Cameron Stern

C.baccatum var. pendulum 🌱🌶️

C.lanceolatum 🌱🌶️

I wish people cared about research more - this is devastating, and it should be a bigger story.

I am thrilled to share the 2nd chapter of my PhD with @adsteinbrenner.bsky.social In collaboration with @tiszapatrick we demonstrated that the LRR-RLP INR is the missing molecular link between caterpillar recognition and predatory wasp recruitment in the field. A thread 1/6

Kareem Carr standing outside Harvard School of Public Health moments after his successful PhD defense. He is smiling, dressed in a dark-patterned sport coat and dress pants, leaning casually against a railing. There is a bright red sign over his right shoulder that reads “Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health”.

Happy to announce I just defended my dissertation at Harvard and I’m now a PhD.

Mary K. Gaillard, 86, Physicist Who Probed the Subatomic Universe, Dies

Mary K Gaillard, a theorist who had a knack for telling experimental physicists where to look, died in her home on May 23 at 86.

Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley:

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...

The administration continues to erode confidence in childhood vaccination designed to keep kids safe and healthy. The AAP will continue to ensure that parents and pediatricians have access to accurate information around vaccinations that protect kids.

www.aap.org/en/news-room...

The CDC just released their latest data on kindergarten vaccination rates. Fortunately, most parents vaccinate their children. Every parent, policymaker, and public health leader in the country should be coming together to increase access to vaccines.
www.aap.org/en/news-room...

UMich cancels doctoral epidemiology program admissions for 2026 The University of Michigan School of Public Health will not admit a 2025-2026 admissions cycle cohort to its PhD in Epidemiologic Sciences program.

The University of Michigan’s Department of Epidemiology, one of the best IMO, will not be admitting any PhD students for 2026 due to funding concerns brought about by the Trump Administration.

North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species Declines in North American birds are driven not by rare species vanishing but by sharp losses among formerly common species.

🚨 First PhD chapter is out! My work thus far, with @andy2dobson.bsky.social

We found that formerly common species have declined the fastest, on average.

📄 North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Senate appropriators approve Labor-HHS bill with NIH bump The vote and lawmaker comments show that most senators aren't going along with the White House's proposed 40% budget cut to NIH.

BIG NEWS:

“Senate appropriators on Thursday approved an FY26 Labor-HHS bill that included a slight bump in funding for the NIH, with a strong 26–3 bipartisan vote.”

Thank you to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on both sides of the aisle!

www.axios.com/pro/health-c...

The NIH budget will INCREASE by $400 million — not slashed by 40%, as Trump proposed — according to a proposal by Senate appropriators, says Sen Murray.

"Some have asked if there will even be an NIH by [2029]. The commmittee's resounding message is yes—Congress has your back", she says.

NIH wants to hear from you. No really.

Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

🚨 Names of scientists willing to help respond to the DOE climate report linked below are being collected.

Report: www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...

If you would like to help, fill out the form linked in the quoted post below. 🧪

DOE climate report response form We are collecting names to assemble a writing team to respond to the DOE climate working group report. If you'd like to contribute, enter your info below. At this point, there is no guarantee what we'll do (if anything), but we want to keep our options open by collecting names. If you have any further questions, feel free to email me. We are primarily looking for Ph.D. scientists at universities or government labs in appropriate fields. I realize that this will exclude some qualified people and I apologize, but we felt this was necessary for a variety of reasons.

🚨 If you're interested in working on a coordinated response to the DOE climate report, please enter your info on this google form 🚨

Please RT this so as many people see it as possible.

forms.gle/BL9xUAfRxA...

Exactly what I was hoping folks would do… sign up if you have expertise!

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut Senators from both parties endorsed a $400 million increase to the budget of the National Institutes of Health on Thursday

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut www.statnews.com/2025/07/31/n...

Abrupt Pause, Unpause of Grants Doesn’t End NIH Funding Woe As senators object to President Trump’s proposal to gut the National Institutes of Health’s budget for next fiscal year, questions linger over what’s happening with the money it’s currently supposed t...

“[the reported freeze] just reinforced the current mood among researchers.”

AAAS’ Joanne Carney, spoke to @insidehighered.com on the impact of slowing NIH grant disbursement with the end of the fiscal year near & little to no time to spend appropriated funds: www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Pretty, but toxic 🤢

Same plant… summer!

Actual orchid stem with numerous hooded flowers with green stripes and translucent white

Between a crazy work schedule and wet winter weather, there’s been little time to get outside recently

So here’s a magnificent Banded Greenhood orchid (Pterostylis vittata) from this time a few years ago in the Perth Hills.
#orchids #ozflora #wildoz #bloomscrolling #nativeplants

Jasmonate-induced prey response in the carnivorous plant Drosera capensis Drosera capensis is a carnivorous plant native to South Africa. Central to its prey capture and digestive processes is a complex array of biochemical processes triggering the production of both enzyme...

Here's the latest preprint from my group's Drosera capensis project. We investigated what the plant can upregulate from a jasmonic acid signal alone (digestive enzymes) and what it needs raw materials from prey to make (flavonoids, lipids).

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How Ben & Jerry’s is recycling food waste into energy It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but diverting food waste from the landfill and converting it into electricity has become a real thing. William Brangham visited Ben & Jerry’s Vermont ice ...

Love this story on anaerobic digesters being used by Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont

Ice cream that’s helping to keep our planet cool 🍦

@pbsnews.org

www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

A geep, a sheep and goat hybrid

Sheep and goats both belong to taxonomic Family 'Bovidae', with sheep in genus 'Ovis' and goats in genus 'Capra'. The two are often raised together on farms.

And very, very rarely, they can interbreed to produce hybrids called GEEP, as in Butterfly (shown), born 2014.

(📷: Priscilla Motola)

Unfollow health and wellness influencers who regularly invoke that the products they sell are science-based, yet haven't used their large platforms to raise awareness about the proposed NIH/NSF budget cuts.

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End — The Atlantic America’s run as the premiere techno-superpower may be over.

“Sagdeev’s most talented colleagues were starting to slip out of the country… Many of them went to the U.S. At the time, America was the most compelling destination for scientific talent in the world. It would remain so until earlier this year.” 🧪 apple.news/AflXtTv8rTVe...

bruce lee is shown with the words always a student written below him ALT: bruce lee is shown with the words always a student written below him

Precarious as it may be financially, I *really* love where my uncareer is taking me. I get to work with some very cool startups on projects that push me to the edge of my knowledge and learn so much. Im basically crowdsourcing my grad school, lol.

Starting some snapdragon seeds in vitro. Conveniently larger than the bore of a 1000uL pipette tip so sterilization and washing can happen without spindowns. Using my favorite bleach, NaDCC from water purification tablets. Diluted to 100mg of active chlorine. Plated in MS agar.

I am, in general, uninterested in sportsball

Much appreciated. Give some of these folks a follow
go.bsky.app/LQZYUdE