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But the process of identifying talent and developing an innovative and diversified funding portfolio may appear opaque to political appointees with little interest in understanding the scientific process. This…explains why the NSF finished FY26 unable to accomplish the most basic of tasks.”

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“Up until 2025, the NSF as an institution worked – this imperfect system helped support more than 250 Nobel Prize laureates and jump-started the careers of tens of thousands of talented early career researchers via its flagship Graduate Research Fellowship Program.”

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“The process by which NSF grants are awarded…may be complicated and imperfect. But those in positions of power might exercise some restraint before they ruin it with an alternative, apparatchik system in which the President’s political appointees determine who and what gets funded.”

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joshuasweitz.substack.com

“Together, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and Office of Science and Technology Policy have politicized NSF’s core functions and undermined its independence. It is far past time for Congress to restore the viability of America’s investigator-led, basic research ecosystem.”

A Compromised Mission at the National Science Foundation

Rhetoric heralding a New Golden Age of Science obscures what is evident: the White House is undermining capacity for investigator-led basic research.

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“…the scientists suspect the decline is due to warming waters causing krill to shift their range south into Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. The chinstrap penguins can’t follow because of an absence of islands to nest on. Still...“the causes of the decline are far from being properly understood.””

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“Meanwhile, the number of nest sites occupied by macaroni penguins increased by 28% from 2011 to ’16..Macaronis have a more generalist diet, including zooplankton and fish, which allows them to switch between food sources and makes them more resilient than chinstraps to declining krill.”

000

“For chinstrap penguins, the results were grim. The number of nest sites occupied by that species shrank by 63% from 2011 to ’25. “This is the worst-case scenario.” “It’s decreasing way faster than most people are expecting.””

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“In recent decades, populations of chinstrap penguins have been declining elsewhere because they specialize in eating krill and climate change is driving the small crustaceans to cooler water. But scientists believed the Zavodovski birds were holding steady because of the island’s colder sea.”

World’s once-largest penguin colony is in perilous decline

Climate change appears to have made food scarce for chinstrap penguins, which had numbered more than 1 million on a remote South Atlantic island

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“This fossil has … the beginning of a mammalian throat,” German says, implying it could have had a mammalian tongue. “That is critical to be able to swallow successfully.” “there are no fossil breasts in the record”…making it hard to determine when exactly nursing arose.

000

“The scientists virtually reconstructed these muscles in Megacauda by comparing its throat bones with those of living animals, including opossums. They concluded that Megacauda probably drank, swallowed, and nursed much like we do.”

000

“In living mammals, these parts hold up the soft palate and the muscles that push food down the throat while keeping it out of the windpipe. They let mammals swallow, drink, and—crucially—suckle milk without choking.”

000

“The biggest surprise, however, came from the tiny bones that made up the creature’s throat. These included the roof of the palate and small, saddle-shaped bones, called hyoids, that support the tongue. Such fragile structures almost never fossilize.”

000

“About 165 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the world, a house cat–size critter paddled the waters of what is now Inner Mongolia, steering with a broad, flat tail as it hunted for small animals. As a babe, however, it would have gotten its sustenance very differently:”

Was this odd animal the world’s first milk suckler?

Ancient swimming creature provides clues to when nursing evolved

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“What did the cave’s occupants do with a 30-centimeter-long object that looks like a short club? “It could be for hunting, or maybe it’s a percussion tool to break bones or knap stone.” “All we know for sure is that it’s not a natural shape and we can see scrape marks on the surface.””

000

“…minerals in the water hardened into layers of travertine…archaeologists have broken apart the travertine slabs to reveal 19 sandy layers…Uranium-series dates from the different layers show they were occupied between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago…”

000

“Different types of fireplaces and concentrations of tools in various parts of the cave suggest Neanderthals divided it into separate sleeping and work areas. “You can see the site has been used for similar purposes for thousands of years...”

000

“More than 40,000 years ago, bands of Neanderthals turned a spacious rock shelter in the mountains of Spain into a cozy home, fashioning wood into tools and windbreaks and burning it for heat and light. That picture comes from a...trove of Neanderthal wooden artifacts from a domestic space…”

Neanderthals were skilled woodworkers, first-of-its-kind tool trove reveals

Find in Spanish cave provides rare window into the domestic lives of our closest relatives

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 22h

“A response at this distance “suggests that they are detecting the particle motion associated with sound”, which hasn’t been observed in sharks before.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 22h

“Blacktip sharks can hear and respond to sounds up to 74 metres away — beyond the radius that scientists thought the animals’ hearing was restricted to. Researchers found that the sharks often turned sharply away from speakers playing certain frequencies of noise...”

sciencealert.com

It Turns Out, Sharks Can Hear Way Better Than We Thought

It's helpful to know how well the senses of underwater predators are working – both to better understand the ecology and biology of marine life, and to get out of their way should you come into contac...

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 22h

"Less than 1 billion years" How long the Solar System will remain stable after the Sun runs out of nuclear fuel and becomes a white dwarf — much less, I’m afraid, than previous estimates of [100 billion] years. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

iopscience.iop.org

Terminal Instability of the Solar System Triggered by Stochastic Solar Mass Loss

Terminal Instability of the Solar System Triggered by Stochastic Solar Mass Loss, Batygin, Konstantin, Fuller, Jim, Adams, Fred C.

