Christopher A. Baker

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”

The first paper for this year's medicine Nobel was NOT published in Science, Nature, or Cell. www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...

Seems like those suing are non-profits, and those not suing are corporations. What's worth exploring is whether tech STARTUPS will sue, because the $100K system favors tech giants that can easily absorb the excess cost

My wife keeps telling me about that place. We're in Connecticut now and it seems so close but also so far if you know what I mean

... the right has been quite adept at this, simply bathing in hypocrisy as required to achieve the ends of destroying progressive and centrist ideals. Should the left take the same road? Or will holding to their ideals actually be the better choice for attracting support based on authenticity?

It's interesting work that highlights a typical poltical problem: ideology versus pragmatism. Making an ethical stand is important, but some consider that such stands might be futile unless power is achieved through pragmatic actions that might require compromising one's ethics...

What's the point? It's deserted? That's capitalism at work I guess

💯
When not private equity, it's often just greed or topheaviness

The one critique that shocked me was: "The NIH Director has never been the PI on an NIH grant". Not sure if that's true but I'm not surprised

So glad I've spent the last couple of days in the woods immersed in science and teamwork with @virusesimmunity.bsky.social, @yalecii.bsky.social, and colleagues, unplugged from media for the most part

Lol it's just for the photo - intent was to get the Sound in the background. Definitely not keeping the glass on that railing

That was Dennis Kucinich's idea. At least it was novel. Trump just went back to his favorite era: 1938. I remember last week when Trump said he stopped 7 wars and should get the Peace Prize; now he's all in on war

I made a chartreuse swizzle to start

A farewell to the summer with a suggestion from @anderseriksson.bsky.social : it's not Mountain Dew; it's a chartreuse swizzle (Chartreuse, pineapple juice, lime juice and falernum), which is orders of magnitude more expensive (glass from Cognitive Surplus)

Thank you for reaching out.
Yes some people were concerned about what I had disclosed, and others began to harass me just for being a researcher in the field. I deactivated the account to remove the previous disclosures and take a break from some of the haters

This paper is suggestive but not conclusive - it shows that dumping spike protein on human retina cultures induces beta amyloid that colocalizes with spike, and that similar colocalization is detected in postmortem retina from COVID patients. Very thought-provoking nevertheless

intersection of SARS-CoV-2 and beta amyloid gets at concepts that have bugged me for years: 1) that amyloid deposition is an antecedent of infection or host defense, and 2) that spike protein itself may have amyloidogenic properties. science.org/doi/epdf/10....

I made a post earlier about Fluorescence Friday, but some people say it's Fascist Friday because of the ouster of UVA president... to which I say I'm still going to do science for the public interest for as long as I can

The subfornical organ is a nucleus for gut-derived T cells that regulate behaviour - Nature A distinct population of CD4 T cells resides in specific regions of the steady-state brain, and these T cells are programmed in the periphery by the microbiome to coordinate adaptive behaviour.

new pathway discovered by Tomomi Yoshida, Andrew Wang, and tons of other great @Yale folks, described in this recent report @ Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

above we see the Subfornical Organ dangling into the 3rd ventricle of the brain, flanked by choroid plexus cells making cerebrospinal fluid. Cell nuclei in blue, with in situ hybridization for genes marking macrophage subsets: F13a1 (yellow), Cx3cr1 (magenta), and Aif1 (cyan)

People consider the pineal gland to be a Third Eye. Maybe they should have focused on the Subfornical Organ instead - also in the middle of the brain, but with a newly acknowledged pathway for T cell traffic between the gut and the brain that affects behavior #FluorescenceFriday

Early grant success attracts more funding: study of 100,000 applicants hints at why Largest study of its kind explores the ‘Matthew effect’ in research.

This seems like a general principle in nature and not mysterious: early rate of return leads to a large inequity over time. That applies to success, wealth, and viral replication
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My wife and I have fantasized about tattoos for years. They seemed like a luxury item, and now that tattoos are being used as an excuse for CBP/ICE harassment, we probably won't get any. (I'm a citizen born abroad; she is a naturalized citizen)

a woman with red hair and a scarf around her neck is wearing a yellow sweater and a scarf . ALT: a woman with red hair and a scarf around her neck is wearing a yellow sweater and a scarf .

What I think of every time I hear Trump say "two weeks"

Which Renaissance painter is this
#accidentalrenaissance

For this #fluorescencefriday I've got my go-to image of small pain sensing nerve fibers and collagen in the toe, now selected as one of many examples of the "Beauty of Science" for the current exhibit at @yaleschoolofmed.bsky.social

A Bouvaldier, because it's been that kind of week

YouTube video by Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway How Trump Plans to Incentivize a Baby Boom | Pivot

I just want to thank @profgalloway.com for this uplifting commentary on American universities as engines of innovation, as well as his recognition of PhDs as incredible contributors to society and human knowledge. Have a nice weekend youtu.be/r4N7BKtgJHo?...

Today's activity: not exactly Maiden or Master of Puppets

"COVID-19 has killed more Americans than all the wars in the 20th century combined" ~ Shane Crotty, La Jolla Institute for Immunology

GitHub - hxu296/tariff: The official repository for tariff The official repository for tariff. Contribute to hxu296/tariff development by creating an account on GitHub.

Has importing python packages been a major problem to making your code great? Now you can impose TARIFFS on whenever you import a package github.com/hxu296/tariff