Kristen Behrens, PhD

Debris-strewn Michigan after a tornado; headline notes four dead, 20+ injured and blames presidential funding cuts.

Debris-filled storm; caption says funding cuts left about a quarter of National Weather Service positions are vacant in Michigan.

Last week, a tornado hit Michigan with no warning, killing four people and injuring more than twenty. With Trump's funding cuts to NOAA and NWS, we can't predict tornadoes effectively and people die.

'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out:

www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Screenshot of a notification from the Washtenaw County Health Department that reads: "If you were at these locations during the times listed, you may have been exposed to measles and should watch for symptoms for 21 days: 7:45pm Wed, March 4 to 1:00am Thurs, March 5 Sidetrack Bar & Grill 56 E Cross St, Ypsilanti MI 48198 6:00 pm to 8:40 pm, Thurs, March 5 T-Mobile 2044 Whittaker Rd, Ypsilanti, MI 48197 6:55 pm to 8:55 pm, Thurs, March 5 Cricket Wireless Roundtree Place Shopping Center 2547 Ellsworth Rd, Ypsilanti, MI 48197 4:00 pm to 6:07 pm, Fri, March 6 CVS Pharmacy 1415 E Michigan Ave, Ypsilanti, MI 48198 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, Fri, March 6 Cricket Wireless Roundtree Place Shopping Center 2547 Ellsworth Rd, Ypsilanti, MI 48197 7:15 pm to 9:27 pm, Sat, March 7 Ypsilanti Urgent Care Walk-In Clinic 301 W Michigan Ave #100, Ypsilanti, MI 48197 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm, Sun, March 8 Canton Urgent Care Walk-In Clinic 43033 Ford Road, Canton, MI 48187"

WASHTENAW AND WAYNE COUNTIES -- alert to measles exposure as of last week:

7 of the World’s Little-Known Fish Migrations Most readers will know of the epic salmon migrations. But have you head of these other fascinating freshwater fish migrations?

Move over salmon. Here are some lesser-known but no less spectacular fish migrations, including redhorse, sharptooth catfish & Nopili rock-climbing goby.

Plus gar with @solomonrdavid.bsky.social.

DIJKSTRA LAB - Social behavior and physiology Postdoc positions available! For details, please go here. Welcome to the Dijkstra lab at Central Michigan University! We study how social competition and oxidative stress shape brain function, stress resilience, and evolutionary processes. Using African cichlid fish as our primary model system, we

The Dijkstra lab at CMU seeks postdoctoral researchers in evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, focusing on cichlid fishes. Apply by March 20. Info: https://sites.google.com/site/peterdijkstrausnl/home #postdoc

"Amazon molly has accumulated mutations much faster than it's parent species, but these mutations haven’t resulted in genetic decay. Instead, the fish has purged some harmful mutations thanks to a DNA repair process known as gene conversion, in which one version of a gene overwrites the other."

4th Circuit Rules That States Can Compel Trans Adults To "Appreciate Their Sex" Via Care Bans They ruled that states "encouraging citizens to appreciate their sex" through care bans is a constitutional goal, affirming West Virginia's Medicaid ban for trans adults.

1. Horrifying ruling out of the 4th Circuit.

An all-Republican 4th Circuit panel has just ruled that states can compel trans adults to "appreciate their sex" by enacting care bans.

It even directly says that trans adult care bans are legal in the ruling.

Subscribe to support our journalism.

Join us TOMORROW, March 12 @ noon! for a #GreatLakes #seminar presented by Ted Lawrence: "Strengthening science on the #AfricanGreatLakes through a highly collaborative network of freshwater experts"

Register online TODAY: ciglr.seas.umich.edu/event/031220...

#GreatLakesSci

An acrylic paint pen drawing of a coral reef and fish

I know it's Wednesday but this has been dragging on for weeks. Started out with the idea of practicing coral. I don't even know what I was going for here but this is where it ended up.
#SundayFishSketch #WednesdayFishSketch

Invasive silver carp jumping out of the water

Just to be clear, invasive carp do pose a significant threat to the #GreatLakes and we need to continue taking action to prevent their introduction, but they're not yet "rapidly taking over Lake Michigan" as the president claimed in a social media post yesterday www.woodtv.com/news/michiga...

How do you get access to papers behind paywalls? #LetsChangeThat (Also side note, not all journals charge authors!)

Goddamnit Michigan

There are a lot of scientific illustrators and graphic designers who are building their portfolios and will take on work for less than you might imagine. It's not out of reach.

Jeremy Wade #fish #fishing #river #monsters #gar #piranha #tigerfish #congo #amazon #hooked

Michigan's risky Palisades reactor restart is behind schedule | Opinion Holtec’s attempt to restart the shuttered Palisades nuclear plant faces delays, safety questions and missing documentation.

