Great to see this out in the world!

Ian Hutchins@bihutchins.bsky.social · last wk.

How cost-effective are NIH Extramural vs Intramural mechanisms? We did internal analysis at NIH but never published results. Happy to share some answers: Extramural is better for measures like publications and citations; Intramural is better at basic -> clinical translation doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

New paper! We found basic scene selectivity arises across the scene network early in infancy (i.e., by ~3.5 months old), prior to independent navigation experience www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience | PNAS

Sighted people rely on vision to recognize and navigate the local environment. By adulthood, human cortex contains at least three regions that resp...

pnas.org

RFK jr overrode the NIH recommendation for NIAID Director to appoint his own preferred candidate (who applied, but NIH declined to interview), per @politico.com. Institute directors have final say on funding decisions and are critical to the integrity of NIH. 🧵 www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

A lab-leak proponent is in line for Fauci’s old job

Steven Quay is in final vetting to run the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

politico.com

There are 15 core states, but cyclosporiasis cases have been reported in 45 states where more than 270 million people live during the current outbreak. This is why we built (pre Trump’s first administration) a functioning CDC and FDA, to avoid the human and economic impact of disease like this.

Apoorva Mandavilli@apoorvanyt.bsky.social · yesterday

SCOOP: The CDC has linked six additional states to a large outbreak of cyclosporiasis associated with iceberg lettuce — Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire and North Carolina — bringing the total tally to 15. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/w...

Also if you're at #CCN2026 come chat with me about Minds, Machines, and Brains @mmb-journal.bsky.social A new journal we are launching with @mitpress.bsky.social with my co-EICs Kendrick Kay & Ellie Pavlick, and the rest of the wonderful editorial board: direct.mit.edu/mmb/pages/ed...

Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB)@mmb-journal.bsky.social · 4d ago

Hello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb

By targeting Fauci, Senate Republicans are trying to transfer guilt from those who downplayed or misrepresented the pandemic, @davidfrum.bsky.social argues.

Anthony Fauci Is Not the Villain in This Story

The doctor was thrust into his pandemic-leadership role because of Trump’s deadly dereliction of duty.

bit.ly

Living in the DC area, full of people with grad degrees who committed to careers helping people, feeding the hungry and protecting civil rights, all fired and floundering

I could barely afford vibranium as it was

Asperas Bompar@asperasbompar.bsky.social · 7d ago

Wakanda tariffs going to get doubled now

After my post, more NIHers wanted to share: "Dr. Fauci took the time to recognize each new staff member during in-person town halls before COVID came along. Although he is not a warm and fuzzy guy, he still cares about people. That included those who worked under his direction at NIAID."

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · last wk.

You can tell a lot about a leader by listening to the people who worked for them. Those who worked for Tony Fauci uniformly respected him. Today’s congressional hearing was a witch hunt, part of a larger effort to undermine science and scientists. www.reuters.com/business/hea...

“I had a million doses of Joker venom that my henchmen and I were prepared to pour into Gotham’s water supply. And the Bat-Man got Commissioner Gordon to stop me from doing that.”

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

Peter Navarro: "I had a million doses of hydroxychloroquine in warehouses as the defense policy coordinator that I was trying to distribute to hospitals. And Fauci got the FDA stop me from doing that."

“Compared to what?”

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I want to come back to this crucial point from @nickfleisher.bsky.social, with data. If you're going to write a report about "declining trust" in universities, then you better benchmark that to other institutions, & you cannot identify causes of that decline w/o accounting for the broader trend.

new political axis just dropped

Anthony Fauci should sue Peter Navarro for defamation. I’m not saying this hyperbolically, I mean it.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

Peter Navarro on Maria Bartiromo's show lies with impunity that "it's an indisputable fact" that Fauci "created that virus" and "killed people"

You might get sick of hearing this but if he keeps doing it I'm gonna keep saying it: this is an unconstitutional impoundment, violating both Congress' Article I spending authority and the 1974 Impoundment Control act, and immediately impeachable.

Catherine Rampell@crampell.bsky.social · 2w ago

Trump administration pauses $1 bln in Medicaid payments to California, Minnesota www.reuters.com/world/us-hea...

This is awesome and one reason why I am so excited about the RMA technology @jerzyszablowski.bsky.social has developed with his lab. Theranos was a great idea ruined by a fraud. The blood supply can be repurposed as a diagnostic tool in so many cool ways. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Watchdog Progressive@watchdogprg.bsky.social · 2w ago

Wow! >>> UCLA researchers develop low-cost blood test to detect multiple cancers and other diseases from a single sample. newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucl...

Trump is going after the National Academy of Sciences. Gift link.

