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Tristan Caro

@tacaro.bsky.social
2.7K followers 757 following 247 posts

Microbiologist and geochemist | Postdoc @ Caltech | Formerly @ CU Boulder, NASA, Berkeley | Enjoys isotopes, dataviz, ceramics

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Reposted by Tristan Caro
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 5h
This afternoon in Marble Hill, a New Yorker was shot by an ICE agent in a residential neighborhood. Early reports indicate agents surrounded him and a 5-year-old child in his car before firing multiple rounds. We believe the child was physically unharmed.

This is an unconscionable and incredibly serious situation. I have called the President; when we speak I will demand that he ends all ICE enforcement actions in our city. I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities.

Our thoughts are with the injured New Yorker and his family tonight. We are praying for his recovery.

Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children.

Abolish ICE.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Agency-wide, NSF made far fewer new grants (~6,200, down from an average of ~11,000) and underspent its buget by 1.4 billion. See previous coverage:
nature.com
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:
science.org
‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research
Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year
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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
In case you hadn’t heard, the lab acquired case is an incredible and sad story The researcher working w/ attenuated strain at BSL2. Strain attenuated by disabling ability to acquire sufficient iron in hosts The researcher unknowingly had rare genetic disorder where their body had >iron levels
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Brett Baker @archaeal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Two Assistant Professor Positions in Evolutionary Biology and Mechanistic Processes - including microbes! faculty.utexas.edu/career/191568
faculty.utexas.edu
Faculty Careers - The University of Texas at Austin
Unleash your intellectual power by joining a world-renowned faculty that is solving the world's most urgent problems. At UT Austin, we provide you the freedom to blaze trails, follow your curiosity, e...
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
ah yes alex told me about this. glad it's finally made it into the textbooks
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
We should collab....
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Reposted by Tristan Caro
Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
One of the most neglected, least understood, and willingly ignored concepts in microbiology is how fast cells grown in their native habitat. We just extrapolate from cultures, which is unrealistic. I wish I could get funds to measure growth in a bunch of habitats and do some foundational work ;(
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Yes!! And one can imagine the many ways textbook rules of microbial physiology may not hold under natural conditions...
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Eos @eos.org · 29/09/2026
NASA has ignored recommended funding levels for planetary research & analysis for 15 years, according to a new investigative report by Mark Sykes (@coop.planetary-research.org). And for FY2025, it hasn’t even spent 50% of what it budgeted for R&A. 🧪🪐🔭 eos.org/research-and...
eos.org
NASA has Underspent on Research and Analysis for 15 Years - Eos
Spending for NASA’s research and analysis programs has remained relatively flat for 15 years, ignoring recommendations from community-led decadal surveys and directives by Congress.
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JL Weissman @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Two weeks left to apply for these postoc positions! We seek two postdocs interested in 1) building trait prediction models capable of resolving complex microbial traits from genomes and metagenomes, and/or (2) building mathematical models of microbial community dynamics in the human microbiome.
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 26/09/2026
Personal essay, weekend edition. My relationship with AI is changing. 1.8k words, 8 min reading time. doi.org/10.59350/bh7...
doi.org
My relationship with AI is changing
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
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Jess Niblo @jessniblo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Excited to share our manuscript “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes” is out in Cell! This work, led by @oliverio.bsky.social & @hbrappap.bsky.social, introduces I. cascadensis, which divides at 63C, beating the prior eukaryotic limit of 60C. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
cell.com
A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes
The amoeba Incendiamoeba cascadensis demonstrates that eukaryotic life can withstand temperatures beyond what was thought possible and sheds light on molecular strategies for survival in extreme heat.
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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
So sick of useless techbro scam artists sucking all the air out of every room and taking up all of the space we could be using for discussing things that matter.
AI is rapidly getting smarter. 

This has nothing to do with our product, but it's a good hook for the kind of person we’re marketing to. 

Anyone who actually cared about general increases in human capacities would put all of their effort into childhood nutrition and public education. But fuck that. 

Today we're announcing Vitruvian, a new set of polygenic scores. We're calling them "genetic optimization models" because "polygenic scores" tested poorly.

