kwitschas

NEWS: The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about changes to the re-submission rules, intended to manage the surge in demand for grants. The Scientific Council will readjust some of the changes: link.europa.eu/TBqRQJ

Just out in @Nature: using iDISCO tissue clearing and whole-brain 3D imaging, the authors show that astrocytes form large-scale, structured networks connecting specific brain regions via gap junctions. These networks span hemispheres, show striking regional specificity, and dynamically remodel, revealing a new layer of brain connectivity beyond classical neuronal circuits. Work by the @LiddelowSA and Moses V. Chao labs (NYU): nature.com/articles/s4158… #DISCO #Clearing #3DImaging

I knew this was coming. We are so f*cked - fake and real now look the same. We desperately need tools to show journals and researchers that data is real, not AI-generated.

We're hiring! 🔬🏔️ Looking for curious, open-minded, and multidisciplinary #PhD candidates to research at the intersection of #mitochondria, #metabolism, #imaging & #physiology, with the #Alps as a backdrop. Sounds like you or someone you know? Link below! @unil

ERC is at a turning point, and not in the right direction. Excellent science needs support, not barriers @ERC_Research Read & sign 👇 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

Everyone is misunderstanding this paper+tweet. THIS PAPER DOES NOT SHOW THAT EMF RADIATION IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT IS CHANGING YOUR GENES WIRELESSLY this paper designs and implements a new ARTIFICIAL GENE SWITCH that is controllable by EMF. This is a very impressive technology!! It will hopefully be a useful tool for biology research. But! You have to do some sort of gene therapy to an organism so that the expression of a gene in that organism can be controlled with EMF radiation. Additionally, the EMF radiation used is 1,000–100,000× stronger than ambient EMF radiation. I WANT TO BE CLEAR: It does not show you can precisely control gene expression using EMF WITHOUT any modifications to an organism. "no drugs" in the original tweet is misleading. I guess technically gene therapy isn't a drug but it's still a significant intervention. Now the mechanism identified is interesting. It does rely on this endogenous protein Cyb5b that triggers a transcription factor Sp7. Now idk if this is a pathway that could ever occur naturally, this is not studied in the paper AFAICT. However Sp7 seems to be relevant in bone formation/growth/healing. So here's my speculation (which could be totally wrong which is likely!): maybe, just maybe, with very high EMF radiation you could induce bone growth/healing without modification to an organism. But biology is complex and there's probably some reason this would never work lol

The number of grant applications is rising sharply. Our capacity for their evaluation isn’t. ERC President Maria Leptin explains why stricter resubmission limits are being introduced for 2027 calls and what this mean for applicants. link.europa.eu/xF7kjc

I can certainly sympathize with the plight of the panelists, but this is a wrong decision. The idea of ERC is encouraging high-risk proposals. Saying "if a couple of panelists think its too crazy", you are banned for 2-3 years is the opposite message

Our review on Potassium Channels in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells is out at Physiological Reviews (@physiolrev ). More than 150 pages long and citing more than 1500 articles, this herculean effort was co-authored by Tessa Garrud and Dan Collier. journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.11…

Functional hierarchy of the human neocortex across the lifespan | Nature nature.com/articles/s4158…

It’s well known that inflammation increases cancer risk, but how? The answer: the epigenome "remembers" inflammation and primes stem cells for cancer. Here is our paper: nature.com/articles/s4158… And a special shoutout to the lead author @snaga13 A 🧵

This reflects how science has been packaged and evaluated over the past two decades. In the 2000s figure preparation software such as PowerPoint and Illustrator became straightforward to use. By the early 2010s, high-impact journals came to associate dense, elaborate figures (i.e. the exhibits of a scientific study) with rigor and depth. The implicit assumption was that more panels and more data reflected more thorough and careful work. At the same time, the editorial decision on whether to proceed to peer review was made by individuals not deeply embedded in the specific science, relying more on visual presentation and the perceived completeness of the data. The aesthetics of the figure panels became a proxy for scientific thoroughness. In response, scientists adapted. Figures became more complex, more densely populated, and more expansive in scope. This gave the appearance of rigor independent of whether the additional data materially clarified the central questions of the study. Reviewers were tasked with evaluating these large and complex datasets under significant time constraints, typically within a few days and without compensation, while managing substantial professional responsibilities. Under these conditions, it is impossible to systematically interrogate every component of a multi-panel figure. There is also a reluctance to question whether key elements of a study are missing if there is a possibility they are included somewhere within the large amount of presented data. The result is a publication system in which the presentation of large volumes of data in complex figure formats can facilitate publication in high-profile journals, often with limited connection to the underlying clarity, coherence, or quality of the science itself.

My website ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/inde…

The 35th Ig Nobel Prize ceremony held in Boston in September 2025 will be the last in the United States—at least for now. This year, the beloved spoof on science Nobel Prizes will take place in Zürich, kicking off a potentially permanent change to European-hosted ceremonies. Learn more: scim.ag/40Y9BMD

new record in scientific fraud: Using the same image 23 times in very different publications:

We are hiring a postdoc in computational biophysics and machine learning studies of intrinsically disordered proteins We aim to study the function of IDPs by combining CG MD, ML and bioinformatics in collaboration with Tanja Mittag and Rasmus Hartmann-Petersen

Here is our updated database of grants for early careers researchers in all fields. It goes way beyond traditional NIH and NSF funding opportunities. We list 428 types of grants. Download it here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-op…

Running a research lab is about leading people. I created a free toolkit on the human side of lab leadership—covering hiring, mentoring, conflict navigation, lab culture, and performance management. Open access: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo… #TeamScience #AcademicLeadership

New blog post: Resources for faculty job applications and starting a new lab Suggestions are welcome! spikesandbursts.wordpress.com/2026/03/15/res…

Download our extended database of postdoc fellowships. 276 funding opportunities. For each entry, we provide eligibility/requirements, amount, deadline, link, description, etc. Download our database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-op…