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Alison E. King

@alisonelinor.bsky.social
392 followers 382 following 5 posts

Assistant Professor of Soil Science, University of Maine Soil organic matter, biogeochemistry, agroecology, sustainable soil management Soil Functions and Trajectories (SOFT) Lab www.thesoftlaboratory.com

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Reposted by Alison E. King
Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 27/08/2026
The name Ontario was derived from the lake and it was used to refer neighbouring land over a century before both the confederation of Canada and the independence of the United States.
static.klipy.com
Toronto City Skyline Time-Lapse: Day to Night
Alt: Toronto City Skyline Time-Lapse: Day to Night
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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
An increasingly hostile climate in the United States of America (2026) as foreseen in “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” (1978)
Life for the townspeople was delicious until the weather took a turn for the worse. 

Newspaper: SPAGHETTI TIES UP TOWN!The food was getting larger and larger…the people were getting frightened. Violent storms blew up frequently….the sea was full of floating rolls…

Pic: boy starting at churning sea full of breadAnother day there was a pea soup fog. No one could see where they were going and they could barely find the rest of the meal that got stuck in the fog. 

Pic: poor air quality with low visibilityThere was an awful salt and pepper wind accompanied by an even worse tomato tornado. 

Pic: houses and people swirling in a red tornado
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Monday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).
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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
tech capture of the NSF: “it allows NSF to make awards to nontraditional recipients such as a limited partnership or a venture capital firm, some of which might have been created solely for the purpose of receiving the NSF award.”
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yperezrojas.bsky.social @yperezrojas.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Is using average soil moisture and temperature a "good" proxy for soil respiration? Not always. The relationship depends on depth, climate, and how strongly soil moisture and temperature are coupled with respiration processes. Excited to see my dissertation work getting published 🤗
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 16/06/2026
How good is it when you get that perfect intellectual impedance match with someone and conversation feels like a mind-meld? I swear I could chase that feeling like it’s a solar eclipse.
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Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez @frodsan.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
#StatsPubs No matter how many times you read it, this paper on hierarchical GAMs keeps giving. Clear model explanations together with R code (mgcv). So useful! doi.org/10.7717/peer... Thanks for writing @ericjpedersen.bsky.social, D. Miller, @gsimpson.bsky.social @noamross.net
In this paper, we discuss an extension to two popular approaches to modeling complex structures in ecological data: the generalized additive model (GAM) and the hierarchical model (HGLM). The hierarchical GAM (HGAM), allows modeling of nonlinear functional relationships between covariates and outcomes where the shape of the function itself varies between different grouping levels. We describe the theoretical connection between HGAMs, HGLMs, and GAMs, explain how to model different assumptions about the degree of intergroup variability in functional response, and show how HGAMs can be readily fitted using existing GAM software, the mgcv package in R. We also discuss computational and statistical issues with fitting these models, and demonstrate how to fit HGAMs on example data. All code and data used to generate this paper are available at: github.com/eric-pedersen/mixed-effect-gams.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Today, the University of Maine's Vice Chancellor for Finance and Strategic AI Integration (who made $243,000 last year) sent UMaine campuses an announcement that we have partnered with OpenAI with a contract for ChatGPT Edu. I sent him the following questions:
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Alison E. King @alisonelinor.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
New paper in Global Change Biol.: soil organic carbon increases crop yields and reduces interannual variability, but largest gains occur under moderate water conditions, not drought. SOC needs water to work. w @muellern.bsky.social @kyoungchoi.bsky.social Jesse Burkhardt doi.org/10.1111/gcb....
Graphical abstract showing effect of soil organic carbon (SOC) in increasing on crop yield and reducing yield variability.
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Reposted by Alison E. King
Ada Lovelace Day @adalovelaceday.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Oh, would you look at that: Men are perceived as more creative than women even when competency is controlled for, and more deserving of rewards. Five studies shows men are routinely seen having more 'out of the box' creativity. But not only are women... adalovelaceday.substack.com/p/gender-ste...
