The simple joy of people watching in Central Park on a hot summer day.

We should support junior scientists (the old ones too 😉) and not destroy their self esteem and their passion.

If you don't like a paper, it is obviously totally fine to point out the issues. But please do NOT make egregious and unpleasant comments about the first author's qualifications. A first author who is usually a trainee. Beyond inappropriate and unprofessional.

Every Monday should start like this. Postdoc gets faculty job offer and ex-postdoc/currently faculty gets massive grant. Too early for tequila shots?

Congratulations to Professor Wang on winning the Fields Medal (Nobel Prize for Math). Only the 3rd woman in history to win. And she won for a preprint article! We have some ways to go in biology before preprints receive this level of impact and recognition.

Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · 2w ago

Hong Wang, who proved the three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture, has just won the Fields Medal, making her the third woman in the award’s 90-year history to receive math’s highest honor. Read our profile: www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wi...

Seeing previous mentees in their fully differentiated state, thriving in their professional and personal lives, makes all the stress and hard work of running a lab so worth it. 30th reunion weekend. Thanks to my current lab for organizing and planning, and to everyone for coming. I am verklempt.

Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals

Analyses of deidentified data reveal complex interactions that quantify success at elite general science journals.

science.org

Continuing on that steep downward slope to destroying higher education in the US. This will create immense issues for life sciences PhD students - very very few if any finish in 4 years.

Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · 3w ago

🚨 Breaking News | The U.S. Department of Homeland Security scrapped a long-standing policy Thursday that allowed international students to stay in the U.S. until they finish their program of study. (1/2) Read the full story ➡️ bit.ly/4pmMoiC #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

"I still love what I do,” she said. “But it’s time to step aside and make resources available for the up-and-coming junior people who want to do what I do, especially right now" news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Award-winning biologist Connie Cepko set to retire  — Harvard Gazette

After decades of advancing work on vision-threatening disease, she passes the torch to scientific successors.

news.harvard.edu

Not AI, no filter and not Photoshopped. Wildfires in Canada making everything look like the the end of the world here

I saw fireflies (plural) in my front yard in my fairly urban neighborhood today and I have no more life goals.

Absolutely beautiful work from the Bradke lab here. As an aside, I'm also genuinely stunned to see fundamental neuronal cell biology like this in Nature! An intrinsic cytoskeletal oscillator establishes neuronal polarityhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10755-6

An intrinsic cytoskeletal oscillator establishes neuronal polarity - Nature

The ARP2/3 complex works together with actomyosin in an oscillatory program at the soma to govern neuronal polarization.

nature.com

Huh - many of the 'comments' in favor of OMB's thing use the same language. So hoping these will all be lumped together. Here's an excerpt from mine- couldn't help going on a mini-rant.

🎉 New/updated preprint! From 🌟 GS Kirsten Judge + Most neuronal cilia form during development. Can adult neurons rebuild damaged cilia? Are functions restored? Does regrowth use different pathways from ciliogenesis? Answers (in C. elegans): Yes, yes, and partly. 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Neuron-intrinsic and glial pathways regulate sensory cilia regeneration in adult C. elegans

Primary cilia are microtubule-based organelles that mediate cellular responses to environmental cues. Although cilia disassemble and reassemble upon cell cycle entry and exit, respectively, in dividin...

biorxiv.org

This is so weird to me, coming from developmental / cellular / molecular neurobiology - where you have to actually physically *do* experiments…

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 4w ago

AI may soon enable researchers to generate high-quality science at a previously unimaginable speed. The effects for researchers will be as disruptive as industrial mass production was for artisan manufacturers, writes @kenneth-harris.bsky.social. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...

How did octopuses evolve novel traits? Rishav Mitra, Richard Han, Trey Scott, et al serendipitously discover a unique ribosome adaptation that increases the accuracy of protein synthesis and evolved alongside their elaborate nervous systems vs deep sea relatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Lab apparently has a new emoji on lab Slack. "One of the younger people in lab made it". That's me in a lab coat - I put it on one time last year to help with an EMS screen. Wonder what they are using the emoji for on their own channels. Hmmmm......

it's crazy when you see a photo for the first time and recognize it's gonna be used as a shorthand for the era you're living in right now by historians in 100 years

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · last mo.

"Members of the group Patriot Front ride the metro as a commuter looks on, during the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2026. REUTERS/Cheney Orr"

Something nice to look forward to in these apocalyptic times. T-shirts for our lab's 30th anniversary reunion ordered and on their way! Cannot wait to see so many lab alums coming in from all over the world (despite reliable intel that apparently I am in for some ribbing).

Sadly, I am too ancient for this but what a great opportunity. Apply!

John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · last mo.

My department, Neurobiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington (nbio.uw.edu), is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor, application deadline 09/30/26. It's a broad search — molecular to organismal, all of neuroscience/physiology/biophysics welcome. apply.interfolio.com/187735

Court can't go on like this. The Constitution as plainly as possible says people who were born here have an unequivocal right to citizenship. Four people whose ONLY job is to read the Constitution for the rest of their lives just tried to overturn it because they're tired of brown people. Pack it.

Quick 🧪 and law note. The SCOTUS decision in Slaughter today has *profound* implications for US science, cancer cures and the economy. Sotomayor dissent: “Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government… shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands”

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · last mo.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court, 6-3, overrules Humphrey's Executor, giving the president broad firing powers over the leadership of federal agencies and limiting Congress's power to limit presidential firings. In a 5-4 decision, however, the court said the Federal Reserve is likely different.

This is the NIH grant screening disfavored words list published by Nature: media.nature.com/original/mag...

Pro-tip. Never ever re-read a grant that has already been submitted (and awaiting review).

All I can say is that if Ann Patchett wrote a grocery list, I’d drop everything to read it.

Please share this gift article from The New York Times with friends, family, sceptics, and People who think that studying weird things is a waste of money. Then follow up with meaningful discussion about what I call 'free range science'. Free without subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/o...

Opinion | The Science That Turned Lizard Venom Into GLP-1s Is Under Attack

nytimes.com

How ancient are the building blocks of animal sensory systems? Key components of animal sensory systems evolved before animals. We find that choanoflagellates possess diverse & spatially segregated TRP channels, pointing to ancient origins of sensory specialization. doi.org/10.64898/202...

We are everywhere. In this case, the 1870 version in the historic Stabat Mater library of the fabled and fabulous Bologna Archiginnasio.

Just a few light snacks on our trip. Interspersed with miles of walking thankfully. (Pics courtesy of F1)

Important new work from Chia-Hsiang Chang, @nachury.bsky.social and colleagues identifying the composition of neuronal cilia in an unbiased way. Lots of surprises herein: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

In situ proteomics unveils specialized domains for extrasynaptic signaling on neuronal cilia

In situ proteomics and expansion microscopy reveal nanoscale organization of postsynaptic proteins on neuronal cilia.

science.org