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“Both the fossil and the Sphinx came from the same rock formation, which led to the name Herugavialis cairensis, Heru being the ancient Egyptian god thought to be the inspiration for the Sphinx. “We seek to connect Egypt’s deep natural history with its human history and the legacy of ancient…”

000

“Working with CT scans…a team of international researchers compared over 300 data points on the size and shape of the skull of the Egyptian creature with that of other gharials. Their findings…concluded that this was a distinct species never before identified.”

000

“The ancient reptile was identified in the historical records as belonging to the genus Tomistoma, the “false gharial.” The problem is that the only false gharials living today exist some 5,000 miles away, in the freshwaters of Malaysia and Indonesia.”

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Scientists identify a crocodile they never knew existed

“In the millennia-spanning fossil records of the order Crocodylia, there was always a group of crocodiles that made little geographical sense. Scientists found one of these animals a century ago in a rock formation…that was quarried to build the Sphinx of Giza.”

washingtonpost.com

CT scans helped determine that the fossil unearthed in Egypt came from a distinctly different ancient species.

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Orioles and grackles may have reached South America before the two continents were joined

"New World blackbirds, including orioles and grackles, might have reached South America about 6 million years ago, predating the formation of the Panama land bridge...The study...suggests the birds moved in a north-to-south direction, possibly using islands or partial land connections."

earth.com

New World blackbirds such as orioles and grackles seem to have reached South America millions of years before the Panama land bridge formed.

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“That points to a response that is not purely behavioural: early nutrition may act on physiological pathways such as metabolic programming, insulin sensitivity, appetite and satiety regulation, or adipose-tissue [fat tissue] development.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“Importantly, while we observe that people exposed to rationing do consume less free sugar in adulthood, we find that dietary difference is similar across genetic-risk groups.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“In August, Prof Nophar Geifman at the University of Surrey and her colleagues reported that people who had spent the full first 1,000 days of life under sugar rationing had a 33% lower risk of being diagnosed with anxiety than those born after rationing ended.

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Interesting… “…the longer people had spent under rationing, the lower their risk…those exposed throughout their first 1,000 days had a 35% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who had never experienced rationing.”

theguardian.com

The generation raised on sugar rations – and what their health reveals 70 years later

From blood pressure to ageing, research suggests the first 1,000 days of sugar exposure could leave a decades-long mark on health

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“…the cultural resource management industry is facing profound uncertainty. President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed changes to preservation laws that could vastly reduce the number of federally funded or federally permitted projects requiring archaeological reviews.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“The 1 October move, which has not been announced publicly, came as a surprise to the firm’s more than 600 employees, including numerous archaeologists and paleontologists who were recalled from digs and other projects around the world. “Our response was absolutely shock, anger, sadness, and fear…”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Such firms are often contracted to conduct legally required archaeological surveys and other reviews prior to major development projects. They have been a major source of archaeological data...observers estimate they conducted up to 90% of the archaeological research performed in the U.S. each year.

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“Chronicle Heritage, the largest cultural resources management company in the [US]...announced last week it was shutting down…Chronicle Heritage…backed by venture capitalists and formed through the merger of several smaller firms, was a major player in the for-profit cultural heritage industry.” 5

Exclusive: Archaeology megafirm abruptly shuts down

Chronicle Heritage was largest U.S. cultural resources management company

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

For example, the right-handed drug Darvon is an opioid painkiller, whereas its left-handed form, Novrad, is a cough medicine. (The names are mirror images of each other as well.)

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

For decades, drugmakers had struggled to create chemical reactions that would produce a one-handed form of a drug—a problem because mirror-image forms of the same drug molecule can have very different biological effects.

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“Molecules can exist in mirror images of themselves—left- and right-handed versions. Yet the stuff of life, from the amino acids in our proteins to the sugars in DNA, has evolved a preference for one-handedness, or chirality. Why this asymmetry arose has long been a mystery...”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

““Their discoveries led to a chemical reaction that spontaneously, without the involvement of other chiral molecules, creates only one mirror image,” “This is the first time this had happened since the processes that led to the chirality of life billions of years ago.””

Nobel Prize honors researchers who solved chemistry’s asymmetry mystery

Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai win award for reactions leading to one-handed molecules

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

They were fairly common in southern West Virginia.

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The work of a bowl and doily spider (family Linyphiidae).

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“SBE...spent just $95 million for 2026, a 62% decline relative to the $247 million average between 2021 and ’24, and awarded just 91 new grants, an 89% drop from its average of about 800… more than 30 program areas…which typically make hundreds of new grants distributed zero new awards.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“…NSF is not waiting. Interviews with five recently departed SBE staff and newly available data document how the agency has quietly followed through on administration orders by slashing SBE’s budget, throttling its decision-making, and reducing its workforce.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“…the White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 called for eliminating the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), which funds roughly two-thirds of the country’s academic social science research, such as...archaeology.”

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wvcaver.bsky.social @wvcaver.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“Social scientists in the United States have known for months that their main source of research funding was threatened, but were unsure how dire...With the end of the 2026 fiscal year on 30 September, the extent of the damage is now becoming clear. “For entire disciplines, this is existential…””