iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eugene Plavskin @mossomest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm no lawyer, but I *have* written a syllabus for a class of 900 mostly first-year premeds...

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Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

So this is stupid in a very serious way, but I think there's a grain of truth here: we should make humanities students study some at least somewhat nontrivial math and modeling. I think that learning differential equations genuinely makes life better and more interesting and expands your mind

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Caroline Bartman @cbartman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ok what is the most death metal biology term? Cytokine storm? Programmed death 1? Executioner caspase? Other?

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Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A quarter of this year's ~2000 incoming UC Davis Bio majors are transfer students. It's an incredible set of programs across the UCs and a big part of the impact of the University of California.

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Jaclyn A. Siegel, PhD @jacasiegel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I don’t take offense when students ask if material is going to be on the exam. I am flattered that they think that I have written their exam weeks in advance of the exam date, however.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16/09/2026

Short thread: 18 months ago, as part of their assault on higher ed, Trump/DOGE/Vought terminated my friend Kelton Minor's NIH Director's award that would have allowed him to take a faculty position there. Without the funds, Columbia ultimately rescinded the position. Kelton moved to Denmark.

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D. Allan Drummond @dadrummond.art · 04/09/2026

Night eyes 😎 Finally got proper pictures of this amazing phenomenon! Mantises change their eye color (and light sensitivity) at night by transporting pigments from the surface of each compound eye unit toward the deeper eye region. Same female Tenodera sinensis, two different times. #bugsky

A female Tenodera sinensis mantis with dark black eyes against a light background, seen from very close up.

A female Tenodera sinensis mantis with green/brown eyes against a light background, seen from very close up to show the details of her face. The pseudopupil is clearly visible on her left eye, facing the camera.

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EvoDevo PanAm @evodevopanam.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

🌟PASEDB community 🌟 PASEDB 6th Biennial Meeting will be held June 14-18, 2027, at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY We are accepting proposals from our members to:

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Wayne Maddison @waynemaddison.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Tree of Life web project is back! A phylogenetic view of biodiversity way ahead of its time (ca. 1995!), conceived and led by David Maddison, collaborative & human-curated, widely used in teaching. Defunct technology had doomed it until Travis, Danny, and Andrew revived it. 🥳🎉 🧪 #evolbiol

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Caxela @caxela.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Cetacea

Digital Drawing. An early whale (Pakicetus) stands at the water's edge, bending down for a drink. Behind it is a wall of tall grasses/reeds. The entire scene is shown within the shape of a blue whale. Despite the vast gulf in form and time between the two animals, they are of the same group: Cetacea.

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Holly Dunsworth @dunsworth.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

To ham-fistedly illustrate (as an tech-troglodyte) what I mean, here's what I show my students as an alternative. It's no more the truth than the prior image, so it's not meant to replace it, per se. But merely imagining it is helpful towards imagining the unknown, isn't it?

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CNN @cnn.com · 02/09/2026

New York City is banning the use of generative artificial intelligence for public school students from 2K through 8th grade, part of a larger move to restrict classroom technology in the nation’s largest school district. cnn.it/4iGlH79

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Have you gotten your FREE (for non-commercial uses, including Butlerian Jihad) copy of Bayesian Workflow? The second half of the book is detailed case studies. avehtari.github.io/Bayesian-Wor...

4. Case studies

Coding a series of models: Simulated data of movie ratings
Prior specification for regression models: Reanalysis of a sleep study
Predictive model checking and comparison: Clinical trial
Building up to a hierarchical model: Coronavirus testing
Using a fitted model for decision analysis: Mixture model for time series competition
Posterior predictive checking: Stochastic learning in dogs
Incremental development and testing: Black cat adoptions
Debugging a model: World Cup football
Leave-one-out cross validation model checking and comparison: Roaches
Model building and expansion: Golf putting
Model building with latent variables: Markov models for animal movement
Model building: Time-series decomposition for birthdays
Models for regression coefficients and variable selection: Student grades
Sampling problems with latent variables: No vehicles in the park
Challenge of multimodality: Differential equation for planetary motion
Simulation-based calibration checking in model development workflow

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Caroline Bartman @cbartman.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Fall is almost here… A hint of cold in the air… A few leaves about to drop from the trees… TIME TO GIVE SOME METABOLISM LECTURES TO STUDENTS WHO DONT CARE ABOUT METABOLISM

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Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Feelin vindicated lol journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 17/08/2026

1. Recently I’ve received lots of emails from people I don’t know personally, asking for my feedback on their books or papers. They explain the connection between my work and theirs and ask me to take a look. The catch, of course, is that the emails are transparently, obviously, written by AI.

