Kelly Dobitz @KellyDobitz

Mel Brooks is 100 years old today! Many people think that Mel is my father.  He isn’t.  But what he is is one of the great comic minds of the last 100 years.  Happy birthday Mel, from your fake son.

@drmichaellevin @HamidSediqi18 @cellbioelectric So cool! Thank you! 😊

@drmichaellevin @HamidSediqi18 @cellbioelectric Fascinating! Thank you for the link! I will definitely give your paper a read. Big guess here, but maybe the cytoskeleton could act as a sort of intracellular gap junction by transferring ions between organelles? 🤔

New #preprint: an exciting and new aspect of #bioelectricity! Most work on bioelectricity and electrophysiology focuses on events at the cell membrane. Here, we (@HamidSediqi18 , @cellbioelectric, et al.) tackle a new aspect of the electric dimension of cells: the nuclear membrane. biorxiv.org/content/10.648… "Ionic Exposure History Shapes Inner Nuclear Membrane Voltage and Chromatin Texture Responses" We created a new reagent for monitoring the voltage across the nuclear envelope, finding changes in chromatin and ordering effects (i.e., a kind of simple memory of past experiences) in its response to ionic stimuli. This is just the beginning - a new target for monitoring and interventions that I predict will have a lot of impact on nuclear events (chromatin state, gene expression, etc.) and thus cell behavior.

Working on topics related to the origin, evolution, and detection of life on Earth and beyond? Going to @theAGU meeting this December? Consider submitting an abstract to our session "The Emergence of Life as a Planetary Process"!

How did life begin? Bacteriology’s Betül Kaçar joined Neil deGrasse Tyson on his podcast, @StarTalkRadio, to explore the beginnings of life on Earth and what it might tell us about life elsewhere. 🌎💫 Watch their conversation: youtu.be/72ugdkB7oQ4?si…

Everyone knows John Hancock for his giant signature. Almost nobody knows the actual man, and his real life was wilder than the legend. He was an orphan. His father died when he was 7, and he was taken in by his uncle Thomas, the richest merchant in Boston. John was groomed to run the family shipping empire, inherited the whole thing in 1764, and became one of the wealthiest men in all of America before most people his age owned anything at all. He was also, by the crown's definition, a criminal. In 1768 the British seized his ship Liberty for smuggling, and Boston rioted in his defense. The man we now put on patriotic posters was, to London, a wealthy smuggler dodging customs. He didn't just resent the crown quietly. He bankrolled resistance and became such a thorn that the British wanted him gone. On the night of April 18, 1775, when Paul Revere made his famous ride, the warning was not vague. He rode to Lexington specifically to warn two men that the British were coming to arrest them: Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The opening night of the Revolutionary War was, in part, a manhunt for Hancock. Weeks later, General Gage offered a pardon to every rebel in Massachusetts who would lay down arms, with exactly two exceptions: Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Being left off that list was essentially a public death warrant. Here is the part nobody tells you. As president of the Continental Congress, Hancock actually wanted to be named commander of the army himself. He sat in the chair and watched as the Adams cousins instead rose to nominate George Washington. He was reportedly stung by it. Then he did the thing most people never manage. He swallowed his pride, signed Washington's commission, and spent the next eight years pouring his personal fortune into the war he could not lead. So when Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence first, big and bold across the top, it was not a cute flourish. He was already a hunted man with a price on his head, putting his name, his fortune, and his neck on the line before anyone else dared lift a pen. And that famous line about signing large "so King George can read it without his spectacles"? He almost certainly never said it. It is a myth stitched onto him generations later. The real story is better. He just signed first, as president, knowing exactly what it could cost him. The flamboyance was real, though. He lived in princely splendor in a granite mansion on Beacon Hill overlooking the harbor, with imported mahogany furniture and apricot trees shipped from Spain. In 1775 he married Dorothy Quincy, and the two became one of Massachusetts' first political celebrity couples, famous for endless lavish dinners that slowly drained his fortune. He went on to become the first Governor of Massachusetts, serving roughly eleven years, and died in office in 1793. His funeral was one of the grandest ever given to an American up to that point. Samuel Adams declared the day a state holiday. The orphaned smuggler with a target on his back had become the face of American defiance. That is why, 250 years later, we still say "put your John Hancock right here."

