Michaela Martinez

Sonoran dogs >>>>>>>>>>>

The indomitable Butte, Montana - High Country News The misunderstood, often-maligned mining town helps itself.

Butte, Montana residents persist despite a century of setbacks.

NC Court of Appeals gives over 60,000 challenged voters 15 days to prove eligibility The majority wrote that, even though they have the authority to completely throw out the contested ballots, they decided to instead mandate a cure period for most of the challenged voters.

If you are an NC resident and voted in November, please check if your name or the names of any family areone of the 60K votes being challenged. If so, confirm ASAP with your Board of Elections. You only have two weeks.

The website to check linked in the reply.

www.newsobserver.com/news/politic...

Press photo of Taylor Dearden as Mel King on The Pitt, she's wearing a visor with magnifying glasses and looking up at the ceiling and smiling.

On a Mission to Heal Gila Monsters After years in Big Pharma, a chemist pivoted to help save the species that made Ozempic possible.

For my fellow infectious disease and desert nerds 👇🏻

Trump policies spark fears of brain drain, threatening to undermine U.S. dominance in biomedicine A torrent of Trump administration policies is alarming scientists who fear the current climate is weakening researchers’ resolve to stick with careers in academic science.

The Trump administration's cuts in science funding will likely lead to an exodus of scientific expertise, the research community warns. "That beacon of research that the US was for several decades — it’s just not going to be there.” www.statnews.com/2025/02/12/t...

🧪 A $4B cut to to NIH funding will have a seismic impact on science & medicine in the US. What's at stake? Our competitive edge in biomedical innovation, access to high quality health care (including for kids w/cancer), local economies...It's a big deal. My latest
@opinion.bloomberg.com (🎁 link):

What are indirect research costs? A quick explainer in light of NIH’s sweeping policy change National Institutes of Health slashed overhead costs allowed under its grants to match private foundations, but the two don't account for expenses in the same way.

On Friday evening, the Trump administration slashed NIH grant "indirect costs" in a change set to massively undercut university & hospital budgets on Monday.

@statnews.com explains what indirect costs are, how this will decrease American scientific dominance, & whether this is illegal:
🧪🧬🧫

I need 10 seasons of The Pitt and I need them now.

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see

Bit of a different landscape for today’s morning run

Bill Belichick did you know you can get a Cook Out tray with two quesadillas and then order a quesadilla for each of your two sides and then swap your drink for a quesadilla? So five quesadillas for the price of one tray. It’s an incredible deal

U.S. moves to add monarch butterfly to the endangered species list The major U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal would declare the iconic species as threatened, with federal scientists saying the species is on the decline.

U.S. officials moved Tuesday to protect the monarch, an iconic orange and black butterfly famous for its marathon migration across North America, under the Endangered Species Act.

It’s not AZ but this will do

To say: my profile pic is a LiDAR image showing the river-ghosts—historical meanders—of the Lower Mississippi.
Water, wandering, wilfully.
It’s by Daniel Coe, who has deep-mapped the pasts of many rivers.
See more of his work at dancoecarto.com/work
& below.
What wild, wondrous beings rivers are.

I have something to write that’s hard so I read a lot of books and articles to get ready to write and anyway my garage is now organized for winter.

Ed Yong · Videos · XOXO Avid birder and Pulitzer-winning science journalist Ed Yong built a devoted audience for his deeply empathetic coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic, while his two New York Times bestsellers, ...

My XOXO talk is online. It's a v. personal look at what it was like to cover the pandemic, live through it, be broken by it, and heal from it. I talk about my approach to journalism, a 7-part code for being a public figure, why I left the Atlantic, and a lot more. xoxofest.com/2024/videos/...

Tatiana Segura Named National Academy of Inventors Senior Member | Duke Pratt School of Engineering The NAI recognizes scholars who are rising stars in their field and are adept at translating their research into commercial success

Duke BME has a stellar community of biomaterials experts, including @seguralab.bsky.social. Her team develops biomaterials that can harness the body’s own ability to repair itself. One of the applications of this work is in the brain, potentially limiting issues caused by strokes.

Decoding the Circuitry of the Primate Brain | Duke Pratt School of Engineering Marc Sommer develops tools and tactics to illuminate neural pathways across the brain

If you need help deciphering the circuitry of the brain, @neurocircuits.bsky.social is your guy. He helped make the body's most complex organ a little easier to understand:

Emma Chory: Using Robotics to Speed Up Cellular Evolution | Duke Pratt School of Engineering New faculty member Emma Chory combines evolution, cellular engineering and robotics to advance basic science and identify new targets for cancer therapies

Duke BME's been growing at a rapid pace over the years, and that means I get to meet new researchers and learn all about their work. Here's a profile I wrote for @chorye.bsky.social where I learned all about directed evolution:

Dunn Receives NSF CAREER Award to Improve Biosignal Algorithms | Duke Pratt School of Engineering Competitive five-year grant will help Jessilyn Dunn address long-standing issues in how biomedical data for wearable devices is collected and studied

I've had the pleasure of working with @drjessilyn.bsky.social and her @duke-big-ideas-lab.bsky.social to cover several publications and announcements from her lab. She's changed the way I think about the biometric data I collect on my smartwatch:

Silkworms Help Grow Better Organ-Like Tissues in Labs | Duke Pratt School of Engineering A new ultrathin silk membrane for organ-on-a-chip platforms helps cells communicate and grow into functional tissues used for research

@stemcellengineer.bsky.social and her team developed a silk-based, ultra thin membrane that helps researchers to better control the growth and function of the key cells and tissues of any organ, enabling them to more accurately model a wide range of diseases and test therapeutics:

It's Easier Being Green | Duke Pratt School of Engineering How a collaboration spanning departments and institutions brought clarity to the mystery of glassfrog transparency.

"It's Easier Being Green" follows Junjie Yao, Sönke Johnsen, Carlos Taboada and Jesse Delia as they work together to uncover how glassfrogs hide their blood and become transparent. The article was recently recognized with a CASE writing award:

Hi! I handle marketing and communications for Duke BME, which means I get to work with very talented faculty, staff and students and share stories about their work. Since we're doing introductions, here are a few of the stories I've worked on over the years:

Hi 👋