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MwahahahahahadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

STOP ATTACKING BIORXIV SO I CAN DOWNLOAD PDFs OF PAPERS I WILL NEVER READ

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Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Everyone says AI will accelerate science. I don't think it will -- at least not in biology, and at least not soon. New post where I explain why, and how the productivity paradox can be resolved: blekhman.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...

blekhman.substack.com

Why AI will not speed up science (yet)

You can see AI everywhere except in the productivity statistics

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

There’s a magic to working with plants in the lab that I just can’t get over 🌱

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Pre-2023 scientific data equivalent to low-background steel… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-bac...

en.wikipedia.org

Low-background steel - Wikipedia

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Dmitri Petrov @petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Very pleased with the response and still have spots & funding especially for students/postdocs. Sign up soon before it gets full. If you are working at or wanting to learn about the intersection of functional biology and ecology/evolution, you would get a lot of it! www.grc.org/function-of-...

grc.org

Function of Evolving Systems - Gordon Research Conferences

GRC presents Function of Evolving Systems, a conference on .

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Last and least, FWIW, my current AI policy for students. Subject to revision. Recommendations welcome.

Artificial Intelligence and Creative Writing: A Policy of Sorts
This is a course for those interested in writing not as means to an end but as an end in itself.
Recently a friend and I read a cover story in New York magazine titled, “Everyone is Cheating Their
Way Through College,” by James D. Walsh. My friend has also taught writing. He likes to tell his
students, “If you want to be a writer, put on a cool hat and go sit in a bar with cheap beer. If you want to
write, write.”
I didn’t think AI would be a temptation for writing students. “Everyone is Cheating Their Way
Through College” persuaded me that for many it’s not a temptation but a condition. You sleep in a bed,
you wear clothes, you don’t scream at teachers. Just the way it is. Maybe AI is becoming that, too, part
of “just the way it is.” Maybe it is that already.
My mind raced through ideas about how to “beat” AI. The article dismantled each one of them.
Then I thought, “That’s not my job.” I’m a writer and a teacher. I’m not a cop. If you want to work with
me on writing, we can do that. If you want to cheat, you have the ability to do that, too, and the truth is,
I probably can’t stop you. Per Dartmouth’s policy: “Students may not use GenAI tools for submitted
coursework unless expressly permitted.” I do not permit it. That’s my part. Now, about yours.
I’m interested in working with students for whom writing feels, somehow, good, even if
sometimes it’s painful. Who seek that feeling anyway. A feeling of being, of alertness. Of purpose; of
intention. Of practice.
This is a course for those who are interested in using writing to experience some variation of
this feeling. Sometimes it comes in a moment of clarity, sometimes in the making of a lyrical
juxtaposition. There are so many more emotional, intellectual, and spiritual possibilities that arise from
the act of shaping language. I live off the aftermath of that act—the recognitions, financial and
otherwise, I earn from the results—but there is no payche…

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Simons Foundation @simonsfoundation.org · 01/05/2026

Now accepting applications for our 2027 Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution! These awards support students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs to conduct #ecology and #evolution research. Deadline is June 30, 2026: bit.ly/4umYKZd #science

bit.ly

Applications for 2027 Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution Now Open

The Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences division is now accepting applications for its 2027 Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution.

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Ryan Gutenkunst @ryangutenkunst.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

NIH T32 proposal with @joannamasel.bsky.social and @wheelerlab.org to renew the Computational and Mathematical Modeling in Biological Systems program for PhD students is funded, starting July 1! I look forward to supporting the next generation of quantitative biology researchers! cmmbs.arizona.edu

cmmbs.arizona.edu

Home | Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Biomedical Systems

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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Slightly adjacent, but ran into a new annoying thing recently… Reviewer (me): “I don’t understand h on you did the stats on this. Please provide more details so it’s reproducible” Response to reviewers: “we asked ChatGPT to compare the groups by ANOVA”

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闵娅(Min Ya; Minya) PhD @minyaaa.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

This spring I took over and redesigned the only Gen Ed on plants here #IB103. We walked through every core aspect of plant bio in lectures & labs, but also through art & design. I had a blast, the evaluations are rewarding (4.9/5), the redesign got an award from the college, and a little press too!

screenshots of the press coverage from the siebel center for design. The link to the article will be in the comment

a pic of me yapping at the design center

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Karandeep(Singh) @kdpsingh.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Statistics aka Likelihoodmaxxing

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Eugene Plavskin @mossomest.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Always post weird RNAi flowers (ESPECIALLY petunia) (link.springer.com/article/10.1...)