It's Wednesday! Take a deep breath and float with Grogu at the edge of space. Baby Yoda flew to 102,900 feet aboard our Away 132 mission. #TheMandalorianAndGrogu

This is indeed a superb letter from The Astronomer Royal of Scotland. “Someone, somewhere, has taken the decision to defund astrophysics research in the UK, but no-one seems quite sure who that was, or why.” I agree - my colleagues in particle physics have also tried, without success, to discover who owns the decision to damage physics research in the UK, perhaps irreparably, at a time when our economy desperately needs the skills and knowledge we develop and teach. @UKRI_News need to get a grip urgently and fix the problem someone, somewhere, has created.

Lucien Heurtier @LucienHeurtier

a month ago

I couldn't say it better than the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, in her letter to Nature. "...whoever made this decision failed to foresee the disastrous and damaging repercussions for UK science and the economy." 🧪🔭 #UKRI #DSIT #STFC #ScienceFunding nature.com/articles/s4155…

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Steven Spielberg was inspired to make Disclosure Day after witnessing UFO whistleblowers and pilots testifying in 2023 “I felt, starting back in, I think 2023, when the New York Times came out with a story,influenced by a whistleblower that released some footage to the New York Times. It was a story written by Helene Cooper and Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Keane. And it was a story about what Navy pilots had photographed on their FLIR systems, their infrared systems, their forward facing infrared systems of a ufo, now called a uap, which stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon. In a sense it brought a more of a serious, more of an acceptable, sort of lexicon of terms to a world that even now, 50 years after Close Encounters, is more likely to believe that something has been happening for decade upon decade upon decade about, our world being visited. Our movie is about what would happen if all this information was disclosed all at the same time. How would that affect everything? And the story really is about the attempt to stop any disclosure from ever taking place.”

More Martian organics have been found! Still doesn't mean we'll find signs of present or past life at the surface there, but does bolster the potential for life to have happened on the Red Planet at some point.

NASA @NASA

2 months ago

Our Curiosity Mars rover has been studying the Red Planet since it first touched down on Gale Crater back in 2012. Now, a new analysis has revealed the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars—informing our search for ancient life: nasa.gov/missions/mars-…

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FINESST - an opportunity for grad students to apply for NASA funding has officially dropped! The deadline is July 14, 2026. Don't miss out! tinyurl.com/FINESST26

scientists just built an RNA molecule that can copy itself. not just make a complement. it makes a full copy of itself. this is the closest we’ve ever gotten to watching the origin of life happen on a bench. nobody is talking about it because it doesn’t have a chatbot interface

What the Artemis II astronauts did over the last 10 days was a testament to their bravery. And the fact that they traveled farther from Earth than anyone ever has, re-entered our atmosphere at more than 24,000 mph, and splashed down safely was a testament to human ingenuity. Thanks to everyone at @NASA for making this mission possible, and for taking us along for the ride.

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“We will explore. We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will inspire—but ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.” - Christina Koch, Artemis II astronaut

On @CNN a clip was played of @Astro_Christina talking about our home world’s beauty and that she’d like to stay in space longer. @KateBolduan replied that she also had #MoonJoy. It is spreading, folks. #ArtemisII

LIVE: Watch with us as the Artemis II astronauts make their closest approach to the Moon, traveling farther from Earth than ever before.

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration nature.com/articles/d4158… @NASA @NIH @NSF @Energy @NIST @NOAA @EPA

We are about to fly around the Moon! In mere minutes, the crew of Artemis II will travel farther from Earth than any humans in history, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. They will sail around the far side of the Moon, photographing lunar features never before seen by human eyes. youtube.com/live/z-j1uxBmi… @NASA #moon #ArtemisII