Working link: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

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Excited to share our new paper in Molecular Biology & Evolution!
👉 [https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf250]
It started as a lab-meeting sanity check for another project — and ended up turning into a new way to interpret machine-learning models in population genomics.

Did you know that this year's Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament includes sweep detection? The competition ends in about a month, so dive in! ghi.st

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.” This Collection celebrates the award and recognizes the winners’ achievements. #medsky 🧪

In the 5 to 10 percent of symptomatic cases where the fungus invades the vital organs, the death rate is as high as 25 percent. The pathogen is so powerful the U.S. army weighed whether to develop it into a bioterrorism weapon in the 1960s.

I am very much in this picture, and I do not like it [teaching coalescent theory and demography this week]. Blocked at reported.

FYI: This story from the Washington Examiner links to a pdf of the purported Compact with universities, above the paywall, so you can see it yourself: www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/educa...

Hear! effing Hear!

[Gift link]

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

Written 55 years ago, Schulz's heartfelt clarity cuts through the noise, even today.

h/t @tisserand.bsky.social

The GHIST paper has been accepted for publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution. Join the competition and do well to be on our next paper! ghi.st

🔁 Please share - we remind the SMBE community that the Call for Symposia for SMBE2026 in Copenhagen is open.

We invite you to submit a symposium proposal to help shape the scientific content of our annual meeting.

🗓️ Deadline: October 15th

More information: smbe2026.org/symposia

#SMBE2026

The US Federal Government is shut down, but the Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament is still running (and concludes in 45 days). Test your mettle against 9 challenges in demographic history inference and sweep detection!
ghi.st

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...

Loved the last episode of @sciencevs.bsky.social with Ed Yong. "What is happening [to scientific infrastructure] in this country is happening because science is bad for tyrants and always has been. ... You have got to stop the tyranny, not try to make a better case for why science should exist."

That's quite the chart annotation.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Here's an interesting bit I missed. RCT on AI tools and swdevs finds AI tools actually makes devs slower metr.org/blog/2025-07...

Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry
The announcement comes months later than usual, leaving many would-be applicants stranded
25 SEP 2025
By KATIE LANGIN 🧪

www.science.org/content/arti...

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.

NSF unexpectedly changed (at the last minute) who is eligible to apply for the Grad Research Fellowship, dropping 2nd year students. We started a petition to reverse this unfair change, Sign here:
laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/
and please spread the word!!!!

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has awarded medals of merit to 11 officers for disobeying direct orders of superiors during the martial law fiasco, orders that they deemed to be contrary to the constitution and endangerment to democracy.
www.chosun.com/english/nati...

Hard to express how bizarre and frustrating it is to hear these non-academics press their hallucinatory visions of what campuses are like. Truly no relationship to the reality.

Announcing such a major change to NSF GRFP this late in the cycle is incredibly cruel. 2nd yr students (mine included) have been working so hard on their proposals despite ongoing uncertainty. They are driven and passionate about being outstanding scientists and helping those coming up behind them.

I'm sorry this caught you. So many students are going to be affected by this. Even without a full solicitation, they could at least have released eligibility information earlier to avoid so much wasted time.