Bob Pellegrino

The research group “Sensory Dynamics and Behaviour” of Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels at the Institute of Experimental Epilepsy and Cognition Research at the University Hospital Bonn invites applications for a position as: Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d) The position is initially limited to three years (TV-L E13/100%), starting from April 2026 or as soon as possible.

Postdoc position in systems neuroscience!
Excited to recruit a postdoc for my lab at the University of Bonn.
🔬 In vivo physiology (Neuropixels, 2P/miniscope)
🐭 Head-fixed & freely moving behaviour
💡 Optogenetics/chemogenetics
⏳ Start: ASAP | Application deadline: 28.02.2026
More info below ⬇️

Is this journal legitimate? This tool can help you decide Aletheia-Probe provides a one-stop shop to help you assess whether journals and conferences are trustworthy or predatory.

🚨Scientists 🚨: Tired of come-ons from journals & conferences that may or may not be predatory? A new tool called Aletheia-Probe could help. 🧪 By @silverjacket.bsky.social @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots

A long, absolutely must-read article from Cory Doctorow: www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

High-Fidelity Tuning of Olfactory Mixture Distances in the Perceptual Space of Smell Through a Community Effort https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.13.694160v1

And the latest from @dreamchallenges.bsky.social

These bags are already in the wild and underpins recent preprints showing strong perceptual validity:

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Bottom line: jars leak information, bags keep it airtight. #bagboi #bagsrule

2/3 We’ve built and tested an odor sampling bag system with:
- Known concentrations
- Closed headspace
- Air as the carrier (no solvent confounds)

In head-to-head tests, bags produced more reliable results than jars and preserved odorant-specific differences.

1/3 The humble glass jar is a workhorse in olfactory research, but comes w/ hidden problems:
- Unknown headspace concentration
- Concentration dilution by ambient air

These add noise to odor measurements.

Our preprint introduces something new, something bag.🧪 @jmainland.bsky.social & Matt Andres

Superior cf what? Full of ultraprocessed constituents.
The relentless and inappropriate marketing of David protein bars

Here's a roundup of facts about protein intake and unnecessary preoccupation erictopol.substack.com/p/our-preocc...

We are only studying perception in this study with modeling informed by past molecular studies that have shown wide-spread inhibition for odor mixtures. One version of that inhibition is competitive binding as you refer to. See this paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31000595/

This isn’t just theory!
These models can replace slow, expensive “omission tests” in flavor chemistry to find the handful of molecules that actually matter in a food’s aroma.
For instance, what molecules really make coffee smell like coffee. ☕

4/5
Using this information, we can predict perceived odor intensity from molecular structure + concentration with high accuracy for both:
• Single molecules (RMSE = 7.1 on a 100 point scale)
• Complex mixtures (RMSE ~ 7.5)

3/5
Using a very cool bag system to tightly control the concentration, we measured:
• 62 molecules, each at ≥7 concentrations
• 260 mixtures (2–10 components)
• >7,000 intensity ratings from trained human panels

2/5
It’s a trick question. At a lower concentration, acetophenone (left molecule, red, smells like urinal cake) is stronger than 2-heptanone (right molecule, green, smells like blue cheese). So concentration ≠ intensity. That’s been a major roadblock for neuroscience and fragrance / food industries

Chemical structure of acetophenone and 2-heptanone

1/5
Odor intensity isn’t just about concentration! We have a new preprint to prove it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In cahoots with @jmainland.bsky.social, @alexkoulakov.bsky.social, Rick Gerkin, Khristina Samoilova and others not on bluesky. 🧪

Which of these molecules smells stronger?

Hi, I'd like to be added to the feed to post a study:
scholar.google.com/citations?us...

work place: monell.org/robert-pelle...

Computational Urban Ecology of New York City Rats Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environme...

New preprint!



tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵

w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sometimes I forget that Todd Rundgren doesn't want to work but just wants to bang on the drum all day.

Distinguishing performance gains from learning when using generative AI

Comment by Lixiang Yan, Samuel Greiff, Jason M. Lodge & Dragan Gašević

go.nature.com/3FJqTq3

Automating chemosensory creativity assessment with large language models Chemosensory creativity, the ability to innovate using taste and smell, is a crucial yet understudied aspect of human ingenuity. This study explores t…

Large language models (LLMs) can mirror human thinking in vision and language, but can they smell and taste?

New study with @rbrainengineer.bsky.social show stochastic LLMs rate creative flavor pairings like humans, prioritizing novelty over taste. #AI #creativity #foodscience

ACOG is deeply disappointed by HHS’s move to drop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations in pregnancy. The science is clear: COVID-19 remains dangerous in pregnancy and vaccination protects both patients and newborns. The vaccine is safe and protects families. Read our full statement: buff.ly/OGue7sO

Towards Universal Chemosensory Testing: Needs, Barriers and Opportunities

Regular smell and taste testing could aid early detection of impairments that negatively impact health, safety, and quality of life, and could also reveal underlying disease. But how do we get there? This new whitepaper is out today:

YouTube video by Starflyer 59 - Topic Lust For Gold

One of the few bands I’ve been listening to since the 90s and still putting out great stuff

DREAM Olfactory Mixtures Prediction Challenge 2025 'DREAM Olfactory Mixtures Prediction Challenge 2025' (Synapse ID: syn64743570) is a project on Synapse. Synapse is a platform for supporting scientific collaborations centered around shared biomed...

With a contemporary smartphone, capturing, transmitting, and replicating sounds and visuals is a breeze, yet replicating scents remains elusive. If you want to change this, consider joining the 2025 DREAM Olfaction Challenge at www.synapse.org/Synapse:syn6....
@oldbap.bsky.social

Most people haven’t heard of this test, which is available in the US. It accurately predicts Alzheimer’s (not just if there’s a risk, but when). It is modulated by exercise and likely other lifestyle factors.
Here’s (almost) everything we know about it
erictopol.substack.com/p/the-breakt...

Stereo olfaction underlies stable coding of head direction in blind mice - Nature Communications Stereo olfaction involves comparing odor differences between the two nostrils. Here, using neuronal recordings and a behavioral test, the authors demonstrate that blind mice use stereo olfaction to fo...

Excited to share the sequel to our 2022 paper! In this follow-up, we show that the stable head direction (HD) signals we reported in blind mice rely on stereo olfaction—that is, the comparison of odor info. between the two nostrils.

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵highlights below

Piriform cortex is an ictogenic trigger zone in the primate brain Objective Area tempestas, a functionally defined region in the anterior piriform cortex, was identified as a crucial ictogenic trigger zone in the rat brain in the 1980s. However, whether the primat...

Very proud of this paper, which spans three decades of work. (1/17) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025!

Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide!

#scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

Mapping the landscape of social behavior Computer vision and machine learning approaches map a multi-scale social behavioral landscape, revealing ASD signatures and establishing an atlas of rodent sociality.

New video tracking suite for social behavior + large dataset to benchmark other tracking suites.

Today's @usatoday.com front page
First US death from measles in 10 years
First child to die from measles in 22 years in the US
All of this fully preventable