E11 Bio is excited to unveil PRISM technology for mapping brain wiring with simple light microscopes. Today, brain mapping in humans and other mammals is bottlenecked by accurate neuron tracing. PRISM uses molecular ID codes and AI to help neurons trace themselves. Read more: e11.bio/blog/prism

Notes from an excellent aging conference on the @norngroup.bsky.social substack: norngroup.substack.com/p/field-note...

The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field? That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience A 🧵 1/n

Like the DNA of an organism, the Constitution assembled around itself a vast substrate, of people chasing dreams and stumbling on the way, of physical transformation, of thoughts that bend history. As complex life arises from simple nutrients, so does a land of opportunity arise from simple ideas.

In 1 month, BEACON has already reported 181 disease events & 381 individual reports. We're excited to announce that starting June 2nd, BEACON will be sending a free Weekly Disease Event Digest on Mondays to help you stay informed about emerging threats globally. Sign up below!

For anyone who wants to understand how medicines are made, from nature and by design, with historical context and amazing stories, The Drug Hunters is hard to beat: www.amazon.com/dp/162872718...

people get mad at me when I say this but it's a Serious Problem for bluesky's long-term viability that the userbase actively tries to bully people they don't like off here

Hopefully things change here, as my big worry about AI talk on this site is that people are being misled about the capabilities of AI by influencers who are telling them what they want to hear. AI is not going away, it will impact all of our futures, and it needs more voices shaping its direction.

After consideration, I will post occasionally, but heavily censor what I share compared to other sites. I tried making the transition, but talking about AI here is just really fraught in ways that are tough to mitigate & make it hard to have good discussions (the point of social!). Maybe it changes

The problem is that Bluesky is still a niche platform at 1.3 Mil active users per day globally. Getting your boss to say yes to making an account and dedicating the time and effort to maintaining it means they need to see positives for that investment. A middle finger isn’t a good return.

This news should instill urgency and remind us to ask ‘why not sooner?’. @martinbjensen.bsky.social shared a long-term vision for how cures could become abundant, if we believe fast, systematic cure discovery is possible, and build the tools to make it happen. www.gordian.bio/blog/cures-o...

1/ A long standing paradox in my mind (from always seeing immune "strength" or reactivity drawn as a spectrum from immunodeficiency to autoimmunity) was resolved this year at #AAI #Immunology2025. WHY do SO many people have both simultaneously? Each infection brings risk of developing autoimmunity!!

"Understanding an idea meant entangling it so thoroughly with all the other symbols in your mind that it changed the way you thought about everything." @gregegansf.bsky.social

I've started blogging on substack to provide a bit more depth. Rationale is provided in the first blog. I'm using some great artwork, but I've lost the source, so the great person who created FDA as Humpty Dumpty--please identify yourself! substack.com/home/post/p-...

New Harvard website is amazing.

@hanascientist.bsky.social and I wrote up some thoughts grappling with rising animosity and mistrust of scientists and their institutions. Would love feedback and responses. www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10....

Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine, has been captive to the hard-line immigration policies of the Trump administration for nearly eight weeks. She fears arrest if she is deported.

Appreciate everyone pushing science forward in these days. Marton Meszaros wrote a great primer on what an #aging #biomarker needs to look like, and more importantly what the prerequisite datasets are. Punchline: We may need to build them out, and should start now. norn.group/writing/data...

Any scientists want to help with a science communication project? Will reach thousands on TikTok! Details⬇️

I've created a shareable document with a list of the HHS offices gutted today that I'll be updating as often as possible. Have something to add? Message marisakabas.04 on Signal or email [email protected] docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Is it time to start splitting this governance experiment into a test and a control group? I mean, we have 50 states to work with, let's do some real economics and social science here.

Aged well

What are some mappings from deleterious cravings to the real need that satisfies the craving? e. g. When you feel like eating candy, what you actually want is fruit. When you feel like playing videogames, what you actually want is progress and accomplishment. Etc.

I may be tired and a little hoarse, but as I said again and again on the Senate floor, this is a moment where we cannot afford to be silent, when we must speak up.

UPDATE: So excited to announce our newest program. Using a 15-week cohort model, goal is help more scientists design the type of ambitious research programs that were critical to advancements such as the Internet or mRNA vaccines. We plan to do multiple cohorts this year (info below).

Sad, Marks was very forward thinking and should have been part of any effort to make FDA more effective.

