Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

The Bourgeois Lab is recruiting a postdoc to work on our DoD-funded human genetics project aimed at understanding Lyme disease outcomes.

wpi.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/WPI_External...

Few people are aware of how much progress has been made against cancers.

Leukemia is probably the most striking example.

Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would soon die from it.

Now, most children in rich countries survive.
ourworldindata.org/childhood-le...

But they know it kills ticks and is safe from past work. They legally could not make the claim it prevents Lyme without this trial testing if it reduces incidence. How would you have them test it more? Even if they just tested when it kills ticks earlier it’s the same risk to patients taking pills

It’s hard to see a downside of proceeding with the trial, which I suspect is why it was cleared to proceed. This is also the only way we could test how long it takes to transmit. Provided steps are taken to protect patients and monitor for TBD I don’t see a downside

they’re not intentionally putting infected ticks on humans. They’re giving them a pill that they proved was safe in previous trials and seeing if rates of Lyme go down. They’re not depriving standard of care and, if anything, they’re probably having the participants be tested for Lyme more not less

Can’t be excluded doesn’t mean confirmed not to. Depends how quickly it kills. If it’s an hour, that rules out most (not all) TBD. If it’s 23 hours, it may reduce the risk of some and not others. Also, even Bb transmission # s are only reduced, that may prevent establishment via the immune system.

Definitely going to come down to how quickly it kills the tick. I’m not sure how early they’ve actually looked, but 97% tick mortality in the first 24 hours post-placement (the 2/22/24 press release) gives me hope it could help against Lyme

More from J. Jackson on what today's #SCOTUS decision could mean: "So, to put it bluntly, the Court could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers."

Such a cool project and potentially such a potent weapon against tick-borne disease.

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She deserved the day off 🐶

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I defended my PhD 10 years ago today. That was the least remarkable thing that happened that day. Sharing something I wrote about it last year. Since then "the horrors persist but so do we." And with dignity.

43 Years Ago, Scientists Dropped Gophers Onto a Volcano. Today, They’re Tiny Heroes. It started as a go-for-broke experiment, but it wound up saving an ecosystem.

Me, being led away by the secret service after releasing thousands of gophers at the Capitol: "You don't understand! It's a scientifically proven way to revive a desolate place! I'm a patriot!"

www.popularmechanics.com/science/envi...

And if you have not been accepted, understand that this is a VERY weird time for grad admissions. Lack of acceptance may not be due to YOU, but due to uncontrollable factors at the university. Keep trying in the future.

When Salmonella typhimurium invades cells that line the intestine, it uses a syringe-like type III secretion system to inject dozens of proteins (effectors) into the host cell cytoplasm. This beautiful descriptive study provides the first chronology of the order in which the effectors are injected.

Translocation of bacteria from the gut to the brain in mice Recent studies link gut dysbiosis to neurological disease, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study shows that a high-fat diet increases gut permeability and enables bacterial transloc...

Bacteria in our BRAINS??!

We observed translocation of bacteria from the gut to the brain via the vagus nerve.

This occurred after high fat diet, or without dietary changes in mouse models of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and autism.

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Biological Laboratory | LEGO® Ideas This is a two-floor realistic Biological Laboratory building. In this design, I try to tell stories about biologists, introduce biology concepts to general publ…

I just made an account and voted for this biology laboratory made of LEGO to "promote biological research and inspire more people into the world of biology". They need 10K votes. Reposting and/or voting below would be helpful. 🤗
beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

Motion to stop referring to it as Next Generation Sequencing. That's like saying The Matrix is a recent movie

Showing this to my students when they ask why we only have computer-free, in-person assignments.

This is so cool and SO exciting!!

Congrats Brian!!!

Scientists have seen Asgard archaea crawling for the first time. When it comes to the origin of eukaryotes, this is like seeing a feathered dinosaur in the wild. (Video courtesy of Philipp Ralder)

Faculty should not get drunk with graduate students. Drinking in general around graduate students is a bad idea. Grad students already have issues with stress, anxiety, and mental health. They see faculty drinking as an example.

Right now I’m culturing them to turn them into macrophages before I mix in the Lyme bacterium (B. burgdorferi)! Goes is to get a good look at how the human cells respond to the bacteria.

Happily! These are human monocytes (which grow up to be macrophages) isolated directly from human blood!

My first time doing an independent tissue culture experiment in Worcester since 2016. Godspeed, little ones.

The Cost of Confusion: Dispelling Myths about the NIH Public Access Policy and Article Processing Charges Last July, the NIH issued an RFI on limiting direct spending on article processing charges (APCs). Over 900 public responses offered valuable perspectives but also exposed widespread misconceptions ab...

V useful piece dispelling myths about NIH policy on open access
upstream.force11.org/cost-of-conf...

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

A super handy database to help support academic society journals and other ethical publishing. academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...