iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ben Uveges

Phoebe Cohen @phoebefossil.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Super excited that our paper led by @sandinmm.eurosky.social in PNAS is out! We show that crown-group eukaryotes were already taxonomically and ecologically diverse throughout the Mesoproterozoic, revealing complex communities well before the Neoproterozoic radiation. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

Environmental phylogenetics supports a steady diversification of crown eukaryotes starting from the mid-Proterozoic | PNAS

Molecular clock and preservation of early microfossil assemblages suggest that eukaryotes were present and already diverse more than ~1600 million ...

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Now that it's official, I am so excited to share that starting July 2027 I will be joining @dartmouthears.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor of Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry/Geobiology! I still honestly can't fully believe it, and I can't wait to get started!

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Another iteration of Sparks lab #TidyTuesday on a Wednesday. This week, the group picked the "Australian Frogs" dataset. I decided to make a map, along with state-specific histograms of frog tribe occurrences.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

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?

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

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!

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

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.

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

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).

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

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:

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

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".

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

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

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

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...

nytimes.com

Why Is This Lake ‘Burping’?

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Erin Hassett @erinhassett.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Our research on Seneca Lake has been featured in the New York Times! Check it out! @benuveges.bsky.social @nytimes.com

nytimes.com

Why Is This Lake ‘Burping’?

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Nemiah Ladd @nemiahladd.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

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...

eag.org

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

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/...

pnas.org

Chemical characterization of C31 sterols from sponges and Neoproterozoic fossil sterane counterparts | PNAS

Putative metazoan body fossils from the Precambrian are curiously lacking morphological characteristics that link them unambiguously to extant anim...

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

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.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

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!

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Sarah H. Ledford @sledford.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

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...

iopscience.iop.org

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Congrats on getting this out!

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Take a break from doom scrolling to have a look at this really cool study lead by @fatimagulhusain.bsky.social out of MIT!

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

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.

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Dr. Tripti Bhattacharya @triptychphrases.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Please tune in today to find out what federally funded research does for you!

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Fantastic article on why cuts at NSF are harmful to everyone. For scientists, a thorough collection of evidence of NSF's impact. For everyone else, a small slice of the incredible number of everyday things NSF-funded research has improved. By Prof. Paul Bierman.🧪 theconversation.com/unprecedente...

theconversation.com

Unprecedented cuts to the National Science Foundation endanger research that improves economic growth, national security and your life

The Trump administration has terminated hundreds of federal grants that support engineering, biology, geology, computer science, STEM education and much more.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

We are really proud of this one, and hope the bluesky-verse finds it interesting! We also owe a huge debt to the late Prof. Nic Beukes who led the CIMERA-Agouron project and was instrumental in the retrieval and sampling of these cores. 7/7

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

So, our study pushes that back by over 100 million years and adds to the growing body of evidence that the oxidation of the oceans and the atmosphere were at times decoupled, and likely played out in a tumultuous non-linear fashion after the onset of oxygenic photosynthesis. 6/7

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

It was previously thought that an aerobic nitrogen cycle was established closer to 2.31 Ga in step with the final stage of the Great Oxidation Event where atmospheric oxygen contents rose above the threshold required to inhibit the mass-independent fractionation of sulfur isotopes (S-MIF). 5/7

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

This coupled with a new age for one of the cores we recently published in a paper led by @alexiemillikin.bsky.social, means that this ocurred in the ocean by ~2.43 billion years ago. 4/7 pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

pubs.geoscienceworld.org

A new Re-Os age constraint informs the dynamics of the Great Oxidation Event | Geology | GeoScienceWorld

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

What we found were strikingly big +ve δ15N values correlated across cores separated by hundreds of kilometers, indicating the extensive operation of incomplete water column denitrification. This indicates a largely aerobic nitrogen cycle, and the predominance of nitrate in the surface ocean. 3/7

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

I was lucky enough while I was at MIT to work with a set of cores drilled in association with the CIMERA-Agouron Great Oxidation Event and Biomarker Drilling project. In this paper, we report carbon and nitrogen isotope data from these cores taken across the Transvaal basin in South Africa. 2/7

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Out online today in @pnas.org our paper: "Aerobic nitrogen cycle 100 My before permanent atmospheric oxygenation" With coauthors Gareth Izon, @chrisjunium.bsky.social , Shuhei Ono, and Roger Summons. 1/7 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Dr. David Miller 🏳️‍🌈 @davidimiller.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I am so heartened to this seriously AWESOME #SaveNSF website go up today!!!! Has a take action toolkit with: 1. Press outreach templates 2. Social media toolkit 3. Elected official outreach 4. Talking points Check it out and share widely!!!! Likely more to come. www.savensf.com

Welcome to Save The U.S. National Science Foundation
A Girl Looking at a Physics Model
TAKE ACTION
Save NSF is a coalition of concerned scientists and allies who are working to save funding for scientific grants through the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Our mission is to support and advocate for the continuation of vital research and innovation in various scientific fields. NSF funding is critical to this work.

Join us in our endeavor to ensure a sustainable future for scientific exploration and discovery.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

This is spin on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_from... 1) 44 M/Z beam 2) Fractionatin’ 3) Filled up bellows 4) Carries Over (aka SO2…) 5) J.J.’s Neon! 6) Biome 7) Desert Soils 8) Heavy Water 9) Nox in leaves 10) Samples lost 11) Cusses over epsilons 12) Botanist 13) Om nom me-thane (methanotroph song)

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

New "band" new album cover! Presenting Jed-ward Sparks and the Magnetic Sectors! "Set list" on the back cover and below. Hopefully, this is a nice brain cleanser from all the craziness for any isotopically inclined people Puns by me, Artistic stylings by the wonderful Audra Linsner at tofd.co

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Dr. Tripti Bhattacharya @triptychphrases.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Excited for our lab's presentations at #AGU24! I'm presenting Monday, but here are the other lab members/collaborators on deck for the rest of the week.

Presentations from members of the Paleoclimate Dynamics Lab at Syracuse EES. On Monday December 9th, Claire Rubbelke presents poster PP13B-0668, and Tyler Logie presents talk PP13E-05. On Tuesday, David Fastovich presents talk PP24A-06 and on Wednesday Haejo Kim presents poster C33C-0449

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Gordon Inglis @climategordon.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Exciting to see a new, community-run, and Diamond Open Access journal launching for geochemists (Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry). Free to read and free to publish! They have assembled a great team of editors too! (www.agcj.org)

journals.uu.se

Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry

Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry is a community-led diamond open access journal that aims to publish innovative and globally relevant articles in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. Regional studies put in the context of a wider research question will also be considered.

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Ben Uveges @benuveges.bsky.social · 09/04/2024

We went up to my parents and had a similar view. Totality was still way cool though. The ring of light on the horizon in all directions was surreal.

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Reposted by Ben Uveges

Chris Junium @chrisjunium.bsky.social · 18/03/2024

Just a reminder that Goldschmidt is for organic geochemists too! If you are thinking of coming, check out the session Hilairy Hartnett and I are convening. Great Lakes, great food and great science, what more could you ask for? Hope to see you in August. conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/...

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