“A company with zero nuclear reactor operating experience is seeking NRC forgiveness for unpermitted welding on the 55-year-old Palisades reactor pressure vessel containment head.” The issues “could threaten financing of the entire atomic energy industry.”
@nucsafetyucs.bsky.social

Happy #internationalwomensday! Championing, researching, and discovering incredible women is our entire mission - not just one day a year. Here are some of the female scientists we’re thinking of in particular today…

an eastern red backed salamander in the leaves

(._____.)

Barred Hamlet fish in graphite and colored pencil; yellow, blue, tan

Barred Hamlet, Hypoplectrus puella #SundayFishSketch #fish #fishart #Hamlet

A hand-drawn digital painting by the artist Dhiyanah Hassan of three garden eels on the ocean floor. The one in thr foreground is painted in more detail, sticking out from the sand and slightly bending its head towards streams of light depicted in a soft lilac tone, part of the dynamic shading of the piece. The other two are in the background, facing the opposite direction but similarly looking up at the light rays. The background is a mix of textured and blurry, wuth some grains of sand highlighted.

Revisiting a fave, experimenting with different brushes and gestures for this study of Spotted Garden Eels #SundayFishSketch 🐡
#art #SciArt #fish #fishArt #wildlife #wildlifeArt #nature #artists

Ink sketch of a fish

A young of the year Lake Sturgeon, all covered in spiny scutes. #SundayFishSketch

🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics!

My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026.

We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems.

#Postdoc #EcoEvo

Pls RT!

Colored pencil drawing of four long and skinny fish poking their heads out of a den in some rocks like Diglets. They’re black with a horizontal white stripe and white belly.

Quick #SundayFishSketch while I move some data around of convict blennies, who are apparently probably not the sister group to cichlids after all 🫢

I am tired of people insinuating that biology education research and disability advocacy within the field or STEM at large are "less rigorous" or "less important" pursuits when both of these areas of critical research are what will help us continue moving the field forward.

Watercolor painting of a Moorish Idol, Zanclus corutus. What look like eyebrows are actually horns on adult fish. The common name may refer to the reverence that fishermen in some parts of Southeast Asia have for these fish. I’m painting one reef fish per day for 100 days with the hope of building a community. It’s about how art becomes connection. If you love the ocean, curiosity is enough. 🐠

100 Days of Reef Fish
Beautiful Reef Fish 5/10: Moorish Idol, Zanclus corutus. The common name may refer to the reverence that fishermen in some parts of Southeast Asia have for these fish.
#sciart #marinelife #coralreefs #dothe100daysproject #sundayfishsketch

A detailed digital composite image based on the 1947 historical photograph of geneticist Barbara McClintock. McClintock, with her characteristic short hair and round glasses, is seated at a microscope, using tweezers in a Petri dish. While based on the original photo distributed for her AAUW award, this image presents a significantly expanded and fictionalized laboratory environment. The simple wooden workbench is now densely populated with a vast, colorized collection of complex glassware, numerous amber-colored reagent bottles, intricate distillation columns, and botanical specimens relevant to maize cytogenetics, creating a rich, illustrative narrative of her "jumping gene" research context that was not present in the original photo. The expanded background shows complex vintage laboratory cabinetry. This image explicitly states it is a composite: a digital recreation where Seriously Scientific has taken the historical figure and placed them into an augmented, complex fictionalized environment. Based on original source from Smithsonian Institution Archives. Digital composite by Seriously Scientific.

Remembering Barbara McClintock on International Women's Day!
She discovered that genes aren't static, they can actually "jump" around on a chromosome.

Her discovery of transposons ("jumping genes") fundamentally changed how we understand evolution and the complexity of DNA! 🧬🌽

#WomenInScience

Horizontal photo of a crayon sketch of an anchovy with mouth closed

I enjoyed some anchois frais marinés today at my friends' restaurant, so here's Engraulis encrasicolus / European anchovy for #SundayFishSketch today. Bon appétit! (And always a fun reminder that anchovies look like real-life Muppets with their big eyes and exaggerated mouths!) 🦑🐡🧪

Great thread on a cool animal and a major problem: where do sturgeon come from? I still wish we could find a Triassic acipenseriform, there are a few candidates. But, the Triassic presents a daunting challenge to parsing out lineages that are gave rise to the fishes we have today.

Next meeting is Sat April 4th at 2pm back at North Hydro Park. Come grill out and fight data centers!

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.

Stand Up For Science Founder and CEO Colette Delawalla speaking at the Washington D.C. Take Back Our Science Rally!

Stand Up For Science Founder & CEO Colette Delawalla states three demands:

1. Remove RFK Jr.

2. Reinstate the American Dream of Science.

3. Science should be driven by scientists not political appointees.

Join the fight!
standupforscience.net/march7