Clark Gray

Congrats, Raleigh! After the warmest July on record 🥵 (since 1887), you followed up with the coldest high temps 🥶 on record for the first week of August!

As Michael Mann said: the US is becoming a petrostate, while China becomes an electrostate.
@michaelemann.bsky.social

I finally got promoted to full professor.

In Guinea, the United States helped beat back malaria. Now, the disease is set to soar Foreign aid cuts are expected to cause a rise in malaria cases and deaths across sub-Saharan Africa

I traveled to Guinea to find out what U.S. budget cuts mean for the fight against malaria. Here's my story in @science.org - with powerful photography by Marta Moreiras. www.science.org/content/arti...

Been there! Had to tell IRB that I needed a full review, which they did.

What a glorious beast. #FungiFriends

The White House is taking new steps to undermine every international student at our universities.

It has approved a new rule restricting student visas to 4 years max. That's not long enough for PhD students, or about half of undergrads, to finish their degree.

Likely to enter force within days.

The Trump administration intends to incinerate $9.7 million in already-purchased birth control in Belgium after USAID shut down, at a cost to the U.S. of more than $160,000 in transport and incineration fees. European governments are still hoping to stop it. nyti.ms/4ma5iaa

(i) Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities. (ii) Discretionary awards shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate: (A) racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation; (B) denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic; (C) illegal immigration; or (D) any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values. (iii) All else being equal, preference for discretionary awards should be given to institutions with lower indirect cost rates. (iv) Discretionary grants should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players. Research grants should be awarded to a mix of recipients likely to produce immediately demonstrable results and recipients with the potential for potentially longer-term, breakthrough results, in a manner consistent with the funding opportunity announcement.

The newest executive order makes major changes to federal grantmaking, including additional review by presidential appointees and prioritizing applications with lower indirect cost rates. To the extent that federal funding remains, this is a big deal.

National Academies Launch Fast-Track Review of Latest Evidence for Whether Greenhouse Gas Emissions Endanger Public Health and Welfare WASHINGTON – A new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study will review the latest scientific evidence on whether greenhouse gas emissions are reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare in the U.S. The committee conducting the study will focus on evidence gathered by the scientific community since 2009 – when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first declared greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health. Any conclusions in the committee’s report will describe supporting evidence, the level of confidence in a conclusion, and areas of disagreement or unknowns. The EPA recently announced that it intends to rescind its “endangerment finding,” a statement issued by the agency in 2009 that found that greenhouse gas emissions do pose risks to public health and welfare. The National Academies study will be completed and publicly released in September, in time to inform EPA’s decision process. “It is critical that federal policymaking is informed by the best available scientific evidence,” said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “Decades of climate research and data have yielded expanded understanding of how greenhouse gases affect the climate. We are undertaking this fresh examination of the latest climate science in order to provide the most up-to-date assessment to policymakers and the public.” The committee will be led by Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biology and public affairs, emeritus, and former president, Princeton University. The committee will also include experts in public health, extreme weather, climate modeling, agriculture, infrastructure, and other areas. The committee has issued a request for information to the public and scientific community. The study is being self-funded by the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academ…

interesting! I note that this is self funded, meaning that the NAS is paying for the report. I wonder how this will go over with the administration.

Major climate-GDP study under review after facing challenge A blockbuster study published in top science journal Nature last year warned that unchecked climate change could slash global GDP by a staggering 62 percent by century's end, setting off alarm bells…

Important data errors discovered in a 2024 @nature.com paper on climate change impacts on GDP. Corrections imply substantially smaller economic costs (20% of global GDP instead of 60%) by 2100. Four of my take-aways:

www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Some senior leadership reshuffles announced today at NIH. Head of peer review division Noni Byrnes is out after 25 years at the agency.

Kate Klimczak, NIH's legislative policy director, is also out.

You mean an AI summary of the reading? IDK. For writing assignments, I make them workshop a draft in class and use specific data sources.

Inside UNC-Chapel Hill’s Scrapped Plan to Open a Michigan Campus UNC-Chapel Hill’s “Prometheus” project explored purchasing Kettering University, an engineering school in Flint.

UNC-Chapel Hill's “Prometheus” project explored purchasing Kettering University, an engineering school in Flint, to speed up development of a new college of applied sciences.

From @themhartman.bsky.social for @theassemblync.bsky.social

www.theassemblync.com/education/hi...

Low stakes quizzes and assigning students to present the paper in class.

"We were able to flag 45 PLOS ONE editors due to the anomalous rate at which they accepted retracted or PubPeer commented publications or had their submissions handled by other flagged editors."

Provost: UNC-CH Chancellor Signed Off On Plan To Delay Tenure Chris Clemens wrote in an email obtained by The Assembly that Chancellor Lee Roberts agreed to delay tenure votes for financial reasons.

