Stieber Lab

Congrats!

😀

😂

Lecture bottle of 13CO2 with regulator

Gearing up for a super expensive 13CO2 labeling experiment. Wish us luck!

The cylinder comes with 33 psi of 13CO2 and a big warning label not to open it without a regulator-otherwise you lose your precious gas!

#chemsky #chemchat #realtimechem

Riding a bike is safe.

Cars and poor infrastructure make it dangerous.

If you ever want to read a paper for free and can't find it otherwise, email the lead author and politely ask for a copy. You will not be bothering the person. You will in fact make their whole entire day. I have had scientists get so excited I asked they sent me everything they ever published.

Congrats!

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

In case you’re just waking up, the U.S. has teamed up with Israel overnight to start an illegal war of regime change, apparently on a presidential whim with no involvement of Congress, and they are already committing horrific atrocities.

Yes, around that age

In CA it was taught during high school chemistry which was 9th or 10th grade. However, we also have many first time university students who are learning this concept.

#chemsky

Perry: The learning loss from the ‘ICE pandemic’ "As Trump’s virus lurked around Minnesota schools looking to kidnap children and their parents, many children quite reasonably went into hiding," David M. Perry writes.

New piece: on learning loss after immigration raids.

Ignore news conferences and politicians. We will know the current horrors are over when kids come back to school. But getting kids back in school is just the first step. Then the real work begins.

Thank you!

View of campus buildings and grass in foreground with ranges of snow capped mountains across the whole horizon

Enjoying the view of snow-capped mountains all around from our instrumentation chemistry lab at Cal Poly Pomona!

#chemsky

California's E-bike Accountability Act seeks to ensure safety, requiring owners to register their rides with DMV The proposed e-bike registration law seeks to introduce mandatory DMV registration and license plates for Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes.

Moral panic around e-bikes is getting out of control.

The assemblywoman proposing this bill is quoted in the article saying she has concerns abt people riding "30,40, even 60 mph" -- those are not e-bikes! Those are e-motos!

www.cbs8.com/article/news...

Congratulations!

They are feeding our proposals to ChatGPT to ask "is this DEI" and then ChatGPT will use our proposals, which is supposed to be confidential and proprietary, to train its next model. Talking about breach of confidentiality and intellectual theft.

Hallway in front of office with water pouring from ceiling around a light into trash cans

Support the @teamsterslocal2010.bsky.social in their strike! They‘re critical to @calstate.bsky.social operations!

See our roof leak today in front of our offices! Normally the Teamsters fix this, but they aren’t paid enough and are on strike.

#chemsky always an adventure in chemistry Departments

I’ve been offering $20/hr for several years now to undergrad research students and it’s seems to be ok and better than minimum wage jobs. Students who have turned down positions usually did so because programs didn’t refund travel or offer affordable housing options.

Let me just make a few little adjustments to that title…

“How a scientist with a PhD in Geology and 25 years of experience is helping lead California’s earthquake work”

Way to devalue my experience.

Thank you! This is very helpful as I advise students (both this year and generally).

A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

NSF Update

Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.

Now by Directorate...

1/11

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Fascism wants you to believe that you are alone. That you are isolated. That the feelings you have are yours and nobody else has them because everybody is too afraid to speak.

But love is stronger than fascism. Community is stronger than fascism.

I don't like to talk about stories before they are fully reported, but I am writing on ICE in a Minnesota town that isn't Minneapolis. However bad you think it is, it is worse. It is a campaign of pure terror whose only strategic goal is more terror. There is no strategy other than to break people.

I just got tear gassed along with thousands of union members, many of whom had their families with them. Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions. I expect to see enforcement of our city code prohibiting the use of tear gas.

Chart of US measles cases by year

US measles cases this year already exceed the total for the whole of 2023 and 2024 combined, and it is only January. Yikes.

There are Senate Democrats who loudly support defunding ICE—which is a reminder that the ones making weaker demands could ask for more too.

Keep calling! As we’ve seen in Minneapolis, a lot of momentum can build in two weeks.

I am hearing that RFK Jr.’s minions are going to go after HPV vaccines. I’ve got problems with these people and now you’re going to hear about them, first from a personal perspective and then from a professional one.

It all boils down to this: WE HAVE A SAFE VACCINE THAT PREVENTS CANCER.