Lex Kravitz

Thank you Sung-Yon!

Thank you for your kind reply!

I've found rotary joints unusable for photometry, we've tried a few types (doric, Thor) but they introduce a lot of artifacts when they rotate. So we don't use rotary joints, instead use long 3 meter cables and loop them up high so there's room for the fibers to twist up some without tangling.

If you missed out on a spot at the other neuroscience/psychoactive drug GRCs this summer, we still have spots open at the Cannabinoid GRC with an exciting program ranging from clinical to pre-clinical to big data to society! Register today! grc.org/cannabinoid-... RT please!

Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychoneuroimmunology Do you want to contribute to improving human health? Join a dynamic and inclusive research group at the forefront of psychoneuroimmunology, where we investigate the interplay between behavior, brain f

‼️🚨 postdoc position 🚨‼️
I am looking for a postdoc in psychoneuroimmunology - come join our group to work on sickness behavior in humans 🤒🦠 at Karolinska Institutet @ki.se !!

ki.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

deadline July 31st

@pnirs.bsky.social #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #interoception

A simple action reduces high-fat diet intake and obesity in mice Diets that are high in fat cause overeating and weight gain in multiple species of animals, suggesting that high dietary fat is sufficient to cause ob…

This was a really fun project: We blocked obesity in mice by making them do a tiny bit of work for their food. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congratulations!!

Thrilled to announce that my lab is now open at Ohio State! We study astrocytes as gene therapy targets for brain repair after ischemic stroke and in vascular dementia, developing new viral tools along the way. If you're interesting in joining or collaborating, please reach out!
gleichmanlab.com

Pamphlet of the President's Environmental Program 1979

Quote from Jimmy Carter: "Ten years ago, at the dawn of the environmental decade, we landed on the moon. For the first time people could stand on the surface of another world and look at the whole earth. The sight of earthrise was awesome. It was also sobering. From that moment we could no longer avoid understanding that all life must share this one small planet and its limited resources."

I found Jimmy Carter's Environmental Program (fittingly?) in the dumpster in the alley behind my house. "The sight of earthrise was awesome. It was also sobering. From that moment we could no longer avoid understanding that all life must share this one small planet and its limited resources."

It's funny that ChatGPT does this shit too

The fit line looks like poverty is rising robustly, but I'm not seeing that in the data points themselves. Maybe end the fit line at the min and max of the data instead of extending past it?

Top researcher quits NIH, citing censorship under RFK Jr. | CNN Dr. Kevin Hall joins The Lead

Thanks to @jaketapper.bsky.social for inviting me on his show yesterday! www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/h...

The preliminary program for the 2026 Basal Ganglia Gordon Research Conference is up! www.grc.org/basal-gangli...

Super excited about this program and to move the meeting to Europe for the first time - come join us in Tuscany!

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.

A neuroimmune circuit mediates cancer cachexia-associated apathy Cachexia, a severe wasting syndrome associated with inflammatory conditions, often leads to multiorgan failure and death. Patients with cachexia experience extreme fatigue, apathy, and clinical depres...

1/ Why do patients with late-stage cancer lose motivation & sink into apathy?
🔥 Our new Science paper shows chronic inflammation activates a cytokine-sensing brain circuit that lowers motivation. Huge team effort: Aelita Zhu, Sarah Starosta, Pignatelli & Janowitz labs! 🧵
🔗 doi.org/10.1126/scie...

12/ This project took a *huge* team, spanning neuroscience, immunology, and cancer. Grateful to co–first authors Aelita Zhu, Sarah Starosta, co–senior authors Marco Pignatelli & Tobias Janowitz & ours labs & all our amazing collaborators including @kravitzlab.com & Pavel Osten.

graph of NIH basisfor new drugs

A pie graph worth keeping in mind as the NIH budget plummets jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... for 356 new FDA drugs approved

Trying something new:
A 🧵 on a topic I find many students struggle with: "why do their 📊 look more professional than my 📊?"