San Francisco license plates South San Francisco license plates

our work on the molecular differences between transcription factor isoforms is out now in Molecular Cell! key point: 2/3rds of TF isos differ in properties like DNA binding & transcriptional activity many are "negative regulators" & misexpressed in cancer www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Obvi we’re all in this together with this admin, but industry is not selling one’s soul, not even close. They’re our friends and colleagues and move the ball forward to getting science to impact peoples’ lives.

Check out chief science officer @martinbjensen.bsky.social’s post tackling misconceptions about AAV gene therapy only being best suited for rare diseases, and how factors like cost would be very different for common diseases like Parkinson’s, heart failure, and arthritis.

I'm organizing a "Data for Good Rapid Response Team", i.e. a set of people who can be mobilized to work on short data science projects to help various groups and organizations. Sign up here if this is of interest to you, and please share with others with data science skills.

We're planning an incredible launch event for our new Menstruation Science initiative --- exploring the complexities of the far-reaching effects of sex hormones on human physiology in sickness and in health. I hope you can join us in-person or online! cgr.mit.edu/2025/03/17/s...

Indeed, and this is explored at length with a number of examples in Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence” where he discusses how this is part of the process of re-wiring people into regime collaborators.

Happy to report the second bit of my series, "How the System Works," is now out for subscribers. Paywall will be lifted a bit soon (stay tuned!). (www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...) Meanwhile, if you're curious, here's the intro: www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

Important lessons from Steven Dowdy #cshlnat

There are so many inspiring examples of scientific roadmaps out there: this post was our quick way of introducing new explorers of the scientific landscape to this fascinating genre. Expect more from us in terms of releasing roadmaps & thinking soon and let us know which of your favorites we missed!

"Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means." Amartya Sen

AAV gene therapy is usually associated with rare genetic disease, but trials are ongoing in chronic diseases like arthritis and Parkinson's. We wrote on the feasibility of gene therapies for common disease and how current assumptions about e.g. costs would need to change. norn.group/writing/gene...

@norngroup.bsky.social is excited to sponsor the continued great work of Harvard Aging Initiative!

The 150-year history of d/acc, a $120M progress fund, fertility on demand, 19th-century kids' sci-fi, the real lesson of Cassandra’s curse, giving the Devil the benefit of law, and more: newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/links-and-...

It pains us to say this. Our lab aims to find cures for many GI conditions. We proudly do both discovery & mentor students - Americans & non-americans alike, & we will have to pause both..unless we find support. So please, help support us keeping discovering & mentoring www.enteric-neuron.com/help

In my 25 years since high school I’ve seen 1. HIV/AIDS go from death sentence to manageable with drugs 2. Cystic fibrosis go from pretty much an extended death sentence to manageable with drugs 3. Sickle cell go from a horrible disease to (almost maybe) cured by gene therapy Simply incredible

Scientific and technological progress drive long-run prosperity. Ben Jones & @larrysummers.bsky.social estimate that *new ideas* account for ~50% of US per-capita GDP growth, with social returns of $14 for each $1 invested in R&D. www.nber.org/papers/w27863

Trying a slightly new model (for us at least) of #openscience. With @ronanchaligne.bsky.social and @karolisk.bsky.social, we pitted 10x Genomics Chromium GEM-X against Illumina PIPseq V head-to-head to understand these two platforms for single-cell genomics. Some thoughts off the bleeding edge: /1

New Yorkers: Call Sen. Gillibrand’s office to vote NO on cloture and NO on the Republican Spending Bill. They vote in the morning. ☎️: (202) 224-4451

A lot of the replies here are saying "if it cant get the aource right why should we trust". I'm not saying LLMs are right all the time, but this is very testable: ask for something you know well, see how correct and then look at sources. For me, most common is answers are right and sources made up.

In a world where we really need to shine a spotlight on abuses of trust in the public interest, my colleagues at @propublica.org are doing the work. Donations keep it free to read and help us make as big an impact as possible. If you have the means, please consider sending a donation of any amount:

*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...

NJ folks, Booker's number is (202) 224-3224, or (973) 639-8700, or (856) 338-8922

Is there already an effort to find foster-homes for irreplaceable sample collections, if NIH or other labs get shut down? If not let's start: 👐 Please reply if you have space and bandwidth to take on resources. 🤞 Please reply w description of samples you're worried about. 📣 Please share this post.