Diogo B Proietti

How Congress can restore the independence of US science Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

A good read.
Since WW2, the #NIH has operated as a decentralized entity. Priorities were set by Congress, but independently executed by experts. This led to its success.

Now, political appointees have unprecedented control over what research gets funded, harming science.
🧪 go.nature.com/4bCwTNh

Our cover for March! 🔥

A study of Brazilian savannas by Manzan et al. shows that fuel traits strongly shape fire behavior, with vegetation structure and environmental conditions influencing flammability and helping predict where fires are most likely to occur.

vist.ly/4uj6q

The hacker expressed disgust at the presence of child abuse images on the device and left a message threatening to turn its owner over to the FBI… FBI officials… convinced… the hacker that they actually were the FBI, by having the hacker join a video chat where they flashed their credentials

Millions of Americans can now claim Canadian citizenship by descent. But they have to prove it | CBC News Amid rising tensions in the United States and increased global volatility, many Americans are looking to Canada — and their roots — for a possible way out following recent changes to Canada’s citizens...

Gonna drop this in here : Canada recently changed the rules on citizenship by descendence, opening it up from one generation to pretty much "whenever". For folks who have **any** Canadian ancestry (which is a lot of the US), there is a path to citizenship in Canada. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Funders open access mandates: uneven uptake and challenging models Over the last two decades, research funders have adopted Open Access (OA) mandates, with various forms and success. While some funders emphasize gold OA through article processing charges, others favour green OA and repositories, leading to a fragmented policy landscape. Compliance with these mandates depends on several factors, including disciplinary field, monitoring, and availability of repository infrastructure. Based on 5 million papers supported by 36 funders from 20 countries, 11 million papers funded by other organisations, and 10 million papers without any funding reported, this study explores how different policies influence the adoption of OA. Findings indicate a sustained growth in OA overall, especially hybrid and gold OA, and that funded papers are more likely to be OA than unfunded papers. Those results suggest that policies such as Plan S, as well as read-and-publish agreements, have had a strong influence on OA adoption, especially among European funders. However, the global low uptake of Diamond OA and limited indexing of OA outputs in Latin American countries highlight ongoing disparities, influenced by funding constraints, journal visibility, and regional infrastructure challenges.

Funders open access mandates: uneven uptake and challenging models https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03457

A much MUCH dumber man. And it's not to compliment Dubya.

Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, su...

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Fig. 1 Simulating the pathway from life history to branching history.

Simulating the pathway from life history to phylogeny

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

👆 A #Commentary by Kieran Althaus & Andrew Hipp on this article by Smith et al.
👇

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

#LatestIssue @mortonarboretum.bsky.social #PlantScience

Ready to start your own lab? Interested in #GlobalChange,#Biodiversity and #Ecosystem#Resilience? Join us in Göttingen - we are looking for a (female) Junior Research Group Leader in #EcologicalNovelty.
Attractive conditions, see euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/415857 - please share widely if you can!

Trump’s strikes on Iran could cost American economy up to $210 billion, report says The president has said the U.S. could give military escorts to oil tankers in the region to ease the strain on global energy supplies

Trump’s strikes on Iran could cost the American economy up to $210B, report says

This Brazilian frog might be the first pollinating amphibian known to science Nectar-loving tree frog likely moves pollen from flower to flower

It’s the first time a frog—or any amphibian—has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported in 2023.

Learn more on #WorldWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4riUU1G

That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

Building the backbone for Europe’s biodiversity monitoring Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s44358-026-00140-6Understanding biodiversity loss and achieving global commitments requires effective biodiversity monitoring. This Roadmap outlines the necessary steps to achieve a transnational European Biodiversity Observation Network built around Essential Biodiversity Variables, combining targeted sensing methods, spatial design, data sharing, data integration and modelling workflows, and coordinated governance to deliver policy-ready insights.

ICYMI: New online! Building the backbone for Europe’s biodiversity monitoring

🇪🇸 “Hoje, mais do que nunca, é essencial lembrar que é possível ser contra um regime odioso, como é o caso do regime iraniano e, ao mesmo tempo, ser contra uma intervenção militar injustificada, perigosa e fora do direito internacional”

— Pedro Sánchez, primeiro-ministro da Espanha

Speciation, extinction, net rate, and biodiversity curves for fixed benthos. (A-C) Brachiopoda. (D-F) Echinodermata. (G-I) Bryozoa. (J-L) Porifera. (M-O) Cnidaria.

"the Cambrian Explosion, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), and the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME)... traditional understanding of these events ...masks the complex dynamics of individual clades"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

My department at CSU Northridge is hiring a vertebrate functional morphologist! We've got a great EEB group, and we're looking for someone to carry forward a tradition of enriching organismal courses and community-engaged research. App review starts March 15

csucareers.calstate.edu/mob/cw/en-us...

Approximately 20 volleyball players have lost their lives as a result of an attack on a sports hall located in the city of Lamerd in southern Iran. Modern.az reports that SNN television channel disseminated this information, citing local authorities.

The US and Israel reportedly slaughtered twenty volleyball players at a sports hall today in southern Iran.

Self-defense, they call it.

modern.az/en/dunya/575...

Perhaps the terrorist state with nuclear weapons is …. {checks notes} … the United States of America?

Commentary, only on Apple News: Congress Is Betraying America's Founders by Ceding Power to Trump

The framers of the Constitution believed liberty lived in the friction between governmental branches.

Read: apple.news/A3BI6GaKRSCi...

Opinion | War With Iran Is a Mistake We don’t know how likely it is that the attacks will be successful, nor what costs or risks they bring.

“We Americans have begun another Middle Eastern war based on dubious intelligence claims, and as in 2003 I fear we haven’t thought through the substantial risks and uncertain gains,” our columnist @nickkristof.bsky.social writes.

Very disappointed to learn after a trip to the grocery store that bombing Iran did not lower any of the prices.

"Managing change is really about managing life, which is a dynamically flowing and shifting river. Swimming and navigating are great to know all the time, because you may need them at any moment."

Thank you for the wise words @gtdtimes.bsky.social !

Why do some islands have more biodiversity than others? In our new paper, published in @ecography.bsky.social , we sought to answer this question for amphibians! 🌐🏝️🐸

@provete.bsky.social @agenciafapesp.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

Follow the thread 🧵(1/7).

To fight authoritarianism, America should look to Brazil YouTube video by Vox

youtube.com/watch?v=mhPH...

Vaivém: Agro paulista gera R$ 19,5 para cada R$ 1 investido em pesquisa Resultado vem da avaliação de 49 projetos em áreas que vão de material genético a alimentos

📝 Vaivém das Commodities | Agro paulista gera R$ 19,5 para cada R$ 1 investido em pesquisa. Resultado vem da avaliação de 49 projetos em áreas que vão de material genético a alimentos.

And a nice accessible write up of the paper scienmag.com/from-correla...

New #causalinference paper just dropped! As an ecologist, I was trained to ask: "What do the data tell me?"

This paper: there are only specific instances when this question is appropriate—when you lack domain knowledge, which we often have!

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

Evolution 2026 meeting logo. A heart with hands reaching toward each other across it. Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Caregiver Grants to facilitate virtual or in-person attendance. Apply by March 15.

Applications due March 15 for the SSE Caregiver Grants, which provide up to $500 USD to help cover caregiving costs while attending virtual or in-person #Evol2026. Apply today!
www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

I saw the preprint and it looked great already. Excited to read the final version