Alex Champagne

Watch Out!

I realize broad science-literacy problems cannot generally be solved just by shoving more facts at people but I really wish more people understood that the entire purpose and mechanism of a vaccine is to educate your OWN immune system, making it about the most "natural" medical intervention possible

Diabetic Man With Gene-Edited Cells Produces His Own Insulin—No Transplant Drugs Required A proof-of-concept study finds that donated insulin-producing cells can be genetically modified to avoid provoking the recipient's immune system.

Diabetic Man With Gene-Edited Cells Produces His Own Insulin—No Transplant Drugs Required

A proof-of-concept study finds that donated insulin-producing cells can be genetically modified to avoid provoking the recipient's immune system.

gizmodo.com/diabetic-man...

New executive order puts all grants under political control All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.

New executive order puts all research grants under political control

"...all federal science research would need to be approved by a political appointee who may have no expertise in the relevant areas, and the research can be canceled at any time"

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

say it again:

4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities

demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

This desert beetle runs to cool off After a sprint, the temperature of the beetle Onymacris plana drops. Efficient running, a body built for cooling and a little bit of lift all help.

This paper was published 40 years after the original fieldwork was conducted. It’s never too late to share cool research!

When she was just 26 Florence Merriam wrote the first guide to birding with binoculars in 1889. And she slipped in this incredible feminist gem:

Yesterday the Pew Research Center released a report based on the internet browsing activity of 900 U.S. adults which found that Google users who encounter an Al summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than use 's who don't encounter an Al summary. To be precise, only [my emphasis] 1 percent of users who encountered an Al summary clicked the link to the page Google is summarizing.

Hey is it bad if google AI search results stop people from leaving google dot com 99% of the time? All our news and information creators can survive just fine with one percent of their previous search traffic right? I’m sure it’s fine. www.404media.co/googles-ai-i...

Perfect representation of scientific papers. 😅

Table from Friedlingstein et al, Global Carbon Budget 2024 Emissions 1750-2023 - fossil CO2 emissions 490 +- 25; land-use change emissions 255 +- 75; total emissions 745 +- 80 (in billion tons of carbon) Source: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/20113/

Did you know that since 1750, land-use change is responsible for about *one-third* of total CO2 emissions released to the atmosphere?

About 255 billion tons of carbon, or nearly *a trillion tons of CO2e*, have been emitted.

That's basically the ghosts of *2 billion hectares of forests* in the sky.

Read news, op-eds, and analysis, not AI summaries. Create your own art (even if it's messy) or hire an artist to do it. Do your own homework. Talk to people, not chatbots. Keep your thinking and skills sharp and cherish our messy humanity. That's the new punk rock.

Too many favorites to name, but these are two candidates.

Happy to see a great collaborator and a great human featured here!

Buzzzzzzzzz Something to actually do about insect decline

"To our untrained eye, a corn field looks more 'natural' than an array of solar panels. But a corn field is a biological desert ... Put up some solar panels, and add some plants that only need to be mowed once a year or so (sometimes with sheep) and you see an explosion of life."

Definitely a haunted burrow.

Future ID mark to separate Glaucous-winged Gulls from Glaucous-winged X Western Hybrids: Does it ride garbage trucks?

The black morph of the Eastern Gray Squirrel is most prevalent in Michigan and Ontario (50-60%) so a black Gray Squirrel showing up at a Tigers game is a uniquely Detroit experience!

two men standing next to a bunk bed with the words so much room for activities above them Alt: A scene from the movie Stepbrothers with two men standing next to a bunk bed with the words so much room for activities above them.

Me after cleaning my office at the end of the semester.

Saw lots of birds on my first trip to Montrose Point in Chicago! Seeing warblers like this Canada Warbler down so low is such a treat!

The Cardinals knew about the new Pope first, but the Yellow-legged Gulls were second.

my inner monologue as i go birding: "people overlook gray catbirds but they're so cute. maybe my favorite bird? oh a hermit thrush! they're so round. that might be my favorite bird. where's that damn cape may warbler singing from? not my favorite bird. LOOK A KINGBIRD!! is that my favorite bird?" 🪶

My pet gar that I donated to Shedd Aquarium would recognize me and swim over to say hi when I visited her exhibit ❤️🐠

A rare hybrid gar, I raised her since she was 2 inches long, and had to re-home her when I moved to Chicago. I was happy I could visit her in her new home!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Isn’t every day Earth Day? Cooking for the climate, counting Earths, and tracking time in nature

If everyone lived like we do in Canada or the U.S., we’d need 5 planets to support us all. Australians & Koreans would each require more than 4 Earths. We are depleting nature’s ability to support life about 70% faster than it is able to regenerate. That's why I think every day should be Earth Day!

a blue dumpster is on fire and smoke is coming out of it with a sign on the side that says " no smoking " ALT: a blue dumpster is on fire and smoke is coming out of it with a sign on the side that says " no smoking "

🧪 Today’s Science News:

1) NSF starts sending out grant cancelations.

2) WTF NSF Guidance on Broader Impacts

3) covid.gov

4) NIH budget slash leaked.

Did I miss anything?

The NPR, PBS Grift Has Ripped Us Off for Too Long For years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which spread

As a biologist, I'm appalled at pride the White House takes in willful ignorance.

In yesterday's executive order about NPR and PBS, their first example of "the trash that passes for `news' at NPR and PBS" is the statement that "banana slugs are hermaphrodites."

But this is unequivocal fact.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

For all those who claim we’d be hurting wildlife by replacing cropland with solar panels.

🐦 Do some birds have #PrettyPrivilege?
💫 New paper: doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2846
We show that ~half the variation in research effort on 293 bird species in US+Canada is explained by just 3 factors: 1)visual appeal, 2)range size, & 3)# of universities w/in ranges. What we did & why it matters:🧵

Started watching The Residence on Netflix, and I am loving the birding angle - and accuracy!

The fact that the national media has been silent about attacks on public education is infuriating. We are your tax dollars at work. Our mandate is to serve. We’ve already seen decades of cuts in state appropriations designed to undermine public education precisely because of who we serve.