Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Molly Schumer

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social · 7h

I’m extremely honored to be a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award!

Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute @zuckermanbrain.bsky.social · 12h

Congratulations to @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social on receiving the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, celebrating “scientists with outstanding records of creativity.” His lab will explore how the sense of touch can help build relationships. 🫶🧠💡

See zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/zuckerman-in...

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Voices for Progress @voicesforprogress.org · 1d

@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social “Every awful thing that would happen in a shutdown...is already happening.” This isn’t about partisanship. It’s about stopping the erosion of our public services. It’s time to protect the programs that serve our communities and stand up to authoritarianism. #StopTheScam

Why some federal workers aren't scared by the threat of shutdown layoffs

Some federal workers support the government shutdown, even as President Trump threatens to use this moment to lay off employees and cut funding to programs.

www.npr.org

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Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 2d

I am proud of MIT, where our branch of AAUP has voted unanimously to endorse this statement urging MIT leadership and the MIT Corporation to reject the Compact wholesale
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Letter Regarding Compact

MIT Chapter of the American Association of University Professors October 6, 2025 Statement on the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” MIT has been invited by the federal governmen...

docs.google.com

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Rosa Lafer-Sousa @rosalafersousa.bsky.social · 1d

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen.

He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

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Megan Dennis @mydennis.bsky.social · 2d

Happy to share work spearheaded by former grad student Colin Shew testing shared duplicated cis regulatory elements (CREs) using an MPRA. While we find some high effect CREs, collectively paralog differences represent modest effects accounting for observed gene expression divergence.

bioRxiv Genomics @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 3d

Influence of cis-regulatory elements on regulatory divergence in human segmental duplications https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.03.680410v1

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Jonathan Pritchard @jkpritch.bsky.social · 2d

I want to try something again at #ASHG25 this year: I'll block some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet with trainees who would be interested to chat on any topic.

I did this last year and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people, at all career stages!

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FlyBase @flybase.bsky.social · 5d

There's an update on the state of FlyBase on the FlyBase.org front page. You can contribute to FlyBase at this link wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase...
We express enormous gratitude to the people, labs, groups, and foundations who have already helped us.
#FlyBase #Drosophila

FlyBase Update – October 2025
The termination of the NIH/NHGRI FlyBase grant has placed the long-term sustainability of FlyBase at risk. However, thanks to the generous support of several key individuals and institutions, we are pleased to announce that FlyBase will remain operational through the coming year. We extend our deepest gratitude to Yukiko Yamashita, Cassandra Extavour, Hugo Bellen, Thom Kaufman, the Genetics Society of America / Drosophila Board, the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, an anonymous donor and the Wellcome Trust. We are especially thankful for a generous gift from Seemay Chou, Jed McCaleb, and The Navigation Fund. We also greatly appreciate the continued support from the broader Drosophila community – your donations and service fees have been vital in helping us stay afloat. Special thanks also go to Jessica Manning for her tireless administrative work at Harvard, to Ruth Lehmann, Hugo Bellen, and Paul Sternberg for advice and efforts, and to the Board of the European Drosophila Society for all their efforts. Sadly, we must also share that several long-standing FlyBase team members have recently moved on. We are immensely grateful to Susan Russo-Gelbart, Lynn Crosby, Gil dos Santos, Kris Broll, Victoria Jenkins, and TyAnna Lovato for their many years of dedicated service and contributions to FlyBase. Looking ahead, ensuring FlyBase’s sustainability beyond the next year – and successfully integrating with the Alliance – will require new funding sources. We kindly ask for your continued support:
• European labs: Please consider contributing to the Cambridge, U.K. FlyBase group
• U.S. and other non-European labs: Please consider contributing to the U.S. FlyBase groups
• Both U.K. and U.S. FlyBase are working diligently to establish an invoicing system. We appreciate your continued patience.
For more information on how to support us, please visit: Contribute to FlyBase wiki page https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase

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Julia Kreiner @jmkreiner.bsky.social · 2d

Human-mediated land-use and climate change occur simultaneously, but how do they interact to shape adaptive dynamics? Super excited to share the first paper from the Kreiner lab, led by postdoc extraordinaire @rpineau.bsky.social

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Governor Gavin Newsom @governor.ca.gov · 3d

This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power by the President of the United States.

America is on the brink of martial law.

Do not be silent.

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 3d

This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 6d

California vows to ‘instantly’ cut funding to universities that cave to Trump ‘compact’

Governor Gavin Newsom urges schools not to sign ‘radical agreement’ to cuts to departments, students and speech Any California universities that sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” will “instantly” lose their state funding, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. The Trump administration on Wednesday offered nine prominent universities, including the University of Southern California, the chance to sign a “compact” that asks the universities to close academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”, limit the proportion of international undergraduate students to 15% , accept the administration’s definition of gender and ban the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, in exchange for “substantial and meaningful federal grants”. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Liz Haswell @ehaswell.bsky.social · 7d

"What is happening in this country is happening because science is bad for tyrants, and always has been"

Science Vs @sciencevs.bsky.social · 7d

This moment from our latest episode with science writer @edyong209.bsky.social is 🔥

We asked Ed — how do we talk up the benefits of science in the face of government cuts? He told us that's the wrong approach. 🧪

Listen wherever, or watch on Spotify 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/7Evh...

