This is (I think) a Greater Blue-Eared Starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) & the amazing chrome job is their super-power. They've evolved to manipulate light in VERY specific ways, attracting mates, intimidating rivals. Let's look at the nanostructures that bring this bling into being.

If anyone else's personal Gmail suddenly started giving AI summaries of your emails with no option to turn them off: I already took the elevated blood pressure hit for you and figure out how to get rid of it WITHOUT getting rid of the multiple inboxes (which I personally need in order to function)

Honored to be featured by ChemSci! I always love reviewing and try my hardest to make sure my reviews are of high quality (which has definitely been a learning process).

Chemical Science@chemicalscience.rsc.org · 10mo ago

Dr Alexandra Brumberg (Drexel University) is one of our latest #ChemSciReviewers being highlighted over on our blog: blogs.rsc.org/sc/202... Have a read of the post to see what all of our featured reviewers had to say about reviewing for Chemical Science.

I had my students do exam corrections after our first midterm. They were allowed to use whatever resources they needed (me, their classmates, the internet/AI) to correct their mistakes. Seeing some of them still not get the right answer hurts my soul 😭😭

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S. Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world. www.nobelprize.org

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

nobelprize.org

I know we all have lots of issues with MS Word, PPT, etc, but all I am asking for is a reverse numbering feature

#chemsky I am introducing the field of inorganic chemistry to our first year chem majors. Does anyone have any resources on this topic? Looking for an overview of the field as a whole, like active research areas eg "five slides about inorganic chemistry" 😅 to quote the VIPEr resource categories

The only thing I am sure about as a new instructor of inorganic chemistry is that all three commonly used textbooks of inorganic chemistry do a terrible job 😭

Come be my colleague at @hopecollege.bsky.social ! We are hiring a tenure-track open rank #chemprof to teach #GenChem & #Inorganic and establish a thriving experimental #undergradresearch group in our exceptional #PUI #Chemistry department! #chemjobs #facultyjobs jobs.hope.edu

Well I can now confirm that both United AND American aren't capable of getting planes/crews to a given location in order to transport passengers in exchange for money. Will somebody please just get me home 😭

So does anyone else always call it "Ted Paella" or is that just me

". . . it is not, in any real sense, about Columbia. Neither is it about antisemitism or free speech. It is not even at its root about education." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

The attempt to destroy Columbia (opinion)

The Trump administration has the symbolic fight it wants, Brian Rosenberg writes.

insidehighered.com

Just had a bottle of DMSO arrive as a completely solid chunk... apparently the melting point is ~18 °C? Definitely colder than that outside today 😅

So today I went to go open up my brand new centrifuge for the lab and inside the box I found a single box of 10 uL centrifuge tubes So, not at all a centrifuge, and in fact completely useless to me WITHOUT said centrifuge

Some of my LA friends have told me that the problem is climate change, and it is. It’s January for fucks sake. But that doesn’t mean we have to solve climate change to better control fire. If we wait for that, cities will keep burning. There are ways to mitigate risk. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Inconvenient truths about the fires burning in Los Angeles from two fire experts

For years, renowned fire experts Jack Cohen and Stephen Pyne have tried to shift the conversation on fire prevention strategies. This week’s destruction, they say, could have been minimized.

latimes.com

hello I would like everybody to imagine for a second that you are a new faculty member and that your university is switching to a new purchasing system, such that you will not be allowed to make any purchases for a FULL WEEK while the transition happens please pray for me

Not many more days to open, I hope you've all finished purifying your products from door 16 to mix with the product of door 22

Well, it happened... I turned 30 and then I hurt my back moving furniture 😭

What I find more fun is when schools let you know that the search has closed in like, July. Or October, at which point the next cycle has begun. Like thanks I had figured that out by now that is not helpful

Darren Lipomi@dlipomi.bsky.social · 2y ago

For whoever needs to hear this, I did 2 on-site interviews last spring as a mid career faculty candidate. I got a lot of interest and an offer from one, University of Rochester, and never heard a damn thing from the other ;)

I will forever be of the belief that customers should be reimbursed for the amount of time that internet and utilities are unavailable to outages. I am literally paying for a service that you are not delivering

A classic editorial by Prashant Kamat @kamat.bsky.social that was partial inspiration for the quoted thread below: pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.... #ChemSky #Physics 🧪

The Lost Art of Composing Single-Panel Figures

pubs.acs.org

Dr. Joseph J. Thiebes@thiebes.bsky.social · 2y ago

“16 Panels” (to the tune of “16 Tons”) #Science #ChemSky #Physics 🧪 Verse 1 Well some people say, “Keep your figures lean.” But I load sixteen panels, I’m a data machine. My plots are dense, the reviewers should swoon, But the editor scoffs, saying, “This just won’t do.”

It turns out it is very easy to get 10k steps if (1) you are commuting to work on public transit and (2) your office and your lab are in different buildings

you know I really don't feel like I listened to this song that much #spotifywrapped #ajr

Re-reading your rejected manuscript

This article hits the nail on the head 💯

Needing to move is a huge barrier to broadening representation in the sciences

Science will be more inclusive and equitable when we stop expecting people to uproot their lives every few years

open.substack.com

When I became a professor, I was excited about all of the teaching, research, mentoring, outreach, and more. But now, doing All The Things is just exhausting and less exciting. How can professors be effective but not do All The Things? open.substack.com/pub/sciencef...

What was the best part of being a professor is now the worst part of being a professor

We get to do it all. Which means we have to do it all.

open.substack.com

Here's what drives me up the wall: We take research ethics as students. We learn and are told that "all authors must have reviewed and approved the submission of their manuscript." Then you end up on papers that get submitted without your knowledge, and what?

Has anybody tried the ACS Publishing Center (new version of ACS Paragon Plus) and has it worked for them? Literally I cannot get anything to update in my profile 😠

#PhysicsFactlet: The "Ashcroft/Mermin Project" I will try to (likely very slowly) make one or more visualization per chapter of "Solid State Physics" by Ashcroft and Mermin, with the hope that they will be useful to people teaching/learning solid state Physics. 1/