Our whitepaper says the expected gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring of five embryos (many IVF patients have 1-3) is ~10.8 IQ points. The gain over transferring a random one is ~half that. So like 5, but let’s call it 14, a number that tested well. 
Best case for P(we pick an embryo with higher IQ than random pick) = 0.63 for a difference that has no demonstrated effect on any outcome a parent would care about. Meanwhile 1/3 of our customers will get a worse-than-chance pick on this metric. The good news is it is impossible to know, and we are selling a value system. 

The models were trained on 1,000,000+ people, mostly of European ancestry, so if you aren't, the numbers above get substantially worse. We validated on 40,000+ siblings, many of whom took a short, noisy cognitive test in UK Biobank, which risks inflation based on relatedness, stratification, overlap between training/test.

Is our model overfitted? Does it suffer from common issues with UK Biobank data? No one has checked but us.  

NICK BOSTROM. (VCs in the Valley like it when you say that.)

Genetic optimization has followed a scaling law all the way up to the hard, low ceiling set by how much your embryos differ from each other. Forget I said that.

In fact, nothing is being optimized in the sense you understand that word, which is the sense in which I want you to misunderstand it. 

Parents across the world now have the choice to pay us for possibly altering a complex and contested metric that is strongly shaped by nutrition, education…
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Incredible paper!! www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Stop messing with rumen microbes and focus on reducing ruminant populations for environmental and human health - npj Sustainable Agriculture
npj Sustainable Agriculture - Stop messing with rumen microbes and focus on reducing ruminant populations for environmental and human health
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PLOS @plos.org · 16/09/2026
We continue #OpenScienceWeek by highlighting the second output of our Redefining Publishing report on the future of the publishing business model. PLOS commits to develop a sustainable, non-APC model for research outputs and broaden participation in open science. 🔗 Read the report: buff.ly/hN8ycqN
plos.io
Redefining Publishing: Practical pathways to open science
PLOS explores innovative publishing models to enhance open science, focusing on broader recognition of diverse research outputs and sustainable participation beyond traditional article-centric…
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Dr. Jennifer Wade @volcanojw.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Do you like maps?? I’m in a briefing where the USGS shared these amazing 3D Elevation images that are just so cool. Find your state/district, and behold this example of DC! www.usgs.gov/3d-elevation...
A 3D Elevation Program image from the USGS of the District of Columbia, depicting (in their words) “the ‘bare earth’ surface, stripping away vegetation and structures, revealing ground surface.
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 14/09/2026
Talk about a title that'll make me click papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... 🤔 "Universities are multi-sided markets whose strategic asset is a credible warrant of quality over a credence good and AI is the first technology to disrupt this core function."
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Ted Pavlic (he/him/his) @tedpavlic.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Another Monte Carlo methods explorer for my simulating stochastic systems course. Demos 6 applications of Monte Carlo methods for estimating output distributions from stochastic models (queueing, inventory, reliability, and more -- 3 dynamic + 3 static). tpavlic.github.io/asu-simulati...
tpavlic.github.io
Monte Carlo Simulation Examples — interactive explainer
Six classic Monte Carlo experiments, each a short simulation per replication: a queueing node with one or two servers, an order-up-to inventory policy, a bearing-replacement policy, a newsvendor, aid ...
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Matthias C. Rillig @mrillig.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
New paper out in @pnas.org : Extreme climatic events drive consistent and predictable shifts in soil antibiotic resistance genes Led by Guanghui Xu, postdoc in our lab; a collaboration with @frantecol.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Extreme climatic events drive consistent and predictable shifts in soil antibiotic resistance genes | PNAS
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing One Health challenge, and as climate warming intensifies extreme events, it remains unclear how these d...
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Mongabay @mongabay.com · 03/09/2026
[Commentary] Deep in the Gulf of Mexico, the unique and unstudied Orca Basin is threatened by corporate plans to dump organic waste for carbon storage. In this op-ed, deep-sea biologist @drcraigmc.bsky.social warns that this ancient deep-sea ecosystem is a living system, not a waste repository.
mongabay.cc
Gulf of Mexico’s unique Orca Basin shouldn’t become a carbon dump (commentary)
It’s 3 a.m. and I am standing on the deck of a research vessel, staring into water so dark it looks solid. I feel what I felt standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, watching the sun set: there are…
