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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 14h

Thanks for sharing this. It's an interesting experiments too, letting people read and comment on a book in progress.

Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

Bruno Pichler @brunopichler.bsky.social · 16h

Wonderful read about the work ethos among 1980s Xerox service technicians and the importance of practical wisdom and storytelling. That’s what drew me to the community of multiphoton microscope tinkerers, and it explains why I find meaning in the unglamorous process of troubleshooting.

The Soul of Maintaining a New Machine - First Draft | Books in Progress

Books in Progress is what we call a “public drafting tool”: Drafts will be made available for comment from the public, allowing for direct collaboration between author and reader.

books.worksinprogress.co

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 23h

For thousands of years, up to about 2 lifetimes ago, people lived and died as their parents, with the same tools.

Then came the industrial revolution—and suddenly, a person’s lifetime spanned horses to rockets, telegrams to internet, transistors to AI. Rapid tech advances are now an entitlement.

Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

Agreed. And I can imagine unintended consequences, as you have discussed before. But I think it's worth a shot.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

This is an accurate characterization of the notes on the NIH eRA IAR system. Both notes are awkwardly worded and/or unclear. It's unfortunate. We aren't trying to get away with anything. We are just trying to do our service to support taxpayer funded research.

Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, some of our panel thought threatening note 1 applied to them. Threatening note 2 I have not heard comments about (“you can go to prison” if critiques submitted late). Historically about 20% reviews late. More so this time and I suspect some will never be done 1/

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

Still worked that way yesterday.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

Agreed. I like the direction. When soliciting broad input to guide funding decisions, a thoughtful discussion of Significance seems more valuable than nitpicking the Approach details that made it into the page limit, or praising someone's publication record.

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Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 1d

NIH Study Sections are on hold...again. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/n...

NIH Study Sections are on hold…again.

The primary input to deciding on the merit of proposals submitted to the NIH for potential funding, as most of my remaining blog audience well knows, is the outcome of the initial peer-review proce…

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

Good points. I'll check in occasionally.

We all know nothing happens until the SRO says so, and the SROs aren't emailing right now.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

Could be.

I write less in this new format. Which could be a good thing.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 1d

I submitted my reviews on time anyways. Less than half of us did so. Which is understandable. Expectations are that I'll have to re-read everything by the time we meet. If we meet.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 4d

The MIT response is a quick read and well done. I highly recommend checking it out.

MIT does a lot of things right, and has for years.
E.g., standardized tests as a data point for admissions, no legacy admissions, clearly stated values, and standing on principles:
orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

Regarding the Compact | MIT Organization Chart

orgchart.mit.edu

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 5d

As soon as alternatives can replace animals in a particular application, people do it already. You don't have to pressure them. We are eager to reduce or eliminate animal use.

We need answers. And when research is funded properly, we can get the answers we need faster. And that helps all. (3/3)

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 5d

The point people need to understand is that we aren't fighting on this. Animal research is done reluctantly. And is well regulated-- much more than agriculture or exterminators, which involve orders of magnitude more animals. (2/3)

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 5d

Even colleagues who should know better are claiming that we are halting animal research. No, we're not. Now this NYT opinion piece appears (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o... You can't just move everything to cell culture, organoids, and computers. Even this NYT piece admits that. 1/3

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 6d

The MacArthur Awards might be my favorite. www.macfound.org/programs/awa... They’ve given about $1 billion over their 44 years. They cover a fascinating cross section of impactful human creativity. Excellent bang for the buck.

MacArthur Fellows - MacArthur Foundation

The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, we work to ...

www.macfound.org

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 7d

Still a few weeks left!

Marius Schneider @mariusschneider.bsky.social · 22d

🚨Our NeurIPS 2025 competition Mouse vs. AI is LIVE!

We combine a visual navigation task + large-scale mouse neural data to test what makes visual RL agents robust and brain-like.

Top teams: featured at NeurIPS + co-author our summary paper. Join the challenge!

Whitepaper: arxiv.org/abs/2509.14446

Mouse vs. AI: A Neuroethological Benchmark for Visual Robustness and Neural Alignment

Visual robustness under real-world conditions remains a critical bottleneck for modern reinforcement learning agents. In contrast, biological systems such as mice show remarkable resilience to environ...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

University of California @uofcalifornia.bsky.social · 7d

UC SWEEP IN PHYSICS! Congratulations to @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social emeritus professor John Clarke, who won the prize along with @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social professors Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis! 💙💛🥇

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 7d

Nobel prize in physics awarded to three scientists for work on quantum mechanics

Trio led experiments demonstrating that bizarre properties of quantum world can translate into measurable effects in the everyday The Nobel prize in physics 2025 has been awarded to British, French and American scientists for their work on quantum mechanics. John Clarke, a British physicist based at the University of California at Berkeley, Michel Devoret, a French physicist based at Yale University, and John Martinis, of the University of California Santa Barbara, share the 11m Swedish kronor (about £871,400) prize announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

UC Santa Barbara @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social · 7d

Exciting news: #UCSB physicists John Martinis and Michel Devoret have been awarded the 2025 #NobelPrize in Physics. They were lauded for work that, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, "revealed quantum physics in action."

Full story: https://ow.ly/TH7K50X7ULp

UCSB physics professors John Martinis and Michel Devoret win 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

ow.ly

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Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

Dr. Katharine Dickson @metaomicsnerd.bsky.social · 7d

We got some more Gaucho Nobels! #UCSB

UC Santa Barbara celebrates new Nobel Prize winners! UCSB professors John Martinis and Michel Devoret have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 7d

All three are UC faculty, two of them at UCSB.

UCSB recruited Devoret. www.physics.ucsb.edu/people/miche...

Michel Devoret | Department of Physics | UC Santa Barbara

Devoret’s research focus is on experimental condensed matter physics, particularly “quantronics".

www.physics.ucsb.edu

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Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 8d

🎯

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 8d

6/14

In communicating with some of the scientists affected by grant terminations, it was striking (but not surprising) that many felt abandoned by their institutions and the scientific establishment at large. This was fueled, in part, by the contrast between this acquiescence and the rapid institutional responses, including lawsuits, after the administration had proposed a cap on the rate of reimbursement for so-called indirect costs of research. The scientific establishment had the capacity to push back vigorously when some of their values (financial viability) were threatened but could not seem to muster much energy when other principles were under assault.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 13d

Prototype.

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Spencer LaVere Smith @spencerlaveresmith.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks for sharing this.

Another bit of his writing: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/spee...

Sharing a country....
Lincoln articulated it well.
"I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning."
" [...] I do not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way."

Abraham Lincoln's 1855 Letter to Joshua Speed

www.abrahamlincolnonline.org

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Reposted by Spencer LaVere Smith

Anna Devor @annadevor.bsky.social · 16d

Chris Xu talks to Neurophotonics about the 'toy land of optics' and how to channel positive vibes! Thank you Tianyu Wang for conducting this fantastic interview!
www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/neu...
#Neurophotonics #Neuroscience #Neuroimaging #BrainImaging #OpticalImaging #Microscopy

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