Michael Ward

@michael-e-ward.bsky.social

Physician scientist studying the biology of neurodegenerative disorders. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5296-8051

Giving a talk? Don't waste time with "practice talks". Stay in slide sorter view & practice 3 things for each slide: 1. What point/s do I want to convey with this slide (</=3). 2. What's the 1-line summary of this slide? 3. What is the transition to the next slide? Something doesn't fit? FIX IT

Triple the science budget AND fix agency governance. TLDR: Those are the two essential things we must fix in US science. Get the president out of the science agencies, no presidential influence beyond appointment, stop the attacks on the civil service, restore Congressional power and oversight.

Costa Samaras@costasamaras.com · 8mo ago

Them: I've devised an exact formula for what we should invest in science and public health and education, see my 100 page PDF and then– Me: I'm not reading all that, just triple it and go from there bsky.app/profile/cost...

Check out the newest work from our, from Fabricio Nicola @fabricionicola.bsky.social on mouse jumping and spinal cell types. Excellent collab with @vulcnethologist.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A spinal substrate for modular control of natural behavior

Natural behavior unfolds as coordinated sequences of body movements. This organization suggests that behavior may be built from discrete motor patterns, yet how such arrangements are implemented by neural circuits remains unknown. Here, we combined kinematic analysis, muscle recordings, genetically identified cell types, and closed-loop optogenetic perturbations to examine the organizational logic of natural gap-crossing jumps in mice. Jumping was characterized by a series of precisely defined phases and their associated modular motor patterns. The core phases, propulsion and flight, exhibited distinct signatures of neural control, including unique bursts of coordinated hindlimb muscle activity, differential tuning strategies for jump distance, and active requirements for spinal neural drive. Mapping activity across lumbar interneuron populations and functionally screening candidate cell types for their ability to drive coordinated movement revealed that a population of dorsal excitatory dILB6 neurons can autonomously evoke coordinated multi-joint hindlimb flexion characteristic of the jumping flight phase, across behavioral contexts. These findings provide a specific cellular substrate for the long-standing concept of spinal modular motor control: a flexible, preconfigured motor template that the mammalian CNS can recruit and modulate to meet the demands of natural behavior. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

biorxiv.org

Fabricio Nicola@fabricionicola.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Mammals have hundreds of joints and muscles. Controlling them individually would be nearly impossible. How does the nervous system organize such complexity into coherent actions? Our new study explores this question through a natural behavior: jumping.

The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed. For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com 🧪

How Congress can restore the independence of US science

Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

nature.com

Begging PhD programs to agree on a common app with only letters of rec that writers upload once. These inane likert scales when students are applying to 15-20 programs is destroying my soul

Ranking categories found on a recommendation portal for a PhD program. It reads:

Top 5%: Applicant is exceptional in this category and is among the best I've collaborated with in my career
Top 10%: Applicant has demonstrated consistent excellence and has performed well above the average of their peers in this category
Top 25%:  Applicant has consistently performed  above the average of their peers in this category
Top Half:  Applicant has consistently performed at an average level or midpoint of their peer group's performance in this category
Bottom Half:  Applicant has consistently performed below the average of their peers in this category
No Basis for Judgement:  I have not interacted with the applicant in a manner that allows me to fairly assess their competency in this category