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Ákos T Kovács @evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Limits and frontiers of microbial phenotype measurements Current Opinion in Microbiology by @tacaro.bsky.social, @quantaofgeorge.bsky.social, Jonas Cremer, Shin Haruta, and @shougroup.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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George Schaible @quantaofgeorge.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Our new opinion piece is out! @tacaro.bsky.social How you measure a microbe shapes what you learn about it. We make the case for a microbial observer effect, and what it means for experimental design: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
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Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
An existing NSF program allows graduate students to work for industry while earning their degree. So why does NSF think that a $47-million award to do the same thing--but on a smaller scale-- is a new idea? www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
NSF’s new plan to fund graduate students to work in industry covers familiar ground
Agency gives university-industry consortium $47 million to reinvent existing internship program
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Oil companies profit when oil prices are high and it allows them to pursue expensive drilling exploration. Finance journals literally say out loud that oil companies and investors *worry* about diplomatic progress. @naomiaklein.bsky.social predicted this in 2017! finance.yahoo.com/energy/artic...
finance.yahoo.com
Exxon Slips Below $159 as Hormuz Hope Hits Crude Again
A third day of falling oil is testing how much geopolitical premium remained inside energy shares.
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Alex Bisson @archaeon-alex.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Yet another myth collapses and joins Ethidium Bromide. Next one will be "having dedicated RNA bench and pipettes" journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org
As a component of aseptic technique, Bunsen burners do not universally decrease deposition of microbe-containing particles | Microbiology Spectrum
The ability to manipulate and control microbial presence in built environments is imperative to research and medicine. The lack of documented evidence relating Bunsen burner use and airborne contamina...
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Homeworld Collective @homeworld.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Cave microbes are a substantial methane sink. A @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social Opinion from Sean Bay, Bob Leung, Homeworld, and @sparkclimate.bsky.social proposes enhanced subterranean aerotrophy, a prospective atmospheric methane removal pathway in caves or mines. www.cell.com/trends/micro...
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Finally, this has gone a bit under the radar, so I want to highlight it: The social, behavioral and economic sciences directorate (SBE) has simply ceased to deliver grants to many of its subareas. Any topic not specifically OK'd by the Trump administration is receiving zero new awards.
All of the NSF’s directorates are awarding fewer new grants, but the hardest hit is the social, behavioural and economic sciences (SBE) directorate, which the White House proposed eliminating in its 2027 budget request to Congress. SBE has so far awarded 84 new grants this year, about 11% of its average, mainly in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience and decision-making. Much of its portfolio, such as sociology, archaeology, political science, economics and geography, has received zero new awards. “I don’t think they’ve realized yet that there’s no awards,” one NSF staff member says of researchers in those fields. “That’s going to be clear soon.”
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PeppyPanda 🐼 - Uplifting and good news @peppypanda.com · 20/08/2026
Emissions from land-use change – including deforestation, loss of peatland and forest degradation – have been falling significantly since the late 1990s. 🌳 The decline accelerated after 2015 thanks to lower deforestation and higher restoration, reforestation and afforestation.
carbonbrief.org
Emissions from land-use change – including deforestation, loss of peatland and forest degradation – have been falling significantly since the late 1990s. 🌳 The decline accelerated after 2015 thanks to lower deforestation and higher restoration, reforestation and afforestation.
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Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Psychrophiles elude genomic prediction of optimal growth temperature journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... #jcampubs
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
incredible, thank you!
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Where is this footage found??
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Mount St. Helens Archive @mountsthelens1980.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
August 17, 1982 Don Swanson and possibly Christina Heliker making deformation measurements on the north side of the Mount St. Helens lava dome. Photo: Lyn Topinka/USGS.
Two USGS geologists make deformation measurements on the rocky north side of Mount St. Helens' dome, August 17, 1982. Don Swanson sits in the foreground beside a red equipment case, while a second geologist, possibly Christina Heliker, stands at a survey instrument on a yellow tripod. The dome rises behind them with steam venting from its summit. Photo: Lyn Topinka/USGS.