adalovelaceday.substack.com
ALD Report: Gender stereotypes result in women being judged as less creative
And men being judged as more deserving of reward.
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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Some lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic are Deeply Concerned about labeling plant-based products “meat” citing consumer confusion, but I have yet to see even one furrowed brow about bread and butter pickles
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Tarnjit Parmar @tarnjitparmar.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
WHAT! Apparently a piece of the Wright Brothers' plane (first powered flight in 1903) is on the Artemis II's Orion spacecraft! It's a 1 square inch swath of muslin fabric on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. 🥺
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The last time human eyes were far enough from Earth to see the whole globe was December 1972. www.nasa.gov/image-detail...
Our home planet, the only place in the galaxy that doesn’t suck
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The tech industry props up the richest people on the planet and pays far less than its fair share of taxes. It can absolutely afford its own R&D. But instead, it’s effectively hijacked our public science infrastructure because having more wealth than anyone could ever spend is still not enough.
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John Bistline @bistline.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
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Alexander J. Stein @ajstein.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Food or not? – Although total calorie production increased by 24% from 2010 to 2020, the available calories in the food system for human consumption increased by only 17% as more calories were used for livestock feed & biofuel production: doi.org/10.1088/2976... >>
doi.org
Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption
Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption, West, Paul C, Gerber, James S, Cassidy, Emily S, Stiffman, Samuel
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Gale Sinatra @galesinatra.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Good news for once.
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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
I have a joke about carbon offsets but someone else is going to have to tell it to you and a third person is going to have to verify if it is funny while a fourth person argues that the second person was already going to tell the joke anyway
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Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Simple information about what the SAVE Act would actually do to American voters. Tens of millions would lose their right to vote unless they spend lots of $$$ and jump through bureaucratic hoops before November.
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26) Directorates to follow 1/10
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.
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Ben Kuchera @benkuchera.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
I'm funding a launching a new cat show in which I'm the judge. I hug each cat, tell the owner their cat is perfect, and then we all hang out and talk about our cats.
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Max Moran @maxmoranhi.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
it's like he sees himself as...serving...the public some kinda public servant has anyone thought of this before, i think there's something there
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Gabriel Zucman @gabrielzucman.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory
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Dr. Katharine Dickson @metaomicsnerd.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
i'm methane mitigation maxxing
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Ariel Ortiz-Bobea @arielob.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
A little bit late, but I'm looking to hire a postdoc at Cornell to measure the private value of soil health improvements in US ag. A 2-year gig. Well suited for an ag/resource economist or data scientist w/ interests in soil health and solid programming & econometric chops. ad coming soon!
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Eos @eos.org · 06/02/2026
Students applying for NSF funding are having their applications “returned without review” for being “ineligible,” despite their proposed research falling squarely within the application guidelines. eos.org/research-and...
eos.org
Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” - Eos
Graduate students applying for NSF funding have had their applications returned without review—even though their proposed research appears to fall squarely within the fields of study outlined in the p...
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Mark Shaw 🇨🇦✌️🇪🇺 @markshawtoronto.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
It’s not left vs right or English vs French. It’s people who have bagged milk vs the godless heathens who don’t!
Map of Canada

