Tanya Noel (she/her)

It has been a week since the Ontario government proposed taking away universities' right to determine their own student selection policies in Bill C-33.

Not a peep from the universities yet.

This is not a good sign.

(Quote from: Berg, M., & Seeber, B. K. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press.)

Oh yeah.
I finally got around to starting "The Slow Professor" & have been collecting quotes to remind myself of stuff (e.g., “Flexibility of hours can translate into working all the time, particularly because academic work by its very nature is never done.”)

Agreed. A friendly planarian!

So glad I could participate in 2025 Open Consortium of Biology Undergrad Educators in-person UnConference last week! oCUBE = Unique mix of community expertise, kindness & creativity.
Looking forward to Virtual UnConference this Thursday - there's still time to register (free)! ocube.ca/page-18398

The Canadian government needs to do a massive PSA blitz telling people that genAI lies and the results from ChatGPT and all the other slop machines cannot be trusted, at all.

The time has come to bring back the house hippo.

As described this 16” x 20” linocut print combines gold text in a central circle reading “OUR FATE” arching upwards, “IS TIED” horizontally across the middle, “TO THAT OF THE INSECTS” arching downwards in two lines with insects. Clockwise from top: two leaf cutter bees (Megachile relativa and M. brevis), the Imperial moth (Eacles imperialis), the Virgin Tiger moth (Apantesis virgo), an Isabella’s Longwings butterfly (Nymphalidae Eueides isabella), a blue orchard mason bee (Osmia lignaria), a firefly (Photinus pyralis), the rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), a white underwing moth (Catocala relicta), an eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica), a sweat bee (Agapostemon sericeus), a hummingbird clearwing moth (Hermaris thysbe), the common eastern bumblebee (B. impatiens), a long-horned bee (Melissodes sp.), a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and centre: eastern snail-shell nesting bee (O. conjuncta).

May 20 is World Bee Day. There are ~20,000 different bee species in the world. 🧪🧵🐝 Here in Ontario we have at least 400 native bees (none of which are honeybees, which are from Europe). Bees are key to pollination. According to the UN nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, 🧵

Horrifying & sadly predictable.

Scientists are pushing to get their grants reinstated — and some are winning The grant termination letters say there are no appeals. Yet dozens of appeals have succeeded as biomedical researchers lobby and sue to restore funding.

Scientists are pushing to get their grants reinstated — and some are winning www.statnews.com/2025/05/19/r...

the top half shows two panels with microscopy images. Left is a light-microscopy image of a group of algal cells. The cells are round with different sizes. Two arrows point at sporangia: one looks as if someone stuffed 8 footballs in a thin elastic bag. The other is perfectly round and contains many small spores within. The right panel shows the same group of cells, but in fluorescent microscopy, where green color shows chloroplasts. In each cell the chloroplasts are globular with small lobes sticking out. The bottom half shows a photo of Xanthoria lichen - bright yellow and leafy growing on a tree branch

⚡ Attn anyone interested in algal genomics and lichen symbiosis! ⚡ New preprint: a near chromosome-level assembly of Trebouxia sp. A48 (member of T. decolorans species complex), the photobiont of Xanthoria parietina. 1/5 #lichen #alga #genomics
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Not surprising, but still disappointing.

Protests against Trump tariffs held at US-Canada border in Detroit, Windsor Demonstrators in Detroit and Windsor joined forces in a cross-border protest against President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada on Sunday.

Thanks to my neighbors willing to stand up & speak out! www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2...

What Vance is doing here is ENORMOUS disinformation. International students at the undergrad level typically pay full tuition, which subsidizes tuition for American students on financial aid by keeping tuition costs lower. At the grad level, domestic students are harder to recruit!

This works in a lot of bureaucracies! Simply refuse. I’ve seen departments NOT be dissolved, disastrous programs fizzle, whole sectors grind to a halt simply because a person with a tiny amount of power said “no!”

Contribution of vaccination to improved survival and health: modelling 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization Since 1974 substantial gains in childhood survival have occurred in every global region. We estimate that EPI has provided the single greatest contribution to improved infant survival over the past 50...

