Clark Gray

Best piece I've seen about scientific funding in this new regime. National Institute on Aging only funded 5.8% of new apps in 2025 compared to 15.8% in 2024. It's not the budget. Project 2025 has rooted institutional changes that are making it impossible to do science www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/u...

Excited to announce Groundsource - an open-source dataset of historic flood events! This has easily been one of the coolest projects I've worked on recently!

Thread 🧵 for details and all relevant links. 1/n

Research Data Analyst in Dean of Research, Stanford, California, United States The Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) is seeking a research data analyst (RDA) to contribute to several academic research projects...

We at Stanford EchoLab are hiring pre-docs for the coming year. You'll work in teams on fun projects and very likely be co-authors on submitted work. Please apply! Link here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/researc...

This is a cliff on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

It's about 1 km tall.

If you jumped from the top, it would take you 47 minutes to reach the bottom, and you'd probably be OK.

Seeking lightning talk proposals!

We’re hosting a half-day event on infectious disease & extreme weather and are inviting 5-minute talks from students, researchers, practitioners, and community members working in extreme weather, health, and disaster-related fields.

Apply: buff.ly/MrYtnMv

The World's collective disaster memory must be preserved

While mere numbers of people killed/affected by etc disasters do not tell the full story, EM-DAT is a critical resource for so many of us. It now faces the risk of termination due to the absence of sustainable funding following the dismantling of USAID. Please sign:
openletter.earth/the-worlds-c...

Planting trees and bushes on smallholder farms in Africa leads to great increases in farm productivity and higher living standards, from Geoffrey Heal, Claudio Rizzi, and Simon Xu www.nber.org/papers/w34929

We're recruiting a new cohort of postdocs focusing on health disparities research for our NIH-funded T32.

pophealth.wisc.edu/health-dispa...

Interested candidates should feel free to reach out!

White Knight is enjoying the sunrise

11/

So why is changing WASH behaviour so difficult today?

We speculate that high levels of child mortality in the past provided very strong incentives for people to adopt better WASH behaviours.

However, child mortality is far lower today, weakening these incentives.

We are honored to have played a part in data preparation for this excellent resource! pdp.unfpa.org#/ @ipums.bsky.social

Are you interested in complex social-ecological systems, pedagogy, sustainability education, and working with bright students and engaged faculty? I'm hiring a postdoc for a cool new initiative! More Info & Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31747

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

The U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office.

A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies. Read more: https://scim.ag/4boPkq8

📣𝗣𝗿𝗲-𝗘𝗣𝗖 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 🇮🇹
𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆: 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲
📅June 3rd
🗺️Bologna
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_events_6123/calendar_1921/climate_demography_population_dynamics_in_a_changing_climate_15101

Risto Emilio Zagheni European Association for Population Studies

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Applications are open for the 2026 Peking University–IIASA Postdoctoral Program (2-year fellowship). Open to postdocs of all nationalities interested in systems analysis and interdisciplinary research.
📅 Apply by 10 April 2026. @pku1898.bsky.social
iiasa.ac.at/opportunitie...

#demography #fertility

📢We updated Short-Term Fertility Fluctuations #STFF data series!
✔️Monthly births for 47 countries and areas
✔️Seasonally & calendar adjusted monthly births & TFRs for 32 countries

Interested in short-term fertility trends?😉👇
humanfertility.org/Data/STFF

Fuqua should focus on preparing students, not surveilling them Transcripts are fed to an in-house AI system that "objectively" grades participation by assessing comment relevance and whether statements spur conversation. While framed as innovation, this transform...

"Fuqua classrooms are equipped with cameras and microphones. Under the new system, students would check in by scanning NFC tags at their seats. This would be used to ascertain the exact position of speakers. Transcripts are then fed to an in-house AI system that "objectively" grades participation."

👀 new storm events database site at @noaa.gov , and it's not terrible!

Go check out the beta site and break it!

www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/storm...

Heads up US demographers. Our main NIH study sections (SSPA/SSPB) are being disbanded. I don’t know what this means. public.csr.nih.gov/StudySection...

What would you think if a hypothetical biology professor at a hypothetical public university in a state starting with an N, who was involved in helping organize a Stand Up for Science Rally this week, and got a visit from their hypothetical Department chair and... 1/2

7/10

4/4
@rdbressler.bsky.social, @annapappp.bsky.social, Luis Sarmiento, Jeffrey G. Shrader & Andrew J. Wilson find that #climate vulnerability isn’t just about where you live – it’s about what you do for work. #MortalitySpecialIssue

Read the full article here: doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

But multi-year awards are capped at last year's rate, so success rates will continue to be low 😢

Jobs | Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Join our team!

We're hiring!

Our Climate & Health Postdoc Fellow will advance research on the health benefits of climate mitigation and adaptation activities, and contribute to case studies, economic evaluation and modeling efforts of specific climate actions.

Learn more and apply: buff.ly/aGbLbU3

Another fun one!:

Adrian Tchaikovsky
Martha Wells
Anne Leckie
Ursula Vernon
Jeff VanderMeer

Another photo from last night's aurora show.

The decline of child stunting in 122 countries: a systematic review of child growth studies since the 19th century Introduction Child stunting, a measure of malnutrition, is a major global health challenge affecting 148.1 million children in 2022. Global stunting rates have declined from 47.2% in 1985 to 22.3% in ...

Eradicating child stunting was a central feature of the modern health transition. A new paper reviews 923 child growth studies in 122 countries 1814-2016 to show massive decline in child stunting in the 20th century even in hi income countries & surprising heterogeneity in the regional trajectories.

Temperature and sex ratios at birth | PNAS Human sex ratios at birth (SRBs) shape population composition and are closely linked to maternal health and gender discrimination. In the context o...

"We show that high temperatures in the nine months before birth are negatively associated with male births in sub-Saharan Africa and India. The exposure timing demonstrates that ambient heat can increase prenatal mortality in early pregnancy, particularly among males"

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Do disaster-relief cash transfers trap people in risky areas, or help them adapt? Disaster relief can discourage people from adapting to future disasters – for example, by reducing incentives to relocate. But in low-income settings, cash relief can also ease liquidity constraints and enable adaptation. Evidence from Pakistan’s 2010 floods shows that both of these forces exist but that they offset each other, so that cash relief does not cause more people to stay in disaster-prone areas.

🆕 Do disaster-relief cash transfers trap people in risky areas, or help them adapt?

Today on VoxDev, Muhammad Bin Khalid (Harvard) & Martin Mattsson (NUS) discuss how disaster relief enabled climate adaptation in Pakistan: https://ow.ly/XAgU50YiFE7