And a very high stride frequency

National Science Foundation’s future in limbo as Trump eyes cuts The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) future is in limbo as President Trump pushes for more budget cuts and his nominee to helm the research agency awaits Senate confirmation.  Since Trump’s retu…

Nice coverage of what’s happening at NSF from @thehill.com!

Two points from me:

1. NSF staff are hanging in like a hair in a biscuit and the admin isn’t making it easy. It’s a psyop every day.

2. Jim O’Neill is not the one to run NSF. Full stop.

thehill.com/homenews/adm...

What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory Theory and empirical science should be in constant dialogue, but often find it hard to understand one another. Here we describe a graduate-level university course we developed to improve matters. The ...

Preprint: What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory - arxiv.org/abs/2604.13344 - how to teach and think about what modeling contributes to science. How does it fit into the scientific method? This is often misunderstood.

The Looming College-Enrollment Death Spiral After many decades of democratization, higher education could once again become a luxury good.

"The spread of colleges into towns and cities across the country, which put a degree within reach of a growing share of the public, is one of the triumphs of postwar America," Jeffrey Selingo writes. "We’re now at risk of the process playing out in reverse."

Abstract Mad Libs

A new paper on guinea fowl gait biomechanics for National Biomechanics Day! 

How do bipedal animals adjust movement to avoid falls in slippery terrain? We found that guinea fowl slow down, take shorter steps and adjust posture to reduce fall risk in slippery terrain, just like humans. 


1/3

Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic showing astronauts looking back at the earth,which is actually a balloon on a string

I was expecting more The Far Side content today 🌖

“The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding. Who know what buttons to press but not why those buttons exist.”

I’m on team windex lozenges 😂

While the situation is grim at NIH, it's closer to catastrophic at NSF. They're just not able to move any money out the door. It appears OMB has them on lockdown. www.science.org/content/arti....

PhD researcher for the FWO research project: MoCo: Motor Complexity and Aging PhD researcher for the FWO research project: MoCo: Motor Complexity and Aging

I am currently recruiting a PhD student to work on our "Motor complexity and aging" project funded by the @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social

www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

"We are watching two disciplines trade their worst habits. Neuroscience is mistaking benchmarked prediction for understanding, and machine learning is mistaking mechanistic language for mechanism. ..."

State election officials testifying under oath say that voting by mail is secure. But an AI video in the MAGA2028 Facebook group says it’s rife with fraud. For busy Supreme Court justices, it can be hard to know who to trust.

During the second session of IMSI's Prepare to Play Workshop, students used their own data to build Python simulations and explore the physics of basketball shots—bringing biomechanics, computation, and hands-on STEM to life. Led by Dr. Christian Hubicki @chubicki.bsky.social.

#MovementScience

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public…

Private money cannot replace public funding of science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I keep having to tell students that the true "product" on a homework, essay, or test is not the completed assignment, it's the brain that has gone through the thinking required to complete the assignment.

⏰ Reminder: Applications for the IMSI Summer Institute 2026 close March 21.

If you’re interested in immersive, research-driven training in movement science this summer, we encourage you to apply.

Learn more and apply:
lnkd.in/gRPtTaS7

Come work with me! 🙌🏼 My lab is hiring a full-time research associate to support projects related to neurodivergent motor & visual development. (Makes a great gap year job! 😉) #psychology #autism #biomechanics #umich #disability (Postdoc ad coming soon! 👀)

careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Excellent article about Douglas R. Wilkie, FRS., trainee of AV Hill, and muscle/mechanics connoisseur par excellence. royalsociety.org/blog/2026/02...

A stochastic world model on gravity for stability inference Empirical experiments and computational modeling reveal a stochastic world model on gravity for stability inference that represents gravity’s vertical direction as a Gaussian distribution.

This is a cool study. The idea is that perceptual understanding and prediction of gravitational effects implies the existence of an innate(?) internal simulation world model, with some representation of gravity (the study probes the nature of this representation). But... 1/2
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Flyer for the 2026 IMSI Summer Institute: Recruiting research interns. Join our interdisciplinary research training internship and study biomechanics, muscle physiology, biophysics, neurosciences, rehabilitation sciences and engineering. All career stages welcome, undergraduates especially encouraged to apply. Full time paid opportunity. Intensive research experience, practical skills development, supportive mentorship. Learn more at CIMS.uci.edu. One photo show a lab member collecting motion capture data as a person jumps. Another photo shows IMSI researchers setting up a camera for data collection in at a field research location showing a desert landscape in the foreground and a mountain range in the background.

Call for applications to the 2026 Integrative Movement Sciences Summer Institute!

 This is a funded research internship, open to all career stages.
We especially encourage undergraduates to apply. 

Application deadline is March 21.

More details here: cims.uci.edu/imsi-si-2026/
Please share!

This sound is why I’m required to keep the volume low while watching basketball 🏀 if my spouse is in the room 😂

As a US senator, I'd find it tragic if Americans replaced vaccines with psychedelics and scammy supplements. But it would be even more tragic if I lost in a Republican primary. Therefore, I will be voting to confirm the kooky wellness influencer that Trump nominated for surgeon general.

There's no better feeling that having some major thing I know that I need to fix or update in my upcoming lecture, and then discovering that past me already did it the last time I taught the course! #AcademicSky

Meet Autumn Routt, a PhD student at Georgia Tech studying how pregnancy impacts balance. She uses computational modeling and human-subject research to examine fall risk and prevention during pregnancy.

Part of our Women at IMSI spotlight series. Follow along for more.

#WomenAtIMSI #WomenInScience

This #PictureOfTheWeek emphasizes just how high figure skaters jump. Discover the physics behind the sport’s hardest skills with researcher Deborah King, from reducing the moment of inertia midair to the g-forces endured when landing a quadruple axel. Learn more with our podcast: buff.ly/EthY5Zl

Have a good visit. Near Central Campus: Comet Coffee or Lab Cafe. Both good but very small with limited seating. Ondo is also good with lots more seating.

Excluding the completely unobtainable options, the Quattro was late 1980s me”s dream ride.

Are you interested in the role of visual information in controlling gait stability? In this new paper from our group we exploited optic flow perturbations to study the relationship between gait stability and gait speed. First-authored by Chunchun Wu, read it open access here: doi.org/10.1016/j.hu...

Brain cells drive endurance gains after exercise JAX team helped show that a set of hypothalamus cells are required for mice to improve their endurance in running.

When you finish a run, your muscles may feel like they did all the work, but new research from JAX and the @upenn.edu have discovered that what happens in your brain after a run may determine whether you gain endurance over time. 🧪🧠 https://go.jax.org/brain-exercise