Purple Petunia flowers with white dots and large white splotches at the tips of the petals

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Thinking about how this might go Listener: My chains aren't converging Andrew: Your model is bad Aki: Your parameterization is bad Richard: The Buddha teaches us that numerical integration is suffering

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Not sure if this is a hot take, but the apparently frequent cheating or borderline cheating with Ai in University seems to me less about Ai and more about how sick the system has gotten. Compare for example to learning from a teacher to graft trees. In that case, cheating would be absurd. Why?

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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

@johanduchene.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social Spent the last hour looking, found ten more apparently manipulated Western blots in Thermo Fisher's antibody verification data (across eight different catalogued products). Thread below. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro...

Apparent manipulation in the antibody verification data in Thermo Fisher's online catalog

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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 20/05/2026

Game over, phylogeneticists! New DNA foundation model "Carbon" reconstructs the tree of life. 🙃 huggingface.co/spaces/Huggi...

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Kate Laskowski @katelaskowski.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Teaching a 1,000 person intro bio is a heavy lift under the best of times. But would you believe it is surprisingly a even more stressful experience when Canvas goes down days before their midterm?

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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

What the hell www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Some people say we don’t build beautiful things anymore and, like, lol. Motherfuckers, we built this:

A graph from Our World In Data showing a precipitous drop in child mortality starting in the late 1800s going from an average of 48% to global rate of 27% in 1950 to the 2020 infant mortality rate of 4%, with some countries having a rate as low as 0.3%

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Sarah Hörst @planetdr.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I was just contacted by a reporter asking for comment about the whole Pluto planet thing. Hanging on by a thread over here.

Honestly, I understand why you all are doing this because it is flashy- but we are struggling with existential issues in planetary science in the US right now and I'm really not interested in talking about this. If you want to write about any of that I would be happy to talk.

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Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

I tried on some bio image prompts I had tried before for gemini's image model and it does even somewhat better at faking these. One is cryoEM grid image showing particles from a human ribosome and the other is HeLa cells with specific % cellular localization for the same tagged protein. Not great.

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Ted Weiland @tedweiland.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

As someone who did similar "woke" work via an NSF grant the past 10 years, I'm just now seeing the results. Students completing MD degrees and starting residencies. Successful careers in public health and engineering are beginning to blossom. Students being accepted to grad school in science.

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Molly Schumer @mollyschumer.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Please share widely! We will imminently be posting a technician position in our lab group since @rheasood.bsky.social is off to grad school 🙌! If you know of anyone excited about molecular biology, evolution, and functional genomics please have them reach out (schumer at stanford). Start date ~June

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MichaelMcMurray lab @mcmurraylab.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Doing the periodic cleaning of used plasmid miniprep columns and realized in honor of Earth Day it may be worth reminding you molecular biologists: Plasmid miniprep columns can be cleaned and reused essentially indefinitely! Just add 1 M HCl, soak overnight and wash 3x w/ water. Save $ and plastic

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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 17/04/2026

I’m looking for an automated way to read others’s scientific data without giving credit or acknowledgement, and also claim full credit for insights from it. And I want it to have a fitting name OAI: say no more

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Birds of a feather 🏳️‍⚧️ @robinyourgrave.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I'm one of those trans women. I worked ground ops for Artemis I. I am torn between celebrating the success of my friends and peers and grieving how my dream of working for NASA was shattered by hateful assholes in Tallahassee

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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 11/04/2026

A 1200+ year climate record is at risk. Do you know know anyone in Japan who could help? See below.

A message from Tuna Acisu asking for help maintaining cherry blossom record in Kyoto Japan.

A figure showing the cherry tree record since 812 from world in data.

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Tuna @antea04.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 09/04/2026

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel. King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

king5.com

UW graduate student deported through SEA as protesters demand answers

A union representing University of Washington graduate student workers says Kennedy Orwa’s student visa was rescinded without explanation.

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Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I’m so glad someone covered this story. Brian is an amazing scholar and person who I’ve been blessed to be able to get to know, even a little. What happened to him is awful

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Kathleen Belew @kathleenbelew.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Oh also interesting: students report that they think we use AI to write lectures and books and articles. Some of them already think this is just a dance of meaningless nothing. I find this endlessly heartbreaking.

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Eugene Plavskin @mossomest.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

government funding is the driver of scientific progress.

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

You know Meganeura, the Carboniferous dragonfly with a 2.5-foot wingspan? All dragonflies spend years of their lives as aquatic larvae before they climb out of the water and emerge as flying adults. Which means...yeah.

A dragonfly larva in a white-skinned hand.

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Trust me--read this. You'll be glad you did. and thank you Dr. Bennet for writing it. 🧪

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