That is even cooler!
15.02.2026 20:43
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That is even cooler!
That’s a really interesting observation - these are still “pelagic” organisms, yes? So maybe there is some complex relationship between size and the presence and depth of an oxy/chemocline in the water column?
However, it does seem some blue states, such as CA, NY, and WA, had significantly higher-than-median (4.6) rates of terminations per R1 uni. Disclaimer: termination data is from GrantWatch, and I am a geochemist, not a social or political scientist. Make of the data what you will!
Scatter plot showing the number of R1 Universities in each state (x-axis) vs the number of grant terminations by the Trump admin (y-axis). Each state is colored by relative vote share (more Blue = more Democratic; more Red = more Republican) in the 2024 pres election. Dashed line shows median rate of grants terminated per R1 univeristy (4.6) as reported in GrantWatch.
The map, however, doesn't necessarily tell the full story. If we scale the terminations to the number of R1 universities in each state (Data from Carnegie) the termination numbers make a bit more sense - states with more R1 unis (who presumably received the lions share) had more grants terminated.
For example, Texas is a dark red, indicating many grant terminations, and a heavily republican vote share in the 2024 Election). Termination data from GrantWatch; Vote data scraped from Wikipedia.
Each State fill color corresponds to the number of NSF grants terminated under the Trump administration (intensity of color), and the relative vote share for Democrats and Republicans in the 2024 presidential election (Blue = more democratic; Red = more republican; purple = similar vote shares).
Map of the united states with each state having a fill color that corresponds both to the number of NSF grants terminated under the Trump administration (intensity of color), and the relative vote share for Democrats and Republicans in the 2024 presidential election (Blue = more democratic; Red = more republican; purple = similar vote shares). For example, Texas is a dark red, indicating many grant terminations, and a heavyily republican vote share in the 2024 election). Termination data from GrantWatch; Vote data scraped from Wikipedia.
Another week of our lab groups #TidyTuesday on a Wednesday. This week, one of the students selected a somewhat depressing data set - National Science Foundation Grant Terminations under the Trump Administration with data from GrantWatch. This was my contribution:
Awesome!
I am glad you enjoy it!
Yes! At least within the database we used all spells that were classified a “sight” range type were of the illusion school.
And yes, the whole lab group participated, though I don’t know that any of them put theirs up online or not. We use it as an exercise to for the group to learn R coding.
A little late on the upload, but last month's lab group #TidyTuesday used the Dungeons and Dragons spells dataset. My contribution takes a look at how different schools of magic are distributed across different character classes and different "range types".
Ha! Well I’m sure there are some people at NASA who could answer that, and there may be some astrobiologists who would be good candidates! I more meant great people doing great work, on this planet or otherwise
Know any stellar organic geochemists? Nominate them for an GS-OGD award!
The Treibs medal is a lifetime achievement, late career award and is very organic geochem focused.
The Hayes award is mid-career and is more inclusive of broader stable isotope geochemistry, and biogeochemistry.
I think the unfortunate reality is that there are just a ton of really good people on the market, which means places can be picky. They can bring 3-5 (or 7 in one case) people to campus and have them all be great fits, and then take the person who covers a specific niche best.
Or if your brand is “too” interdisciplinary. Having been lucky enough to have a few interviews for fairly different sub fields (modern env geochem to geobiology) it’s always ended with not being [bio/geo/applied/etc]-enough for the vision of the position.
Check out this great write up of our field campaign out on Seneca lake in the @nytimes.com ! With @erinhassett.bsky.social.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/n...
Our research on Seneca Lake has been featured in the New York Times! Check it out! @benuveges.bsky.social @nytimes.com
Cool PhD opportunity at Uni Bern to work with Petra Zahajska on her Ambizione project Pixel2Paleo, creating high resolution pigment and lipid biomarker marker records from lake sediments 🧪. Apply by Dec. 2:
www.eag.org/wp-content/u...
New co-author paper out today in @pnas.org led by the fantastic Dr. Lubna Shawar!
Lubna breathes new life into the sponge sterol hypothesis with her meticulous organic geochemistry, and the ID of two new sponge-derived C31 Steranes in ~600 Myr rocks. Check it out! 🧪⚒️
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Had a great week out on Seneca lake taking samples to test some ideas about the cause of the mysterious Seneca Drums (aka Guns)!
Aside from the “cool factor” of getting to investigate a local legend I grew up hearing about, there are Environmental and water quality implications of the work too.
A new semester means a new round of Sparks Lab TidyTuesday on a Wednesday! This month, one of our students picked the #TidyTuesday Pokémon dataset to visualize. This was my contribution, which explored median stat distributions by primary type. Really fun dataset and a great group exercise!
It’s that time of year again! #MinCup25
New paper with our community partners! We used four years of community science E. coli measurements to look at patterns in Atlanta streams. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Congrats on getting this out!
Take a break from doom scrolling to have a look at this really cool study lead by @fatimagulhusain.bsky.social out of MIT!
This was a neat project to work on, and I enjoyed getting to branch out into some methane isotope work. Thanks @profbobhowarth.bsky.social for suggesting we take a deeper look.
Another really nice writeup on our recent PNAS paper by Dan Bernardi at Syracuse University A&S Communications!
artsandsciences.syracuse.edu/earth-scienc...
Please tune in today to find out what federally funded research does for you!
Wonderful write-up by the amazing @fatimagulhusain.bsky.social on our recent PNAS paper:
eaps.mit.edu/news-impact/...
