Daniel Bolnick

In every Republican presidency of my lifetime there's been a recession and a new war in the Middle East.

Just a few days left to submit the ASN student research award (due March 13th)!!!! This is an AWESOME opportunity for students to get some grant writing experience!!! We LOVE reading your grants and giving feedback!!!!!!!!!!! Apply, Apply, Apply!!!!!!

www.amnat.org/announcement...

sip-sassenheim.org/registration/

Excited to be one of the invited speakers at the 3rd conference of the Society of Immune Polymorphism in the Netherlands, this November. Looks like a great line up of people to be speaking alongside

Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran.

No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles.

Worth a watch.

(🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)

‘Nazi heaven’: Inside Miami campus Republicans’ racist group chat The chat is the subject of a Florida International University police investigation.

The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s GOP started a group chat for conservative students — and within 3 weeks, it was filled with over 400 instances of the N-word, Nazi rhetoric and writings of "dozens of ways of violently killing Black people"

New preprint: an undergrad in my lab Stella DiPippo tested out vivio-morpholinos as a means for transient targeted knockdown of gene expression in adult threespine #stickleback. It worked, but a bit inconsistently. A useful start testing a new method for this species

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

a large screen shows a man 's face and says ingsoc ALT: a large screen shows a man 's face and says ingsoc

So... A friend was supposed to give a PURELY SCIENTIFIC talk at NIH within the next couple of weeks and it was cancelled because of a "new process" where all speakers/talks have to be CLEARED BY A POLITICAL APPOINTEE.

Celebrating Holi in the ancient city of Hampi in India, starting with drumming and a midnight bonfire.

Iran's missile math: $20,000 drones take on $4 million Patriots Both Tehran and Washington may run low on weapons in a matter of days or weeks. Whoever can last longer will gain a serious advantage.

www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/03...

This is not just any random report. This is a review of how the major federal fisheries on the U.S. west coast are assessed, basically how U.S. fisheries management should be altered so that it works better.

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Biological Sciences.

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A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

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Frontiers | Changes in gene regulation are associated with the evolution of resistance to a novel parasite IntroductionHost–parasite interactions are ubiquitous and are important drivers of host diversification and evolution. In particular, host immune systems are...

Now published: Transcriptomic basis of the fibrosis response to tapeworm exposure in 3 populations of threespine stickleback www.frontiersin.org/journals/imm...

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

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. 🧵👇

This week's cover @thelancet.com

Somanathapura Temple in Karnataka Province, India, is a spectacular 13th century temple to Vishnu with the most intricate soapstone carvings I’ve ever seen.

Do come listen to this public talk — open to all — by @danielbolnick.bsky.social. So happy to be hosting him in Bangalore!

a black and white cartoon skunk is standing on a yellow floor . ALT: a black and white cartoon skunk is standing on a yellow floor .

So sometime last night a skunk took up residence in the crawl space under my entry room. My bags were in there packed for an international trip. Now I’m at Logan airport and everything with me smells weakly but distinctly skunky.

Moving forward, I'm excited to keep exploring questions about host-prophage-environment interactions in non-model systems in my new lab @sc.edu. If you are (or know of) a trainee interested in this area, please reach out!

Excited to share a preprint of work from my postdoc with @paulturnerlab.bsky.social exploring how prophages can impact host thermal ecology and evolution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

But just using the word “aim”…. That’s a ridiculous level of phrase micromanagement.

DOJ Scrubs Record of Interviews With Trump Accuser From Epstein Files The FBI interviewed one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims four times over her allegation that Donald Trump assaulted her when she was underage.

DOJ Scrubs Record of Interviews With Trump Accuser From Epstein Files
newrepublic.com/post/206765/...

#HigherEd #AcademicSky

*Please* amplify this risk.
The US DOE wants to implement an earnings test on all undergrads and grads--if grads of your programs do not earn a specified amount upon receiving their degrees, your programs risk losing federal funding. The earnings tests begin *this October*.

An acquaintance had an NIH MIRA grant declined without review for using the word “Aim” in the text.

Duke appears to have lost NIH grants because they used the prefix "trans" in reference to disease transmission, transgenic genetic material, translational studies, or signal transduction www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

In genetics:
'Trans-acting' = a gene exerts influence on another gene on a different chromosome.
'Expression' = when a gene produces an effect in the cell

They tagged two of the most common terms in genetic research for defunding because we put fascist tech-bros in charge of our science. 😠

Stalin did it first.

We understand a great deal about how and why cooperation evolves, but what about its long-term consequences?

Great to see our new review on this out now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social!