation of scientists. 🧪

We are shortchanging our future.

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

NSF GRFP solicitation out.
App deadlines now in November.
As others noted, eligibility rules for current graduate students now exclude 2nd year grad students. See the solicitation - they’ve emphasized “first year” and “less than one academic year” in grad program.

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

"Cadavera" Bloomstream - UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens YouTube video by videoadmintest

Who needs a panda cam, when you can have a corpse flower cam!?

Love this from the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens - their newest bloom in the beautiful McMillan greenhouse. 👃🌹
#PlantSci 🧪

www.youtube.com/live/a8o3Pxh...

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.

The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/