We are constantly reminded that the most promising ideas still have to be proven in the clinic - and that the first trial is almost never enough. If you've never heard of TIGIT, it's yet another cautionary tale:

“As one person, I can’t eat that much,” she says. “So that’s why I stayed for five days.”

Ori Weinstock and company. My daily post on the dark site, now moved here youtu.be/PH-ijpgDZsY

state of the union he gives himself another stellar review #vss365 #senryu

🧪 Moms will be moms. One of my most distinguished colleagues told me that his mother told him one day that she had met the mother of one of his classmates at kindergarten, and found out that the classmate had since won the Nobel in Physics, so when was he going to get his prize…

I’m embarrassed to find how little I knew, or thought, about Agarose. Despite its efficacy, ubiquity & essential nature in labs. Nor did I know anything about Fanny Angelina (another example, whether intentional or not, of the Matilda Effect) & Walther Hesse. This is absolutely fascinating.

I'm very fond of this poem strangehorizons.com/poetry/the-s...

the stairs leaving Hiroshima never end --Yukie Noma 広島を去る階段が終わらない　野間幸恵 #haiku #gendaihaiku #translation

🧪 "There is wonder in this thing we do. This thing, wonder, so prevalent in the experience of children, is incredibly rare in adult life. And if you think about it, what other ‘job’ can invoke a sense of wonder?" journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

one nation under gold #SenryuSunday #oneline

Fluorescence Friday - DNA-PAINT imaging of axon initial segment TRIM46 ('cyan') and bIV spectrin ('red') by the incomparable Allison Melton in my laboratory. Just spectacular!

🧪 A 🧵 well worth reading ! When a peripheral nerve scientist had to diagnose himself…

1/ In March 2023, I received a lumbar puncture. This was key to receiving my chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy #cidp diagnosis. This 🧵 is on my experience with identifying and treating #autoimmunedisease. I'll also be sharing some 🧵s I posted previously on the Other Place.

“I mean, they seem like nice people or whatever,” the woman told Palmer on the call. “But if they’re taking up resources from our county, I’m not into illegal people being here.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Which science jobs are most at risk from AI? To find out, Nature spoke to more than four dozen researchers across academia and industry who use AI in their work. go.nature.com/4cFPvxH

still going nowhere a bend in the river Thanks to guest editor Vidya Shankar for featuring this one in thehaikufoundation.org/haiku-dialog...

CARTOON OF THE DAY

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Rookie-level stuff. Brian Wansink had a paper retracted twice *from the same journal*.

It is a leading producer of caviar, foie gras and truffles

Bill Bramhall cartoon.

It has never been easier to create fake or low-quality papers, and other AI slop go.nature.com/46ay9VR

Why would a tropical frog toxin be used to murder someone in Siberia? You know why.

My quote of the day Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change. Jesse Jackson

Doug Lanzo has a knack of building incredibly vivid images in your mind line-by-line. This #Sciku is a great example, the third line is the final piece of an exquisite puzzle. red-billed quelea millions of birds mirroring shifting sands #SciArt thescikuproject.com/2026/02/16/f...

"Aber China": Rund um die Taklamakan wurden so viele Bäume gepflanzt, dass die Wüste jetzt Kohlenstoffsenke ist 66 Milliarden Bäume in 47 Jahren, 10% mehr Waldbedeckung in China gesamt Und schon höre ich die Ersten rufen: "Aber wir haben doch gar keine Wüsten in Deutschland!" #Klimakatastrophe

So… IS the Essence of a Journal Portable? Checking in on _NeuroImage_ and _Imaging Neuroscience_ scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/02/11/s...

a mirror placed between us storm water #SenryuSunday #senryu #3lines #micropoetry

www.nature.com/articles/d41... Excellent summary by @prof-tregoning.bsky.social @natureportfolio.nature.com @ukri.org

Submissions are OPEN for the first issue of Only Human! Send us your English language senryu, kyoka, senbun, and haibun during the month of February. Guidelines are available on our website. We can’t wait to read your poetry!

Lobstering can be tough. But Virginia Oliver skippered her own boat until the age of 103—fully 95 years after she first put to sea with her father

I’m deeply honored to have a haiku featured here and for Sean’s insightful commentary. I highly recommend giving Sean and the featured poets a follow.

Very important topic. IMO, it is not all academia who fails here but specific societies. We were lucky with my partner to do our research...and our kid in Israel where it is VERY common to see mothers at all training levels. The Weizmann is doing great to allow its researchers to be parents too !

Maybe I’ll keep tidying my own dataframes a little while longer.

still going nowhere a bend in the river Thanks to guest editor Vidya Shankar for featuring this one in thehaikufoundation.org/haiku-dialog...

A Japanese university established to set a new paradigm for higher education in the country has hit another stumbling block. https://scim.ag/4qk14xL

Breaking news: One of the largest monkey research centers in the United States has taken the first steps toward converting itself into a primate sanctuary, a seismic change that would affect biomedical research across the country. https://scim.ag/4bH2COV

Donald Trump has shown that expert panels and funding, like many other things over which the executive branch holds sway, can be wielded as a partisan cudgel econ.st/45MjrEo Illustration: Javier Palma

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Avoiding the hothouse, at least for while, may stop youngsters burning out, becoming disenchanted with endless practice or simply getting bored with their field

‘Asked what he looked for in a piece of writing, he responded simply, “I just want to fall in love with it…You don’t know until you’ve found it, but when you find it, you know.” ‘

Welcome, piles of slop filling up the journals with clouds of useless wordy garbage. Case in point:

🧪 “The reviewer’s exasperating “I see what you’re trying to do, but…” is not a bug in the system; it is the system. It signals that another human intelligence has wrestled with the work long enough to care.”

New in #ScienceSignaling 👉Importin β1 has an unexpected role in presynaptic long-term plasticity and spatial memory, by regulating local protein synthesis at hippocampal synapses. #neuroscience #cellbiology #synapticplasticity #memory www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” — The Epicurean Paradox

Wasn't it precisely what the Impact Factor was invented for historically?

shadow puppets the naked emperor a marionette ————- late January the city streets fill up with tear gas ———— ice storm in the road abandoned cars with smashed out windows

PJ's submission window is NOW open for the month of February! We’re looking for your best #senryu and related forms of #poetry, including #kyoka, #haibun, #gembun, #haiga, and #sequences Submission guidelines: prunejuicesenryu.com/submissions/ #WritingCommunity #submissions