@rosemarybraun
A physicist stumbling ergodically through the life sciences. Faculty @NorthwesternU @NITMB @SFIscience. Complex systems, networks, high-dimensional statistics / ML, with application to omics data analysis in cancer systems biology, circadian rhythms, &c.
Remember, the temporal paradox will return tonight. You may notice anomalies, such as missing time or strange behavior from your pets. You will likely feel tired for the first few days after passing through the temporal displacement field. This is normal for time travel.
Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302
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.
Tragic. Please pass this along to US Chairs and Deans, and consider it when you sit on promotion committees. This, combined with the review backlog, is dire - especially for our early career researchers.
Monstrous even before considering the environmental footprint of having to air-condition an all-black house in the summer sun
Fascinating thread & paper on mechanisms of multicellularity:
They missed out on making Quantum Plumber's wrench look like a \psi ... *tsk*
A cartoon in the style of a 1950s correspondence-school magazine ad that says "Stuck in a dull, low-paying job? Want to make big money? BE A QUANTUM MECHANIC!" It pictures a man clutching a wrench that looks like a \psi in one hand and a wad of cash in the other
Relevant:
In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.
This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.
AI makes continuous reproducibility and robustness testing trivial. What happens to science under new levels of scrutiny and stress-testing by default?
Some thoughts on how this could play out, informed by watching open science play out over the last decade.
Stunning! And what a great capture of Alexander's band (the darker sky between the two bows). The light from that part of the sky is being refracted away from you to form the rainbow that someone else sees. The darkness that each of us perceives makes beauty for others possible :)
Three postdoctoral fellowships in quantitative biology are available as part of a new Quantitative Biology Initiative in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland.
Best consideration date: 3/14
Job Ad:
umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...
Department:
biology.umd.edu/people
Astonishingly, they were there much of the afternoon, which suggests that there was a fairly stable vortex over the mountains 🤩☁️
NPS webcam image of Lake McDonald in Glacier Nat'l Park, Montana. The sunset is illuminating the mountains, above which are perched piles of pancake-shaped lenticular clouds. The mountains and clouds are reflected in the slightly rippled surface of the lake.
Incredible lenticular clouds over Lake McDonald right now! www.nps.gov/webcams-glac... (h/t @nps-cambot.bsky.social for the webcam link!)
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.
Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This Day in Labor History: February 2, 1848. The United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war the U.S. launched against Mexico to steal land and extend slavery. Let's talk about how this also led to the widespread theft of the land grants from New Mexicans!!!
What a gorgeous photo! Curious if you'll share what camera you use?
www.youtube.com/shorts/z4dy0...
A video from board-certified ophthalmologist a @glaucomflecken.bsky.social - FYI if you ever get pepper spray somehow onto you, in some manner.
I was not expecting Douglas Adams to bust out the period-doubling route to chaos! This video has *everything*
❗️❗️Don’t forget ❗️
Applications to the 2026 Summer Undergraduate Research Program are closing on Monday, January 26th
Don’t miss your opportunity to engage in hands-on mathematical biology research and receive mentorship from NITMB faculty - www.nitmb.org/surp
⏰ Time is running out to apply for this year’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program!
Undergraduate students are invited to join us at NITMB for a summer full of hands-on mathematical biology research
Apply by Monday, January 26th - www.nitmb.org/surp
It's a pH indicator! A little acidity from lemon juice or vinegar should pink it back up 😋
You can check Aurorasaurus to see if folks near you are reporting aurora.
Two new chapters from my free online book in human genetics out this weekend!
These complete Part 3 of the book, on human population structure and history:
3.3: Human prehistory [separate thread]
3.4: Ancient DNA: a genetic time capsule [this thread]
web.stanford.edu/group/pritch...
Sandhill Cranes typically fly with their long legs trailing behind them. On very cold mornings, like this morning when it was in the single digits, they will tuck their legs in while in flight.
Executive briefing study: When FDR abruptly died Truman needed to be briefed on massive secret Manhattan Project. Fascinating to explore its size, style, & content
Memorandum for the Secretary of War from General L. R. Groves, “Atomic Fission Bombs,” April 23, 1945
nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/defaul...
When DHS shot Miramar Martinez in Chicago last October, they also claimed she tried to ram agents with her car. Because she survived, they even charged her criminally.
They lied. She had done no such thing, and the goon who shot her bragged about it in texts. They dropped the charges against her.
Are you an undergraduate student curious about the intersection of mathematics and biology?
Receive mentorship from faculty experts and engage in innovative multidisciplinary research at NITMB’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program!
Applications are due Monday, January 26th - www.nitmb.org/surp
Thanks for this! Can you add zipcodes or neighborhood names to the list? (A map would be even better!) It's hard to find the closest location with only the street addresses...
Text of Marge Piercy's poem "On New Year's Day": Bless this my house under the pitch pines where the cardinal flashes and the kestrels hover crying, where I live and work with my lover Woody and my cats, where the birds gather in winter to be fed and the squirrel dines from the squirrel-proof feeder. Keep our water bubbling up clear. Protect us from the fire’s long teeth and the lashing of the hurricanes and the government. Please, no foreign wars. Keep this house from termites and the bane of quarreling past what can be sweetly healed. Keep our cats from hunters and savage dogs. Watch with care over Woody splitting logs and mostly keep us from our sharpening fear as we skate over the ice of the new year.
Marge Piercy, On New Year's Day (via languagehat.com/on-new-years...)