It's *lots* of tiny decisions that aren't the defaults in many libraries, so let's break down 1 simple graph by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social

🔗 www.ft.com/content/73a1...

😂

About fifty years ago, NASA strapped a message in a bottle to a rocket and flung it into the deep dark
It wasn’t supposed to go this far, but it did. Long past its mission, it’s still out there so far away now that a simple hello takes a day to reach it, and another day to hear if it says hello back

Special shout out this AM to NIH 🧪 grant mgmt specialists, POs, and SROs during this chaotic time - THANK YOU for caring for our grants and uploading scores/summary statements despite the unprecedented challenges you may be facing. You are science warriors and we APPRECIATE & SUPPORT YOU 🫶

I am recruiting for postdoctoral and technician positions at UCSD. If anyone with relevant skills/interests has lost funding due to the anti-DEI jihad or the NIH purge, I’m open to discussion of ways we can try to help out.

Most of these F31 applicants who had their apps pulled from review will be first time newbies to the NIH system. They are not hardened to the brutality like most of us. So heartbreaking to contemplate their disappointment and confusion and pain over the lost opportunity.

Science funding is key to the future of America and the health of our community I am a Biology professor at UNC and this semester I am teaching a course called Cancer Biology to a group of juniors and seniors. I began teaching this course 20 years ago and it’s been incredible to see and teach about the improvements in cancer treatment. Between 1991 and 2019, the cancer death rate decreased 32%. New treatments for breast cancer, colon cancer, and most recently melanoma have saved millions of lives—many of us know a cancer survivor. Similar advances occurred in treating heart disease, with drugs like statins changing outcomes. Even more exciting changes are starting to roll out: these include the first gene therapy treatments for sickle cell disease and Type 1 diabetes. It’s been exciting to be a small part of this—our lab helped define how signaling between cells goes wrong in colon cancer. None of these new treatments arise in a vacuum. All rest on decades of basic and translational research, and follow-up clinical trials, most of which is funded by our tax dollars via the National Institutes of Health (NIH). North Carolina and especially the Triangle play an essential role in this, making science and technology key drivers of our state and regional economy. In 2023 NIH awarded $2.28 billion (yes, with a b) in grants to NC institutions, and this helped us create more than 25,000 jobs. Nationwide more than 400,000 jobs are supported by NIH grants, and this generates $92 billion in economic activity. The National Science Foundation, which funds scientific research more broadly, has a similar impact, fueling, for example advances in solar energy or helping us understand the impact of climate change on the NC coast. NSF provided $220 million in grants to NC Institutions in 2023. In total, UNC received $800 million in federal research funding in 2023, Duke $860 million and NC State $416 million. This not only creates jobs directly but is also the reason …

It's time to educate our neighbors about the importance of science funding. Local news papers still exist and are read by folks. Here is the op-ed I wrote for this week's "News of Orange", a local paper in Orange Co NC. Full text is on the alt-text 🧪

Reminder that a study on lizard saliva eventually led to the development of Ozempic so be real wary of the criticism of studies and funding that sounds non-sensical when presented with no context.

Reminder: You can always submit a grant late and include a cover letter saying why. NIH receipt and referral may take it. Or not. If you end up missing deadline because of these Commons access issues, there is this potential save move.

Journalists: When you ask the question this way, you are accepting the premise.

The premise is that non-white men and women (including white women) are not qualified to do the job.

Please don’t accept the premise. Frame the question in a way that challenges it.

Thank you

guys I tried ChatGPT for drafting some summary sections in a grant application and it was just... really lame. Like vague and bland and not something that was ever going to engage a grant reviewer at 10.30pm on a Thursday night while they had a glass of red wine in their hand

I've tried using that logic to explain to PhD applicants why it is counter productive to use ChatGPT at all in their essays. It can do a passable job, putting out middle of the pack prose. But admissions committees are looking for the top ~10% so.....

Many of you know I'm a long-time vegetarian. I don't push vegetarianism on anyone ever, not even my own kids. But I do think it's sad that all the focus is on egg prices and not the conditions that lead to massive outbreaks of things like bird flu.