BREAKING: @theassemblync.bsky.social obtained an email in which UNC-Chapel Hill's ex-provost said Chancellor Lee Roberts agreed to the Board of Trustees’ controversial move to delay tenure votes for financial reasons.

From me & @themhartman.bsky.social

www.theassemblync.com/education/hi...

A July 26 SkySat image from Planet Labs showing a large crowd of Palestinians visible around an aid convoy in southern Gaza. There are enough people in the crowd to make it very easily visible in the satellite imagery. There's a large amount of destruction in the area and an IDF outpost is nearby.

A massive crowd of Palestinians surrounding aid trucks is visible in July 26 SkySat imagery from @planet.com near the so-called Morag Corridor at 31.3104, 34.2822 in southern Gaza.

July 26 video from Ibrahim Alsallout on Instagram showed the crowd from the ground: www.instagram.com/p/DMkmVvNo6n...

Postdoc opportunity! 📣

IBES seeks candidates for one or more distinguished Voss postdoc fellowships in any field relevant to environmental research. Appointments start July 2026 with an expected term of two years.

Learn more & submit step-one proposals by Sept 12: ibes.brown.edu/opportunitie...

"Knuffman said UNC-CH would reduce spending by $4.8 million for academic centers and institutes and by $2 million on “low-performing” academic programs."

"Beyond a $3.5 million reduction in nonresident graduate tuition waivers, Knuffman said the mini budget does not include big changes to UNC-CH."

#durhamnc folks, someone in the city/county has been infected w the West Nile virus, which transmitted by mosquitoes. Important: It's not transmitted between people.
DEET is gross, but right now it needs to be your friend.
@durhamhealthnc.bsky.social
dconc.gov/DurhamCo-New...

Soliciting paper submissions for a special issue in Spatial Demography (Springer Nature) on #climate and #health! More info here: link.springer.com/collections/....
🛟📈📉🧪 #geosky #AcademicSky #gis #spatial #population #popsky #demography #healthequity #climatechange #sustainability #weather #medsky

A New Approach to Measuring Extreme Heat :: North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies By Mark Essig A black globe thermometer (center) and a humidity and temperature probe (left) at the NC State Climate Office’s ECONet station at Jockeys Ridge State Park. Photo courtesy of the North…

Wet-bulb globe temperature offers the best metric for heat stress but requires specialized instruments. NCICS’s Kyle Wodzicki and colleagues offer a fresh approach—and find alarming evidence of extreme heat trends in the Southeast US. @ncsco.bsky.social @kathiedello.bsky.social bit.ly/ncicswbgt2025

Global Hunger Is Falling Slightly—But Food Remains Too Expensive for Billions — The Food Archive Every July, the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report drops — and for anyone tracking global hunger, diet affordability, or food policy, it’s essential reading. Produced ...

Global hunger is declining — a rare bit of good news. But food is still unaffordable for billions. I broke down the latest @fao.org SOFI 2025 report findings in my latest post on The Food Archive.

🔗 www.thenutritionarchive.com/blog/2025/7/...

Another semester, another moment to thank that guy from Rice University who made that syllabus maker thing. I love you

wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

Some journals are claiming that you need to pay big $$ for gold open access to comply with NIH's new public access policy. FYI that is total bs. You can comply by depositing the Accepted Manuscript into PubMed Central on the Date of Publication without embargo. Pass it on.

Pursuant to the North Carolina Public Records Law, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 132‑1 et seq., and in accordance with the implementing policies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (“UNC”), I respectfully request access to the following public records: All syllabuses, lecture slides, course materials, or presentation materials presented to students containing any of the following search terms, whether in titles, body text, footnotes, metadata, or hyperlinks: “diversity and inclusion” “DEIA” “DEI” “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging” “DEIB” “gender identity” “racial preference” “ESG” “organizational equity” “intersectionality” “anti-racism” “critical race theory” “LGBTQ+” “transgender” “cisgender” “gender ideology” “white privilege” “privilege walk” “cultural humility” “equity audit” “restorative justice” “racial equity” “implicit bias” “microaggressions” “inclusive pedagogy” “identity-based oppression” “systems of oppression” “queer” “non-binary” “sexuality”

If you're curious about the FOIA requests to colleges & universities that are looking to weed out "woke," here's the request that UNC got earlier this month. nextrequest.unc.edu/requests/25-...

at its meeting this week, the unc board of trustees will discuss a vision for a new colosseum at carolina north big enough to host nfl games

bot.unc.edu/wp-content/u...

Spider Builds Fake Spider Decoy The new spider, thought to be a member of the genus Cyclosa, might build these decoys as part of a defense mechanism to confuse or distract predators

“Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, a spider is at work building an elaborate, fake decoy of itself. In its web, it busily goes to working crafting its doppelgänger out of leaves, debris and dead prey insects…”

#scicomm
#sensoryecology
#falsesignal

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/s...
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