State of Decay

<p>We talk about a big travel month (including <a href="https://aucryst.org/sheldrick-award/inaugural-2026-sheldrick-awardee-announced/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Stephanie winning the George Sheldrick Award for Structural Science</a>), federal funding in light of the upcoming turnover of US political representation, pre-prints, and the use of AI with agentic workflows for science and LLMs for writing. </p><p><br></p><p>News Links:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/assault-science-funding-continues" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Derek Lowe&#39;s Blog: The Assault On Science Funding Continues</a></li><li><a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/senate-votes-block-rule-giving-white-house-more-control-over-research" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Senate votes to block rule giving White House more control over research</a></li><li><a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.16322" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Estimating global article processing charges paid to 14publishers for open access between 2019 and 2025</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>Preprints/Blogs:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.21.746204v1?rss=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Atomic modeling of radiation damage in cryoelectron microscopy datasets</a></li><li><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.11.744235v1.abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Dynamic view of an allosteric intermediate in a positively cooperative dimer</a></li><li><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.04.741757v1.abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Incidental conformational switching in an allosteric enzyme</a></li><li><a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/Anthropic/claude-protein-binder-design/tree/main/prompts" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Anthropic Protein Design Prompts</a></li><li><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15485" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">The Rise of Large Language Models and the Direction and Impact of US Federal Research Funding</a></li></ul>