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.

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.

static.klipy.com

Which vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...

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/

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:

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

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.

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 ...

arxiv.org

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...

Can't wait for my doctor to prescribe me treatment based on sports gambler sentiment

Carl Zimmer@carlzimmer.com · 3w ago

Kalshi Will Offer Sports-Style Betting on Drug Trial Results www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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.

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-...

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.

naturepeopleactioncolab.org

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...

I want to see a prison-to-PhD pipeline

Ryan Rising creates programmes that help people who have been incarcerated to access academic opportunities.

nature.com

New: The National Science Foundation is preparing to claw back some $500 million in funds from some of its core science programs in physics, math, computer science, and engineering in order to fund a project from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

NSF plans cuts to core science programmes to fund White House initiative

A proposed clawback of already distributed research funds comes as the US agency’s budget is already squeezed and it struggling to clear a backlog of grant applications.

nature.com

PSA to my fellow Zoom users -- it's automatically turned on a bunch of A.I. features without asking you✌️ to turn all 32 of them off, go to "Settings" --> "My Account" --> "View advanced features" it'll open up your browser and list a SHITTON of A.I. features, many of which will be on (scroll!)

@cbo.bsky.social doing the heavy lifting for biologists here 🏋️

C. Brandon Ogbunu@cbo.bsky.social · last mo.

New for @undark.org: Mathematicians have signed the Leiden Declaration for AI. I argue that the life sciences needs one: built for noisy, context-dependent systems, w/ disclosure, human accountability, wet-lab validation, & rules that evolve as fast as the tools do. undark.org/2026/07/02/o...

Social media posts containing misinformation evoke more moral outrage than posts with trustworthy information, and that outrage facilitates the spread of misinformation, according to a 2024 study in Science. https://scim.ag/4wgXGHA #SocialMediaDay

Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online

We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is high...

scim.ag

Spent the last two years developing a new Intro to Physics course for undergrad biology majors. It features tons of examples from biology (especially Ecology & Evolution!) and requires only middle school-level math. Lecture note here shorturl.at/0PiVp Any comments or feedback are highly welcome!

Two researchers — one in Massachusetts and one in Shanghai — hoped for the same breakthrough: a gene therapy for deaf children. New Chinese investment in science propelled the one who got there first. n.pr/4weVi49

How the U.S. is losing ground to China in university research

Two researchers — one in Massachusetts and one in Shanghai — hoped for the same breakthrough: a gene therapy for deaf children. New Chinese investment in science propelled the one who got there first.

n.pr

Absolutely, and it's surrendering *the point* of being a scientist. The point is that we, humans, evaluate science, because we, humans, live in the material world. AI cannot adequately evaluate science because it does not have a stake in the material world.

Dave Baltrus 🦦@surtlab.bsky.social · last mo.

I…am feeling icky about AI assigning numerical value and ranking to scientific manuscripts

This is more money than was spent on cancer research at the National Cancer Institute since 2014.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · last mo.

This amount would fund the US National Science Foundation for a decade. 🧪

Curiosity just pulled up to some wild terrain on its Sol 4928 drive this week. Check out all those polygonal fractures, linear features, and all the other stuff going on! flic.kr/p/2sjtA9y

Modifying Mountains in Models Reduces Wet Bias in Western North America journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

No one owns ProPublica. As a nonprofit newsroom, our journalism is free from corporate interests, free from political pressure and free to read. Join us. Become a member by midnight: https://propub.li/49vQRJ9

As #ClimateChange intensifies, rapid swings between drought and deluge —#HydrologicWhiplash — are becoming more common. These back-to-back extremes can amplify impacts. Learn more in this PNAS Core Concept: https://ow.ly/R5Rx50Zb6kO #drought #flooding #GreenhouseGasEmissions

What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Global CO2 emissions have plateaued since 2013, leading to a slower growth in atmospheric CO2 than would have otherwise been the case. In a new analysis at The Climate Brink, I've taken look at what would have happened if emissions had continued to grow: www.theclimatebrink....

I'm happy to share the first pre-print of out Lab! 🎉 Introducing ArchaeaHQ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We curated 21,644 genomes across all 4 archaeal kingdoms to bridge the gap in public datasets for computational biology What is inside ArchaeaHQ... (1/2)

Introducing openRxiv Labs! 🔬 Growing from the strong foundation of bioRxiv & medRxiv, Labs is an experimental space for working with collaborators to push the boundaries of open scientific communication. 👉 Check it out and learn more: openrxiv.org/openrxiv-lab... #OpenScience #Preprints #Scicomm

Launching openRxiv Labs - openRxiv

Over the last thirteen years, bioRxiv and medRxiv have grown into widely used infrastructure for rapid research sharing in biology and medicine. The reliability and researcher-first values that have d...

openrxiv.org

▶️AI‑generated #climate #disaster images look persuasive but don’t boost climate action. Across 3 experiments, they raised emotions but also reactance, lower trust, and reduced willingness to act when people suspected the images were AI‑made. 🧪https://www.nature.com/articles/s44458-026-00092-0

Realistic AI-generated climate disaster images decrease support for climate action when artificial origin is suspected - Communications Sustainability

Support for climate action decreases when highly realistic disaster images are suspected to be generated by artificial intelligence, as shown by three large experiments testing emotional and resistanc...

nature.com

I've got to say that I'm really disappointed in the recent discourse surrounding the RCP8.5 scenario. The lack of context and understanding is something I expected from the usual suspects, but it's frustrating to see such bad takes from people and outlets who should know better.

So happy to see this out 🎉 it all started with a discussion group of ECR brought together by the NCCR Microbiomes and cumulated in this primer on microbial community ecology. This was such a fun group project, where I learned a lot about how cool both microbial and human communities are 🤩

Oliver Meacock@olimeacock.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Delighted to see this out in its final form! doi.org/10.1093/isme... We established a discussion group focussed on the history of community ecology and how it informs our understanding of microbiota. This review distils those discussions to provide a guide for microbiologists entering the field