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
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Low-D you say...
Two-photon calcium imaging at 24,000 lines/s, with the resonant axis spanning 4x what other systems can do. Inertia-free. Diffraction-limited. No tradeoffs. Che-Hang Yu developed a 4x angle multiplier for laser scanning. His paper is out today: opg.optica.org/optica/fullt... 1/n #fluorescenceFriday
Embedding unreliable AI deep into the source code of the military without human oversight is the single stupidest thing we could do as a species.
And that is *exactly* what the United States is about to do.
Yes! Some clear thinking. Once we move away from "species x is a good/bad model for y because of z handpicked reasons" we can do science.
In 2023 a bill to prevent AI from autonomously launching nuclear weapons *failed to pass*. This was apparently not newsworthy.
www.congress.gov/bill/118th-c...
The urgent plea of @garymarcus.bsky.social demands rapid action: the US Military, in the hands of fascists, seeks to bend Anthropic to the knee in the aims of incorporating AI into military weaponry. Gary asks us to call our political representatives right now. I just did. Now it's your turn.
A summary of the last decade's news:
2016: the cunts are in charge now
2026: documents reveal that the cunts were always in charge
Calcium spikes know which way the wind blows!
Lily Nguyen and I wrote a dispatch on this fascinating work led by Itzel Ishida+@sethisachin.bsky.social+Gaby Maimon!
authors.elsevier.com/a/1mfk53QW8S...
LLMs should be a private cognitive tool, like a calculator, which is not currently possible under our existing model of corporate AI. Crucially, they do not think and have no agency, again in the same way as a calculator
for those who are paywalled or want to read the original research instead of the headline: arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14740
Broader engineering principles than those most of us are familiar with, for sure!
Macro photo of a brown stink bug in face view on a leaf, guarding a tightly-clustered bunch of eggs that are shaped and colored exactly like a full tray of dark beer with foam on top.
Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.
No! It's the other way around. Engineering principles *generate* complex systems:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
engineering principles first, complexity follows ;)
Podcast recommendation: I had never heard of Judith Shklar before, but her idea that hypocrisy weighs against cruelty couldn't be more relevant to our current politics. Depth of discussion is a nice antidote to the rising tide of bs too... podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...
Not just a gut feeling: It is indeed harder to find reviewers....
Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)
1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."
My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!
that's because it was the same country back then... and we're still trying to get rid of them
this is simply because spiritual energy cannot be localised to a unique source
nice rug
If you use peer review for your own work but refuse to contribute to it yourself then you know what you are: we all have one.
"Move fast and break... oh... it broke."
Who could have seen this coming?
Thank you!
"The brain doesn't know or care about trial averaged rates" couldn't have said it better!
Could you share links to the studies you mentioned in the article? ❤️ (stuck at paywall)