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Richard Sedgley @richardsedgley.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Two-thirds of UK news articles about wildfires this summer haven’t mentioned climate change uk.themedialeader.com/two-thirds-o...
uk.themedialeader.com
Two-thirds of UK news articles about wildfires this summer haven't mentioned climate change
Analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit adds to concerns that national newspapers are failing to link this summer's extreme weather to climate change and the net-zero policies necessary to mitigate its drastic effects.
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whet moser @whetmoser.com · 06/08/2026
about the angriest i’ve ever gotten about an editorial was someone being smirky and shitty about the phrase “tree equity”
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Thousands of ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) once roamed Texas, but urban sprawl, the rise of ranching & the clearing of thornscrub forest biomes for cattle have depleted their numbers to ~100-150 left. This Texas research institute aims to change that, if Elon Musk doesn't stop them.
static.klipy.com
Baby Ocelot Yawns and Meows
Alt: Baby Ocelot Yawns and Meows. A pair of gloved hands holds an ocelot, a sort of kitten-sized cat with yellow and white fur with black stripes. It is ridiculously cute and I want to hug it so much it hurts.
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Which vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
where is this visualization hosted?? i would love to include this in a class
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Leon Simons @leonsimons.com · 28/07/2026
This is such a great visualization of the carbon cycle and of how humanity has completely altered it within a geological instant. Visualization by @rarohde.bsky.social. 1/
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 28/07/2026
Fires in France have now burned over 91,000 acres, by far the most of any year since the satellite record started in 2006. Current area burned is about 34x larger than this date in a typical (median) year:
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
An intense and long-duration heatwave now appears likely by late Jul/early Aug for SW U.S., including California. Extreme heat is likely in hottest inland deserts, and a potentially dangerous combination of heat & elevated humidity may develop in SoCal. More to come. #CAwx #AZwx
Map of predicted 500mb GPH anomalies (normalized) from the ECMWF ensemble across the Western U.S. Extremely anomalous positive (warm) GPH is depicted across the Southwest, including California and Arizona.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 21/07/2026
1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
arxiv.org
The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science
As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...
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Loukas Theodosiou @bioinformatician.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
After four years, several updates and a handful of CRAN releases, 𝗹𝘁𝗰 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲 𝗥-𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗮𝗴𝗲, reached a version I feel genuinely good about sharing with the community. github.com/loukesio/ltc...
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Can't wait for my doctor to prescribe me treatment based on sports gambler sentiment
"Michael Selig, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that regulates prediction markets, has also touted drug-trial contracts as a potential way for sick people in need of medicine to hedge their future treatment costs."
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CIRES @cires.colorado.edu · 16/07/2026
Smoke from Canadian wildfires is blanketing the Midwest and Northeast, creating hazardous air quality conditions. This experimental @noaa.gov GSL decision support tool forecast shows where the smoke will travel over the next few hours.
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
very cool, is there an accompanying paper?
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CIRES @cires.colorado.edu · 14/07/2026
New blog by CIRES' Kyle Manley: "These [public] lands deliver an estimated $507 billion in benefits to the American public every year, from pollination that underpins our food systems, to water regulation supporting downstream populations..." and more. www.naturepeopleactioncolab.org/news/launch-...
naturepeopleactioncolab.org
Public Lands Are Worth Far More Than the Price Tag of a Sale — Nature & People Action CoLab
Public lands are already working for the American public, sustaining the food, water, air, biodiversity, and cultural connections that define daily life across the country.
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Kendall Powell @kendallsciwrite.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
This @nature.com Q&A with Ryan Rising covers his own journey – and his work to help others – to get a PhD after being incarcerated. So easy to take for granted the raw power of higher education. As told to @virginiagewin.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
I want to see a prison-to-PhD pipeline
Ryan Rising creates programmes that help people who have been incarcerated to access academic opportunities.
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Tristan Caro @tacaro.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
What's this video from??
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