Cool! 🐙

My article on the likely influence of the experiments of polymath Thomas Young on the early abstract art of Hilma af Klint is now published & open access at Leonardo / MIT Press 🎉 direct.mit.edu/leon/article...

Excited to see Europe prioritizing scientific funding! 🧪🇪🇺

Hard to beat biology in terms of complexity 🧠 🧪

Same reason I follow opto-/magneto-/chemogenetics. Nanoparticles are new to me, so I need to do a deeper dive—a quick search hasn't led me to much info about their tech. Fair points about founder & investor; not familiar with either. Curiosity ≠ conviction for sure, & always appreciate your thoughts

Absolutely fair concerns—I’m reserving judgment too. What grabbed me is the nanoparticle angle: a possible non‑surgical path to deep‑brain I/O. I'm interested in creative approaches & alternative form factors to invasive neuromodulation devices/BCIs, since I think these will only get us so far

Catch these two paintings of mine in the show "Little Things" at @olbluegallery.bsky.social, opening April 18
#sciart

Does shingles vaccination cut dementia risk? Large study hints at a link Analysis of nearly 300,000 people finds an association between the shingles jab and a lower rate of dementia — but questions linger.

Vaccination against shingles might also prevent dementia, such as that caused by Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study of health records from around 300,000 people in Wales.

https://go.nature.com/446nriQ

A temperature-inducible protein module for control of mammalian cell fate - Nature Methods The Melt (Membrane localization using temperature) protein translocates to the plasma membrane upon temperature shift. Melt variants with a range of switching temperatures enable straightforward therm...

Interesting paper about a new thermogenetic switch—Melt enables precise control of cell behavior using small temperature changes. A potential alternative to optogenetics that doesn't require getting light inside tissue 💡 Could be huge for neurotech, particularly noninvasive neuromodulation 🧠 🧪

An oil painting of a school of fish orbiting a gas giant planet, like a ring. #sciart #surrealism #surrealart #oilpainting #fish #planet

Just keep swimming 🐟

Maybe they’re migrating. Maybe they’re just being pulled along. Hard to tell the difference sometimes 🪐

("Endless Orbit / Accretion Fish". Oil, acrylic and silver leaf on canvas, 70x60 cm)

Developing a CRISPR therapy for muscular dystrophy Researchers at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center in Berlin are developing a targeted treatment for muscular dystrophy with the help of gene-editing. Preclinical research led by the Spuler ...

Great to see this promising research coming out of Berlin 🦾 Gene therapy is such an exciting field right now 🧬🧪 @naturecomms.bsky.social paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

THIS IS HUGE! Researchers at Stanford Medicine have devised an influenza vaccine that prompts immunity to ALL four major flu subtypes AND shows potential against bird flu, indicating a significant advancement in flu prevention and a potential increase in vaccine efficacy. Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️

Biotech Refoxy Pharmaceuticals advances research with €9.1M funding The financing will accelerate the preclinical development of Refoxy’s program in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and expand its platform to other age-related indications.

FOXO3 is a gene linked to longevity with protective effects against cellular stress. Refoxy's targeting it for IPF, but their bigger vision is tackling aging at its roots. Exciting to see (our portfolio) companies addressing age-related diseases + aging itself as biology unlocks new possibilities 🧪

(which can confer a survival advantage for some species in particular situations). And over long periods of time, this increasing intelligence can lead to self-awareness, either as a side effect of greater problem solving ability or perhaps as a feature that enables greater survival in itself

but very few of them we would consider to have self awareness--just a tiny minority. So it doesn't seem that life tends automatically towards self-awareness. But I do think certain combinations of conditions and pressures can select for increasing intelligence ...

Thanks! I don't necessarily think that life generally tends towards becoming aware of itself. If you think about the vast diversity of living organisms on earth, they've all been evolving for the same amount of time (since they all share a common ancestor) ...

Thanks! 🙏

It's fascinating (and I think often under-appreciated) how intelligent some birds are! 🐦

They're really fascinating creatures! And they've always captured human imagination, whether as sea monsters or inspiration for sci-fi aliens haha

The Octopus: A Case Study in Alien Intelligence What these evolutionary outliers can teach us about alternative minds

Pondering the cosmic implications of the octopus 🐙 & what this strange creature can teach us about the diversity of possible minds in the universe ✨ So I wrote this.
🧪 #philsci #neurosky #neuroscience

Thanks! Much appreciated 🙏

Orcas may have revived a trend of wearing dead salmon on their heads 👒🐟 They are very social animals, and behaviors or "trends" can spread from pod to pod. Still unclear why they do this though 🌊 but I love the aesthetic ✨🧪

Thank you! 🙏

Hello! I'd love to be added. I have a research background in biology and neuroscience (a couple random neuro papers: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34644570/, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30578972/), current master's student at Charité Berlin, and I also write about scientific ideas (medium.com/@la.payette/...)

Nice you're here! Kept checking over the past couple weeks to see if you'd made an account yet 😅

Love it! 🎨
Nice to find you on here :)

Amazing, I love it!

Nice to find you on here! 🦋

It's an honor 😊🙏🎨

I think the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. I encourage European founders to be more confident and aim higher. I wish more Americans would communicate directly and admit what they don't know more readily—that's also a sign of confidence