Alex Keyes, PhD
@neuropharmnerd.bsky.social
1.7K followers 740 following 340 posts
neuro nerd. aspiring artist. UIowa PhD - Pharmacology. Interested in neuro-immune interactions in the spinal cord. my opinions are my own. they/them
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feels like there's a whole lot of people who are more committed to never doing anything wrong than actually doing something right
most people in the town my great-grandparents went to had their names fully anglicized to "Hill" (from Mäki). i genuinely don't know other great grandparents' original names because they were anglicized to "Cook" (from something Ukrainian)
Reposted by Alex Keyes, PhD
i have maintained for years that tswift is a mediocre songwriter but a phenomenal business woman. her music has generally been, to me, generic and inoffensive to a corporate ear, and i think this author's comparison to marvel movies is apt.
love to have a representative that refuses to do her job! or be accountable to her constituents!
she won that seat originally by 6 votes. she held it last election by less than 1000. bold to be acting like this with those numbers.
she's the rep for iowa city - she won that seat originally, in 2020, by 6 votes. she held in it 2024 by less than a thousand votes. to say that's a swing seat is understating it, almost.
the spicier the better for me!
this feels like the true inverse of mine, which is red vines licorice dipped in salsa
i have genuinely never been able to convince people to try this. option 2 here was tuna salad (with pickles) served in apple halves, which is something i did when i wanted variety from the grilled cheese
grilled cheese, made with: tillamook cheddar cheese and strawberry jelly on sourdough bread, grilled with butter
i'll be really curious to see what happens with my age cohort (at least, those of us who got chickenpox vaccines and never got chickenpox in the first place)

i'm among the oldest of people vaccinated against chickenpox, at least in the u.s.
A new Nature Medicine study analyzing health records from >100 million people in the US offers compelling evidence that reactivation of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) ,the same virus that causes chickenpox and shingles may contribute to dementia risk.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Varicella-zoster virus reactivation and the risk of dementia - Nature Medicine
Large-scale longitudinal health records reveal consistent association of varicella-zoster virus reactivation with dementia.
www.nature.com
i should add, my mother has told me to leave because she doesn't think it's safe. i don't really know how safe anywhere really is for trans people, though.
there are people i care about that i don't want to leave here. that said, i've definitely considered leaving and have looked for jobs abroad.
Reposted by Alex Keyes, PhD
There have been two hosts in the history of Reading Rainbow. The Legend of Literacy, LeVar Burton! And... me, Mychal Threets, a librarian 🥹🤯

I am a reader, a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow made us believe and see we belong in books, we belong everywhere ✨

youtu.be/e7es7qdWVnU
Reposted by Alex Keyes, PhD
quick while the government is shut down let’s all switch to metric
and like, as a comment, Katalin Karikó was not funded for her work for a very long time partly because people didn't see the relevance but i think we can all agree her work had a pretty massive impact!
you will end up making a system that will disproportionately fund white men. and people that do this always claim "it's objective!!!" but it's based on data that we know has these biases and i'm a little tired of having to explain the fundamental principle of "garbage in, garbage out".
we know that white men have been disproportionately represented in the sciences, particularly in who gets funded and who gets high impact papers. if your metric of who should get funding is primarily based on whose funded research gets the biggest press (or, say, nobel prizes)
okay not to be really cynical about this but it's not seeming like they accounted for the systemic biases that we already know exist in who gets funded, published, etc
so like. are we measuring actual impact or proportion of white men? if your training data is biased, then your system will be biased
🧪 A new AI tool, Funding the Frontier, integrates massive datasets to trace the societal impact of scientific research. It moves beyond citations to link grants with patents, policies, and clinical trials, even predicting future impact. #MLSky #AcademicSky
Will your study change the world? This AI tool predicts the impact of your research
A tool called Funding the Frontier visualizes all the downstream impacts of funding — and predicts which studies will have the biggest societal impact.
www.nature.com
1. making things - i worked on the quilt pieces i've been meaning to for a while, i'll be making mooncakes with my roommate today
2. skating - there's something so meditative about figure skating
Reposted by Alex Keyes, PhD
Breaking news from Des Moines: ICE has detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Iowa's largest school district.
The Des Moines Public Schools said "We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps."
www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/09/26/i...
ICE detains Des Moines Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts
Iowa's largest school district had "no confirmed information" on why ICE detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent since 2023.
www.bleedingheartland.com
Reposted by Alex Keyes, PhD
Dear friends,
As have become a habit, I mark each #autumnequinox by sharing a small poem by Xin Qiji. I also start my translation cycle of Chinese and Japanese poems and prose that mark the twenty-four lunisolar micro-seasons. Translation notes blogged here:
#everynightapoem
Frances Oldham Kelsey would like to have a word

context for those unaware: she is why thalidomide was never approved in the u.s. for morning sickness, she was the FDA pharmacologist who had concerns re lack of safety data
This is bonkers. FDA is going to change leucovorin's label based on a lit review with data on 40 patients w/ cerebral folate deficiency and comparisons to "known natural history."

www.statnews.com/2025/09/22/f...
FDA brings back GSK's leucovorin drug that RFK Jr. touted as autism treatment
The Trump administration is touting leucovorin as a treatment for autism.
www.statnews.com