Roman T Cavallaro

The laid-off lawyers and PhDs training AI to steal their careers Experienced white-collar workers are now part of a miserable gig economy.

AI companies are paying screenwriters, lawyers, and other white-collar professionals to produce the training data needed to automate their jobs. I spoke with more than 30 workers about conditions inside this fast-growing and extremely secretive new gig economy.

New paper from lab has mapped plant pathogen hotspots worldwide and revealed how soils naturally suppressed plant disease. Nature Communications @natcomms.nature.com

Dominance and natural suppression of bacterial plant pathogens across global soils led by Min Gao

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is amazing.

When the government kills a crucial report, independent scientists decide to write it anyway and release it outside of government channels.

That’s science serving society, even when our political leaders don’t.

A $2.4 billion bet on electric trains cut Bay Area commute times by 23 minutes and black carbon by 89% Caltrain's $2.4 billion electrification boosted ridership 60 percent, cut travel times by 23 minutes, and slashed carcinogenic black carbon exposure by 89 percent — proving that upgrading existing rai...

The plus isn't just reduced pollution, electrification decreased travel time. Investment in electrification infrastructure could also be a boon for the economy in multiple ways. Jobs, less in medical bills, fewer sick days, both mean more money in consumer pockets to spend on local economies.

Trump administration plans to end ban on bear baiting in Alaska national preserves | Alaska Beacon The proposal would reestablish state authority to allow sport hunting of bears over bait stations on federal land.

Trump administration plans to end ban on bear baiting in Alaska national preserves, writes @yjrosen.bsky.social for the @alaskabeacon.com alaskabeacon.com/2026/03/09/t...

Potted plants (cacti, adeniums, orchids) in a sunny window

Overhead view: potted plants (cacti, adeniums, orchids) in a sunny window

Watering day 🌵

ICE Detention of Teen Musicians Roils Texas Mariachi Community Two brothers who were recognized by their congresswoman last year, along with their parents and younger brother, are facing deportation.

Two brothers from South Texas and their high school mariachi bandmates were recognized by their congresswoman last June for winning a state mariachi competition. Nine months later, the brothers, along with their parents and younger brother, are in ICE detention and facing deportation.

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

#OnThisDay in 1938, American evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis was born. Margulis is most known for developing and popularising the endosymbiotic theory, which explains how eukaryotic cells evolved organelles from simpler prokaryotic organisms that resided within another and became incorporated.

BYD just killed your EV argument with a battery that competes with gas engines The Chinese carmaker's new batteries feature a 5-minute charge and 621-mile range, plus a 620,000-mile lifespan and lower prices.

It feels like we get new announcements like this -- more range, more speed, more features, and lower costs -- every few weeks from EV makers.

From conventional automakers? Crickets.

www.fastcompany.com/91503415/byd...

Homelessness is a policy choice

Probably could get trains AND healthcare.

Jennifer Doudna, PhD describes the crispr-cas9 system

Jennifer Doudna @ Stanford: The 2026 Linus Pauling Lecture

Current NIH leadership want you to think they are using rigorous, consistent & scientific processes to screen studies to align them with agency priorities.

But the process that they have put down on paper is a sham.

It’s important to know NIH is not following its own guidance. Here’s why:

🧵1/

9/ I also want to note that this censorship process is blatantly discriminatory, and so it really weighs on my heart and the hearts of many of my colleagues who are being forced to carry this out from the inside.

I want to share these quotes from some of my colleagues:

11/ ...When people are being shot, detained inhumanely, deported, and abused for having the same identities we are removing from grants, it is abundantly clear we are participating in hate.”

- anonymous NIH program officer

An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants In many algae, photosynthesis is boosted by biophysical CO2-concentrating mechanisms, which pack the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco into liquid-like organelles called pyrenoids. Engineering C3 crops with a...

Our work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Success – I have scheduled my oral qualifying exam! ✅

An important reminder!

A leafless tree, branches dripping with moss, stands on an incline in a densely occupied forest. The sun filters through surrounding trees and alights on this particular tree casting a warm glow on the heavy moss. Blue sky peeks through the treetops. Background is blurry

in the chill of isolation
she will wrap her light around you
no words or explanation
no need or expectation
her warmth casts a remembrance
you are not alone

#words #photography #nature #humannature #wellbeing #loneliness #bekind #daybyday

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning to widen the shipping channel leading into Port Everglades, blasting through a coral reef and dredging up sediment that could smother acres of coral, federal scientists say. https://wapo.st/4r7kRAU

Tree bark microbes for climate management Microbes living in bark can process the greenhouse gases methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide

In a recent Science study, researchers reported that bark microbes process methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, showing that bark is an important component of global trace gas dynamics.

Learn more on #WorldWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4qX0MxL

Même une simple pomme de pin peut contenir un monde. 🌍💚
Entre ses écailles, la vie s’installe en version miniature : mousses, filaments, champignons… 🤩✨
L’extraordinaire ne crie pas : il se cache dans les détails.

📷 u/maesterofwargs
#Nature #MicroEcosystem #LifeFindsAWay #Insolite

The reign in Spain expels the American plane

MADRID, March 2 (Reuters) - Fifteen U.S. aircraft have left the Rota and Moron military bases in southern Spain since the U.S. and Israel launched weekend attacks on Iran, maps by flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed on Monday. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Spain would not allow its military bases, which are jointly operated by the U.S. and Spain but under Spanish sovereignty, to be used for attacks on Iran, which Spain has condemned.

Spain is not playing this game.

(a) The historical record of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 1950 to 2022 and predictions until 2100 estimated by a collection of Global Climate Models, which assume several CO2 emission scenarios (IPCC 2021). (b) Earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration during the past 40 million years, according to two independent proxy measures (δ¹¹B and alkenones) (Rae et al. 2021).

🌱 Plant, Cell & Environment: Plants may stabilize protein levels under rising CO2 by shifting nitrogen use and metal cofactors, boosting energy efficiency and maintaining carbon nitrogen balance. (Arnold J. Bloom, Xiaoxiao Shi, Nathan M. Hannon)
▶️ www.researchgate.net/publication/...

#PlantScience

Yas! Breaking the cycle with love!

AM fungi challenge a core assumption of cell biology. They can lose a core DNA polymerase (Polɛ) and survive for 360 million years! This blew my mind this weekend!
Reductive evolution of the DNA replication machinery in endosymbiotic fungi | bioRxiv
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenomics of Bryopsidales and the significance of genome duplication in multinucleate cells

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#Commentary by Quinten Bafort highlighting the recent work by Hossen et al.

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A reminder that we are actively recruiting a geneticist to the Department of Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine

careers-einstein.icims.com/jobs/17847/a...