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David L. Stern @gallseeker.bsky.social · 8d

It's official! We are moving to Stowers!
Very exciting opportunity to expand our studies of insect-plant interactions. We have many opportunities available in biochemistry, development, behavior, genetics, evolution, genomics, AI, and even pest control. Interested in any of these things? Reach out!

Stowers Institute @stowersinstitute.bsky.social · 8d

NEWS🎉 We’re excited to announce @hhmijanelia.bsky.social Investigator David Stern will join the Institute from Janelia Research Campus. His lab studies how aphids transform plants at the genetic level, uncovering secrets of #evolution & new strategies for pest control. @hhmi.org bit.ly/4np96Fb

Stowers Institute recruits renowned developmental and evolutionary…

David Stern, Ph.D., brings groundbreaking research on insect–plant interactions for next-generation pest control to the Institute.

bit.ly

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Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 8d

Another violent attack by an ICE officer on a civilian at 26 Federal Plaza—this time on a journalist, who had to be carried out on stretcher.

Another attack on the First Amendment, our neighbors, and our democracy.

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Charlotte Garden @charlottegarden.bsky.social · 8d

I'm skimming, but this paragraph stood out:

And there’s the issue of masks. This Court has listened carefully to the reasons given by Öztürk’s captors for masking- up and has heard the same reasons advanced by the defendant Todd Lyons, Acting Director of ICE. It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable. ICE goes masked for a single reason -- to terrorize Americans into quiescence.

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Heng Li @lh3lh3.bsky.social · 9d

Do you know ~60% of human SVs fall in ~1% of GRCh38? See our new preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.23057 and the companion blog post on how we started this project and longdust: lh3.github.io/2025/09/29/o.... Work with Alvin Qin

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Kory Evans Ph.D @sternarchella.bsky.social · 9d

New paper alert!!!🚨 in our new study we find that Antarctic icefishes added a new module in their skulls during their adaptive radiation special shout out to @mayaranevesbio.bsky.social who led this project!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 9d

Delighted to contribute to an effort led by @omfishient.bsky.social, @jasonwilliamsny.bsky.social, @danielbolnick.bsky.social, @jbyoder.org, Susan Brennen, + Gisele Muller-Parker.

Petition link here:
laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

Petition to NSF to Restore Eligibility for the 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship Program Competition

laurenkuehne.github.io

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Mitchell R. Vollger @mrvollger.bsky.social · 9d

@mollyschumer.bsky.social if the data is pre SPQR chemistry I would recommend fibertools. If it’s new data then you can use Jasmine from Pacbio, Andrew and I spent a fair amount of time looking at the Jasmine results and they look good. And it will all still work with downstream fibertools commands

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Molly Schumer @mollyschumer.bsky.social · 10d

What are people using for calling m6A from pacbio revio data? This is for analysis of fiberseq library. Any suggestions appreciated, we are newbies with m6A analysis!

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Braasch Lab @ Michigan State University @fishevodevogeno.bsky.social · 11d

Hello #fish 🐟 🐠 researchers and PIs of tomorrow! We would be excited to sponsor you for an Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (EEB) Presidential #Postdoc Fellowship application @michiganstateu.bsky.social. Application deadline is Nov 10, so get in touch soom!

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful

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Sally Aitken 🇨🇦 @sallyaitken.bsky.social · 13d

We are searching for a Forest Ecophysiologist (tenure track Assistant or Associate Professor) to join the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry. Please share! Details are here: ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/ubcfacultyjobs

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Till Eckert @tilleckert.com · 13d

1/ I’m Till Eckert, a ProPublica reporter. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been going to the same NY immigration courthouse.

Nearly every time, I see ICE agents arresting immigrants. Today, a woman was slammed to the ground after begging officials not to take her husband away.

Thread 👇

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Jenn Coughlan @jenncoughlan.bsky.social · 13d

I'm so proud of this work!!! It was an incredible amount of effort that started when I was trapped in a greenhouse during the pandemic and is only now seeing the light of day. Kudos to Megan, Hagar, & Pia!

We'd love to hear your thoughts!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Introgression and Parental Conflict Underlie Repeated Occurrences of Postzygotic Isolation

Postzygotic reproductive isolation is often thought to accumulate as a byproduct of neutral divergence. Yet, it frequently evolves rapidly, in line with non-neutral evolution. A major driver of intrin...

www.biorxiv.org

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Jenn Coughlan @jenncoughlan.bsky.social · 13d

We're on a roll: Super proud of this paper lead by Dr. Megan Frayer & GS Hagar Soliman (with a major contrib from GS Pia Schwarz): Introgression and Parental Conflict Shape Repeated Occurrences of Postzygotic Isolation @hybridzones.bsky.social @hagarsoliman.bsky.social @pfschwarz.bsky.social

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Jason Williams @jasonwilliamsny.bsky.social · 13d

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.

The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

An Open Letter to U.S. STEM Leadership on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io

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