Nothing will kill more children than the ongoing decimation of CDC, NIH, and USAID work to lift vaccine uptake in the US and world.

Child survival rose 75% in the last 50 years. Vaccines account for 40% of that. Measles vax alone was 60% of the benefit. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

papers being torn apart

📜 How we remember matters. What happens when records become harder to access? OAH has launched the Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative to track changes in the availability of historical sources & their impact on public history.

🔎 Read about it: ow.ly/c9A950VgxWt

I'll correct this:

The government runs out of funding Friday at midnight, leaving Democrats to decide whether to help Republicans ACCELERATE DESTROYING THE COUNTRY or block the bill TO FORCE THEM TO NEGOTIATE.

CALLS ARE WORKING - it has bought us precious time, but we NEED to keep the pressure up.

Tomorrow is the cloture vote.

KEEP CALLING: (202) 224-3121 ☎️☎️☎️

Tell your Dem Senator to vote NO on Cloture and NO on the Republican spending bill.

Do NOT assume your Senator will be good on this. Trust me.

The thing about scientific research is that it’s one of the few national investments that’s a clear public good even if you entirely discount the actual ostensible point of it.

Public measles exposure at UWindsor Toldo Lancer Centre. #Windsor #UWindsor
Hoping this doesn't lead to a large outbreak or serious outcomes. mailchi.mp/wechu.org/po... (Gutting to know that measles can be eradicated ... was nearly eradicated. Instead, we have multiple outbreaks in 2025.)

sorry cancer patients, if you wanted to keep cancer research funding intact you should have sent your $5m cash payment to the President like all the smart corporations

48 Scientific Societies Representing Almost 100,000 Scientists Ask Congress to Protect the Future of Science 48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 scientists signed on to a letter asking Congress to protect the future of science

Today, a broad coalition of scientific professional societies who represent over 92,000 scientists are speaking out against the politicization and demonization of Federally funded science and government scientist jobs.

It was an honor to help the Union of Concerned Scientists with this! 🧪🌎

Email from SharePoint Online with subject "Head's up! We noticed that you recently deleted a large number of files from your OneDrive."

Hahahaha. I wonder how many of these I'll get?

Message from IT Services sent on Monday, with header "IMPORTANT INFORMATION, ACTION REQUIRED", letting me know of upcoming changes to OneDrive storage limits, and that my storage is full. I must take action to avoid disruption!

Over past few years, we've been encouraged to use OneDrive for all our storage, including Stream videos (that they wanted us to take out of Stream storage). I remember someone telling us "OneDrive storage is pretty much unlimited!"

We have about a month to get our OneDrive affairs in order.

These grants survived intense scientific competition and scrutiny by expert peer scientists. It’s a sham to suggest they are unworthy. Pure bigotry to revoke them.

DOGE recommends cuts to the FAA.

Hundreds of workers get fired, including those tasked with producing air traffic navigation maps.

Now Starlink is reportedly in line to take over a $2 billion contract to upgrade the nation's air traffic control systems.

See how this works?

This is extraordinary. BEFORE the pandemic the WIV tried to publish a paper that contained “Lineage 4”…which does NOT contain a precursor of SARS-CoV-2. The paper was withdrawn after some rejections. They hid NOTHING. I’ve gone over this multiple times. Amazing that this nonsense keeps coming up.

Gregg is a former Marine and Forest Service ranger. He's saved the lives of hikers dangling off a cliff or going through cardiac arrest, and he's bravely fought forest fires to save small rural towns.

100% of his salary is paid by WA state.

Elon fired him. Share his story.

Use This Script to Call Your Congressperson and Ask Them to Please God Just End It All Hello, office of [CONGRESSPERSON’S NAME]! This is [YOUR NAME] from [CITY OR TOWN]. I’m calling to ask about [CONGRESSPERSON]’s stance on simply put...

USE THIS SCRIPT TO CALL YOUR CONGRESSPERSON AND ASK THEM TO PLEASE GOD JUST END IT ALL (McSweeney’s) www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/use...