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BREAKING: The Senate Judiciary Committee just postponed the vote to advance Todd Blanche's AG nomination.

🥑 From Scientific American: New work explains how avocado trees coordinate a complex reproductive strategy, switching every day between male and female. (Jeffrey Groh) ▶️ www.scientificamerican.com/article/avoc... #PlantScience #PlantBiology

🥑 From PNAS: Ancient genetic variation helps coordinate avocado pollination, offering new tools to breed higher-yielding orchards. (Jeffrey S. Groh, Gracie Ackerman, Graham Coop) ▶️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #PlantScience #PlantBreeding #PlantBiology

Did you know that the flowers of avocado trees change sex every day? Scientists have noticed this nearly 100 years ago but only now do we how it works. Life is amazing.

Avocado reproductive strategy involves the the changing of sex daily & a beautiful dance between the flowers of two types of trees. #genetics Thank you so much, @jeffgroh.bsky.social @dr-crushworth.bsky.social @sarahexplains.bsky.social & Emily W! www.scientificamerican.com/article/avoc...

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Here I come! *blink* (Snapping turtle moves from the deeper part of the pond toward shore, amidst lots of little fish and painted turtles. Then raises its eyes and snout just out of the water and blinks.) 💚

I am always amused and impressed by the painted turtles. No way would I get as close to something the size of godzilla like they do!

The scraping sounds are a number of little painted turtles who were exiting the pond, walking up the sand a little bit toward my feet, then going back into the water, scraping their shells against rocks in the sand.

Inquisitive snapping turtle, surrounded by lots of fish and equally-inquisitive painted turtles. 💚

Lovely evening for a bike ride. 💙🚲

Two physicists won the Nobel Prize for the 2012 discovery of the so-called “God particle.” Under a new rule proposed by the Trump administration, American scientists might be forced to watch similar discoveries from the sidelines. www.propublica.org/article/fede...

1/So happy to comment on @lisalsong.bsky.social’s article on OMB’s misguided rule-making. Lisa correctly focuses on our scientists, whose work needs to be protected. I ppreciate how she grounds us in the structures of opportunity provided by our current system, www.propublica.org/article/fede....

FYI there is no "real" reason why Rome "fell." Its power waned for the usual, mundane reasons: widening gap between rich and poor, inability to maintain infrastructure, incompetent leadership, pointless wars, endless persecution of marginalized groups who performed vital labor, etc.

🦖🧪You can read the #openaccess original paper in @peerj.bsky.social here for free:

We compiled all known records under 7-8 mya, revised their ages, tossed out bad dates, and ran this analysis - indicating the C. megalodon extinction happened between 4.0 Ma and 3.2 Ma, and most likely happening about 3.6 Ma.

#sharkweek 🦖🧪🦈🦑 Not only do we know that the giant shark Carcharocles megalodon IS extinct, we also have a pretty good idea of *when*. An analysis of non-reworked fossil teeth we published in 2019 revealed that the fossil record of the "meg" ends around 3.6 MYA - shortly before the ice age.

Some more fossils