Trump Attacks National Academies Over Climate Chapter in Judges’ Manual (Gift Article)

The president joined Republican officials who slammed the National Academies of Sciences for a chapter about climate science in an educational guide for judges.

nytimes.com

Nigel Goldenfeld@nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 2w ago

🧪 #climate Trump has ordered a probe of the National Academy of Sciences. If the timing on his post is Eastern Time, and he actually types his posts himself, then I guess this was on his mind during the World Cup final.

The only team not to lose to Spain at the World Cup? Cape Verde.

The fact that VP JD Vance and Richard Grenell went to Romania—on behalf of the Trump Administration— to advocate for Andrew and Tristan Tate, who by all accounts, were rapists running a coercive sex ring, then permitted them to come to Florida, should be a crazy, crazy scandal.

Neuroscientist Brenda Milner turns an incredible 108 years old today! In the 1950s she uncovered the role the hippocampus plays in consolidating memories, and in the 1970s she published her seminal studies of speech lateralization. Wishing her all the best today! tinyurl.com/3am8syhf #WomenInSTEM

Building a Kingdom in the Brain’s Unfashionable District: Brenda Milner’s Century of Neuropsychology

There are scales and metrics you use to evaluate the lives of most neuropsychologists, and then there are those you have to invent in order to speak with any degree of justice about people like Brenda...

tinyurl.com

More than a quarter of American adults have a daily gambling habit, 42 percent of bettors have said they spend more than they should, and a majority of men ages eighteen to forty-nine have an active account with an online sportsbook.

Doubling Down - Dissent Magazine

Online sports gambling has been normalized at a breakneck pace. Is there any way to push back against a predatory culture of promo codes and prop bets?

dissentmagazine.org

Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...

Trump administration limits student visas to four years, changing longstanding policy - The Boston Globe

The new rule, which also restricts the international students’ ability to transfer schools or change majors without approval in their first year, will go into effect in mid-September.

bostonglobe.com

Starting September, international students will be limited to four years of study. With most PhD programs lasting 5 or 6 years, this is a huge blow - to the International students themselves and to our ability to recruit the best students we can. This is not how the U.S. remains competitive.

Trump administration tightens visa rules for foreign students

Students will need federal permission to stay longer than four years in the US and universities will lose the power to extend visas.

bbc.com

Note the date

Ryan Marino, MD@ryanmarino.bsky.social · 11mo ago

CDC is no longer surveilling outbreaks caused by campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. What could go wrong?

I work at Google DeepMind. This won't make me popular. But it's all public reporting: 2014: DeepMind reportedly sold to Google on conditions: no military use, independent oversight 2026: a Pentagon contract for "any lawful government purpose" Not one safeguard survived intact

TRUMP DIARRHEA OUTBREAK: Cyclosporiasis cases are surging now across 40+ states, a severe diarrhea outbreak linked to contaminated produce. Reports indicate Trump admin CDC changes made Cyclospora surveillance optional and restructured the parasitic diseases division.

“To accommodate the expected funding withdrawal, programme officers…are being required to pull back proposals that have already passed peer review and have been recommended for funding….[M]any of the researchers who submitted those proposals had already been informed” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NSF plans cuts to core science programmes to fund White House initiative

A proposed clawback of already distributed research funds comes as the US agency struggles with a squeezed budget and a backlog of grant applications.

nature.com

Jessica (@cantlonlab.bsky.social) lost her funding because she dared to include gender as a relevant variable in studying how people learn math. Only the enemies of truth seek to suppress the search for it. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/c...

She Studied Ways to Make People Smarter. Then Her Grant Was Cut. (Gift Article)

Jessica Cantlon had a grant with the U.S. Navy to explore whether people could improve spatial problem-solving skills through training. Then the program was cut.

nytimes.com

YOU NEED MORE PROTEIN BRO! Julia Belluz & Kevin Hall’s book, Food Intelligence, explores the roots of the wellness industry in non-scientifically backed protein supplements, and shows why you’re almost definitely getting enough protein.

New paper alert from our lab! nature.com/articles/s41... We used stimuli sequences following 1/f statistical patterns—an ubiquitous statistical structure in natural stimuli—to probe predictive processing in the human brain. How does the brain predict upcoming sensory inputs based on past inputs?

The notion we get to imprison people indefinitely without trial in a foreign prison, at our behest, is something the signers of the Declaration would revolt against.

Gillian Brockell@gillianbrockell.com · 4w ago

Reuters confirms. 11 more people captured by ICE have been sent to a maximum security prison in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a country where they have no ties and committed no crimes. reut.rs/4wpbIGU