Our universities are in turmoil…places of education have become the front line for ideology battles that reflect real world conflicts. The escalation by university leaders is an unnecessary step towards more chaos. Attacks by politicians and billionaires also sow more unrest.

Haven’t spammed you with our backyard view for a while..so here’s this morning’s sunrise on the wasatch mountains.

This is super cool work!

'we were able to temporarily remove joeys from the pouch, deliver a lentivirus carrying an shRNA to downregulate Emx2, and return the joeys to the pouch (aka ‘in-pouch’ transgenesis 😲).'

🤯

NIH to increase pay for predoctoral and postdoctoral NRSA. Predocs now earn will go up 4% and postdocs will start at $61,008 (+8%), with more based on experience. Also boosting childcare subsidies and funds for training expenses.
nih.gov/news-events/ne…

'the reliance on transcriptomics to define cell types comes with intellectual hazards.' Wisdom from West Lab @ Duke 🙌

These snapshots miss the dynamics of plasticity (or other cell states). thetransmitter.org/defining-cell-…

Happy #earthday ! Took this in Kenya a few years ago.

Last year's event was awesome! Come check out our students' amazing research.

😅😩

Missed her! (Garage is still not done 😩).

In what seems like eons ago..I was a curious undergrad wanting to know more about consciousness. Stumbled on Daniel Dennett's books and they sucked me in! Part of how and why I became a neuroscientist. RIP. nytimes.com/2024/04/19/boo…

Final reminder this online workshop starting Monday. Three half-days next week

Congrats to Utah gymnastics for getting to the NCAA final!! (Nice win for our “date night” with Tanya Halliday, PhD, RD!).

Nice paper from Harmit S. Malik and colleagues that delves deeply into the evolution of domesticated LTR retrotransposons in mammals that have Gag capsid domains (~24 of them!), including Arc and the PNMAs. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/41…

😍

We are excited to put on another awesome public symposium NHMU May 7 by graduate students University of Utah! This is part of a science communications workshop I run for our Chan Zuckerberg Initiative sponsored DASL group.

I think these changes to NIH fellowship reviews are good! Criterion scores now only include these 3:
1. Candidate’s Goals, Preparedness and Potential
2. Research Training Plan
3. Commitment to Candidate