Has bagged milk: Ontario, Quebec, Novia Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick

Bagged milk was available in the mid 1990s: Manitoba

Bagged milk is not available: Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC, Yukon, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Newfoundland
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
But, as they say, there is no time like the present [OK, maybe the 1930s if you want to nitpick] But, with some data wrangling, my first NSF Funding Curves! 2/3
A line plot with the numbers of NSF awards for fiscal years 2021-2026. The curve for fiscal year 2026 is quite a bit lower than those for 2021-2025 while the curve for fiscal year 2026 (in red) is much lower than all through the same date.
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Dr. Todd Arrington @btarrington.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
“A republic, if you can keep it.” ~Attributed to Benjamin Franklin when asked after the Constitutional Convention if the new government would be a monarchy or a republic. Franklin was born in Boston on this day 320 years ago: Jan. 17, 1706. Image: National Portrait Gallery.
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Ed Maibach @maibached.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
So little was known 18 years ago when I started researching climate comms. I'm blown away by how much we now know. This study, led by the incomparable Jan Voelkel with his all-star band, and released today in @natclimate.nature.com confirms that many distinct message strategies can work...
nature.com
A registered report megastudy on the persuasiveness of the most-cited climate messages - Nature Climate Change
How to effectively communicate climate change to the public has long been studied and debated. Through a registered report megastudy, researchers tested the ten most-cited climate change messaging str...
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Bryn @slimewave.me · 04/01/2026
Doing this challenge called “January” where I try to make it through the whole month of January
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Meade Krosby @meadekrosby.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
Don't forget folks: allowing yourself a vision of the future you'd want for our country and planet - not the one you'd settle for, not the one you fear, but the future of your dreams - isn't naive, it's a vital cognitive skill. That's how we articulate what we most value. What's worth fighting for.
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Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) @fisherdanar.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Let's be clear: the US National Science Foundation's decision to reduce the role of expert panelists and outside reviewers does not limit the burden on NSF workers; it empowers them to make funding decisions without scientific oversight. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
NSF pares down grant-review process, reducing influence of outside scientists
Memo cites overburdened staff, but some say move also aims to elevate White House priorities
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
🧵 NSF is reducing external review requirements and eliminating routine expert panels, citing staff shortages that this administration implemented. This change expands program officer authority. But the solution to flawed accountability isn't less public accountability.
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Dr Charlie Gardner @charliejgardner.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
I keep seeing articles about 'rebuilding trust in science' They all focus on changing how science is carried out, but mistrust in science isn't the result of what scientists do - it has been manufactured by the science denialism industry Science isn't the problem, the forces of anti-science are
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Richard Waite @waiterich.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
He’s making a list Checking it twice Hoping emission factors are nice Santa Claus is developing his scope 1-3 GHG inventory
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Evan Frost @wildwoods.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
We can map the world's existing forests with incredible accuracy now, but clearly we cannot (or will not) stop them from disappearing at rapid rates almost everywhere. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌎
nature.com
Natural forests of the world – a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Natural forests of the world – a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 28/10/2025
To quote my friend @drkatemarvel.bsky.social, climate change won't make humanity extinct but we can do better than "not extinct". Raise your standards people!
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Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸 @rweingarten.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
It's official. Nearly 7 million people. Today is the single largest day of protest in American history. Americans from all corners of the country are standing up and saying #NoKings. This is what peaceful, patriotic protest looks like.
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Jason Shepherd @jasonsynaptic.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
#goals
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Mary Williams @PlantTeaching @plantteaching.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
How an academic betrayal led me to change my authorship practices | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
How an academic betrayal led me to change my authorship practices
“Every cleaned data set, debugged script, and refined figure deserves acknowledgment,” this researcher writes
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juli g pausas @jgpausas.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
The final version of this paper is now published @newphyt.bsky.social The onset of phenological plant response to climate warming nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Long-term databases as an antidote to the shifting baseline syndrome in global change. 🧪🌎🌿🌐🌳 🍁 #PlantBiology
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Lydia Jennings, PhD @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
The paper highlights actionable steps to help improve these double standards, including more RESEARCH RELATED LANGUAGE in P &T letters for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous women to improve their outcomes.
nature.com
Underrepresented minority faculty in the USA face a double standard in promotion and tenure decisions - Nature Human Behaviour
Masters-Waage et al. report that underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in the USA face barriers in the promotion and tenure process, receiving more negative votes and fewer unanimous positive decisi...
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Carsten W. Müller @cwmsoils.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Call for manuscripts - joint special Issue #Geoderma / #GeodermaRegional - "Tropical Soil Science: Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Biogeochemistry, Plant-Soil Interactions and Climate change Mitigation" Geoderma: tinyurl.com/bdf2989c Geoderma Regional: tinyurl.com/3yarxaan photos: Sebastian Doetterl
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Climate change is altering the natural world’s soundscape, with declining bird, insect, and amphibian populations leading to quieter environments. This “sensory extinction” is exacerbated by noise pollution from human activities. Listen to these recordings in this article from @sabs.bsky.social!
defector.com
How Climate Change Is Transforming The Soundtrack Of The Natural World | Defector
It is easy enough to read about the climate crisis through the dozens of devastating stories that run each week, warning us of the people who will be displaced or otherwise harmed by the planet’s rapi...
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Alison E. King @alisonelinor.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Paper now out in Science Advances — “Soil carbon formation is promoted by saturation deficit and existing mineral-associated carbon, not by microbial carbon-use efficiency” with Noah Sokol science.org/doi/epdf/10....
Map of the U.S. showing sampling sites (left) and results from subsequent laboratory incubation (right) showing positive association between existing mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) and new MAOC formation.
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Glen Dsouza @nonresidentdesi.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Thrilled to share our new paper in @science.org describing our discovery that bacteria can switch from competitors to bonafide predators when resources run dry—arming nanoscale “spears” (T6SS) to stab & consume neighbours. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #MicroSKy #Microbiology
science.org
Antagonism as a foraging strategy in microbial communities
In natural habitats, nutrient availability limits bacterial growth. We discovered that bacteria can overcome this limitation by acquiring nutrients by lysing neighboring cells through contact-dependen...
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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.
Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.
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Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe @aaberhe.com · 31/05/2025
This represents a systematic dismantling of the US STEM ecosystem that will create lasting negative consequences for innovation and competitiveness.
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