Karen C. Glass, PhD

@dudedad 🚡🚡🚡 SNL tram skit 😂

Spaghetti just tastes better in a gondola…and with an epic pass – now on sale for next season at the lowest price of the year.

Will be getting a shingles shot ASAP

Neat story about a random walk through science. Luck favors the prepared mind. Follow what interests your brain and pick a PROBLEM that you have the right skill set to solve.

Sleeping 2h earlier significantly improved cognition & mental health.

Happy New Year from Vermont! 250 mL IPA pour courtesy of the fabulous MAVEN science leadership group.

As a parent, I think this video has taught me something useful. I recommend that you should try it on your kids, too. I have also shared it with my wife. Credit: joe_drummer_boy on IG.

Here's yet another study showing that kids who get smartphones earlier have worse mental health as teens. So what's the right age for a first smartphone? I'd say its whatever age you want them to cut back on sleeping, reading, exercise, and socializing. I advise not doing that before 14, at the earliest. Let's make that a new norm, to break out of the collective action trap together. Some parents may then wait even longer. But lets try to get all kids through middle school in the real world, before exposing them to the many harms of adolescence lived on a phone. Note that this research use the ABCD study, which is the highest quality longitudinal study going. It confirms an earlier finding by @sapien_labs that found the same thing nytimes.com/2025/12/01/wel…

Multiple large natural experiments have documented Shingles vaccine is linked with ~20-25% reduced risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. A new report today adds to that and extends the to slowing the progression of dementia @CellCellPress cell.com/cell/fulltext/…

The HPV vaccine is miraculous. Look at the green line of cervical cancer rates:

ZERO cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in women under age 25 in Australia 🇦🇺 None . Nada . Zip. For the first time since records began! How did this happen? One word VACCINES!!!!!

New @PNASNews "This work represents the most extensive study to date regarding the effect of tattoo ink on the immune response and raises serious health concerns associated with the tattooing" including altering the response to vaccination pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

“I had hemophilia for nearly five decades. I went to Philadelphia and had a 45-minute infusion, and my hemophilia was gone.” Genes-> Medicine @NatureMedicine nature.com/articles/s4159…

Handwritten notes are more useful for studying and committing to memory than typed notes, ultimately contributing to higher achievement for college students. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

IF I GET DEMENTIA….. I’d like my family to hang this wish list up on the wall where I live. I want them to remember these things. 1a. Every time you enter the room announce yourself. “Hi Dad - it’s Amanda.” NEVER ask- Do you know who I am??? That causes anxiety. • If I get dementia, I want my friends and family to embrace my reality. • If I think my spouse is still alive, or if I think we’re visiting my parents for dinner, let me believe those things. I’ll be much happier for it. • If I get dementia, don’t argue with me about what is true for me versus what is true for you. • If I get dementia, and I am not sure who you are, do not take it personally. My timeline is confusing to me. • If I get dementia, and can no longer use utensils, do not start feeding me. Instead, switch me to a finger-food diet, and see if I can still feed myself. • If I get dementia, and I am sad or anxious, hold my hand and listen. Do not tell me that my feelings are unfounded. • If I get dementia, I don’t want to be treated like a child. Talk to me like the adult that I am. • If I get dementia, I still want to enjoy the things that I’ve always enjoyed. Help me find a way to exercise, read, and visit with friends. • If I get dementia, ask me to tell you a story from my past. • If I get dementia, and I become agitated, take the time to figure out what is bothering me. • If I get dementia, treat me the way that you would want to be treated. • If I get dementia, make sure that there are plenty of snacks for me in the house. Even now if I don’t eat I get angry, and if I have dementia, I may have trouble explaining what I need. • If I get dementia, don’t talk about me as if I’m not in the room. • If I get dementia, don’t feel guilty if you cannot care for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s not your fault, and you’ve done your best. Find someone who can help you, or choose a great new place for me to live. With a bus and activities!! • If I get dementia, and I live in a dementia care community, please visit me often. • If I get dementia, don’t act frustrated if I mix up names, events, or places. Take a deep breath. It’s not my fault. • If I get dementia, make sure I always have my favorite music playing within earshot. • If I get dementia, and I like to pick up items and carry them around, help me return those items to their original place. • If I get dementia, don’t exclude me from parties and family gatherings. • If I get dementia, know that I still like receiving hugs or handshakes. • If I get dementia, remember that I am still the person you know and love.” ᴄᴏᴘʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴀsᴛᴇ in Honor of someone you know or knew who has dementia. In Honor of all those I know and love and lost who are fighting Dementia/Alzheimer’s.

A needed nomenclature for nucleosomes: Molecular Cell cell.com/molecular-cell…

Sub-3 Å resolution protein structure determination by single-particle cryo-EM at 100 keV dlvr.it/TNSRf8

🔥Vaccine news🔥 A study of 2,300 women has shown that HPV infections dropped by 98% (!!) in vaccinated women HPV causes cervical cancer This vaccine prevents cancer! jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…

A needed nomenclature for nucleosomes. Chromatin biology is complex and our new perspective in Molecular Cell proposes a nomenclature for histone proteoforms & nucleosomes that brings clarity to PTM combinations and experimental nuance. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Today, we introduce a nomenclature that can express discrete PTMs, proteoforms, nucleoforms, or situations where defined PTMs exist in an uncertain context and can describe how proteoforms are configured in functionally distinct complexes across biology. authors.elsevier.com/c/1lt5I3vVUPVb…

PGxRAG: A Retrieval Augmented Generation supported Pharmacogenomics Assistant 1. A novel study evaluates the use of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to enhance the accuracy of Large Language Models (LLMs) in pharmacogenomics, achieving a remarkable 95.1% accuracy with the optimal RAG-enhanced model, significantly outperforming native LLMs at 89.8%. This advancement promises to revolutionize personalized medicine by making complex pharmacogenomic guidelines more accessible to healthcare providers. 2. The study constructed a comprehensive knowledge base integrating guidelines from PharmGKB, CPIC, DPWG, and FDA, containing 2,617 document chunks. This rich dataset, embedded and stored in a vector database, forms the backbone of the RAG framework, enabling precise retrieval of relevant pharmacogenomic information to support clinical decision-making. 3. A diverse set of 225 multiple-choice questions was developed, reflecting both patient and healthcare provider perspectives. These questions covered a wide range of pharmacogenomic topics, including concerns, specific guidelines, drug-gene interactions, general knowledge, and out-of-scope queries, providing a thorough evaluation of the models' capabilities. 4. The research systematically explored various hyperparameter combinations, including different temperatures, embedding dimensions, retrieval methods, and k-values. This rigorous approach identified the optimal configuration for the RAG-enhanced models, demonstrating that smaller embeddings and reranking strategies can significantly improve performance. 5. The study highlights the potential of integrating RAG-enhanced LLMs into electronic health records and bioinformatics pipelines, envisioning a future where clinicians can efficiently retrieve and apply pharmacogenomic guidelines at the point of care. Future work will expand the model to include drug-drug interactions and develop a chatbot interface for more interactive querying. 📜Paper: medrxiv.org/content/10.110… #Pharmacogenomics #AIinHealthcare #PersonalizedMedicine #RetrievalAugmentedGeneration #LLMs #ClinicalDecisionSupport