Randy Heiland

Competitor enters a major AI competition (RNA folding)
GPU poor so can't train an AI
Builds a "classic" eng pipeline instead. (90s tech)
Wins and beat everyone using DL 💀
Their winning "hybrid" model had an AI in it. Their original one did not and had a higher score
So they won despite the AI 😂

What are your favourite biographies of mathematicians? 🧪 📚💙

Two leading voices in medicine – Lee Hood and Eric Topol – will explore what it means to live longer and healthier in a free virtual conversation hosted by @isbscience.org.

🗓️ November 4, 10-11 a.m. PT
💻 Register here – isbscience.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

#Longevity #DigitalHealth #SuperAgers

Having just finished reading Other Minds by @petergs.bsky.social , I definitely think more about squid (and cephalopods) than other animals. Sorry kids 🙂

Dryad partnership brings easier data sharing to bioRxiv bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

bioRxiv partners with Dryad to enable easier, better linking to curated datasets connect.biorxiv.org/news/2025/09...

Manu Prakash, a bioengineer at Stanford University, interacts with students in a lab

Manu Prakash practices “recreational biology,” a scientific approach that explores life in the same playful way that puzzles probe math. “Basic science is not at the service of something, but the groundwork that is our entire society’s foundation.”
www.quantamagazine.org/how-paradoxi...

Opinion: Susan Stamberg, trailblazer and NPR Founding Mother, retires NPR Founding Mother Susan Stamberg is retiring. She became the first woman to anchor a nightly national news program in 1972, and helped loosen up the serious, stodgy sound of radio hosts.

www.npr.org/2025/09/06/n...

Opinion: Susan Stamberg, trailblazer and NPR Founding Mother, retires - NPR

Our new collection offers cell biologists practical, expert-driven guidance and best practices in the design, execution, and analysis of experiments, and the subsequent communication of their results to their peers. 👉 rupress.org/jcb/collecti...

#Reproducibility

Opinion | The Era of the American Lawn Is Over

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...

Are different cell types like oil and water? Over a century ago, researchers found that dissociated sponges and embryonic tissues can self-assemble into functional structures. Join me, @benswedlund.bsky.social to explore the differential adhesion hypothesis & its applications in tissue engineering!

My recent postdoctoral work is out today in @nature.com! We found that physical confinement makes melanoma cells more invasive and drug tolerant. Thanks to all who made this work possible @whitefishlab.bsky.social @mskcancercenter.bsky.social #NIH #NCI www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How did life get multicellular? Five simple organisms could have the answer Single-celled species that often stick together in colonies have researchers rethinking the origin of animals.

For some three billion years, unicellular organisms ruled Earth. Then, around one billion years ago, a new chapter of life began

go.nature.com/3JyRV4S

Why newsrooms must rethink science journalism before the next crisis Despite climate extremes, pandemics and a global AI revolution, science reporting remains underfunded and undervalued.

We need (good) science journalism now more than ever. And you'll find me and other journalists saying just that in this smart piece.

International Day of Mathematics A worldwide celebration of Mathematics on March 14 of every year.

I love the theme of the 2026 International Day of Mathematics: “Mathematics and Hope” 👉🏼 www.idm314.org #mathsky

Human interpretable grammar encodes multicellular systems biology models to democratize virtual cell laboratories We developed a plain text modeling language—a cell behavior hypothesis grammar—to easily build virtual cell models and connect them to data, helping scientists to unlock the hidden dynamics of tissues...

Really excited to share our new @cellpress.bsky.social Cell paper with @fertiglab.bsky.social and colleagues. 1/n

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

@jktgfoundation.bsky.social @itcrtraining.bsky.social @smbmathbiology.bsky.social #mathbio #mathonco @mathonco.bsky.social @deniswirtz.bsky.social

Ok, reinforcement learning fans: RL is great, but what do we do when there's no obvious reward from the environment? What about perfecting a golf swing or a foxtrot or a musical performance? We may have an answer. A tale of 🐦 🎶 + 🧠. 🧵1/ #bioacoustics #prattle 💬 #neuroai #compneuro

New software simulates cancer cell behavior using genomics and computational models In the same vein as weather forecast models that predict developing storms, researchers have now developed a method to predict the cell activity in tissues over time. The new software combines genomic...

Fantastic work, @mathcancer.bsky.social ! phys.org/news/2025-07...

Evidence for a sub-Jovian planet in the young TWA 7 disk  - Nature Using the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument, a study reports evidence for a direct detection of a cold, sub-Jupiter-mass planet in the disk of the star TWA 7. 

Wow! For the first time ever, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed an exoplanet by directly imaging it. The newfound world has a mass similar to Saturn and orbits inside the debris disk surrounding a very young star just 111 light years away. via @nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Key Innovation: Getting beyond descriptive trajectories. DLA generates a geometric dynamical model—a Waddington landscape—that provides mechanistic insights without needing every molecular detail

It bridges microscopic gene expression to macroscopic cell behaviour

Scientists love to use the expression "emergent behaviour" when they talk about complex systems (as I do)
But what it means is not clear
As a way to start a conversation, here is a definition:
a behaviour is emergent if it cannot be easily guessed through naive reasoning.
What is your definition?

Hungry baby

Student-led experimental evolution reveals novel biofilm regulatory networks underlying adaptations to multiple niches We established a research-education partnership known as EvolvingSTEM that provides secondary school students the opportunity to conduct authentic research experiments centered on microbial evolution....

Sharing the most significant work from my group, led by the @evolvingstem.bsky.social team.

Come for the discoveries of how Pseudomonas adapts in biofilms, stay for the story of how they were discovered by thousands of young scientists in grades 9-12. 🧪🧫🧬🧵

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

Shaping epithelial tissues by stem cell mechanics in development and cancer - Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology Adult stem cells self-renew and differentiate to build, maintain and repair tissues. This Review discusses recent insights into the contribution of mechanical forces produced by epithelial stem cell a...

Shaping epithelial tissues by stem cell mechanics in development and cancer
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

EU almost on track to reach 2030 climate goal The European Union is nearly on track to reach its main climate target for this decade, with countries' existing CO2-cutting plans set to bring the bloc within one percentage point of the goal, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

Many believed that EU would not be able to reach its ambitious 2030 climate goal
Now:
EU almost on track to reach 2030 climate goal
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Extremely happy to see our work on the collective chemotaxis of cell groups out!

Such an incredible and fun collaboration leading to exciting interdisciplinary science

#biophysics #mathbio #cellbiology

🔗 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

GRS Developmental Biology 2025 Image gallery - the Node The 2025 Developmental Biology Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) was held on March 29-30 2025. This year, the GRS co-chairs Ana R. Hernandez Rodriguez and

One of the reasons I love #DevelopmentalBiology is that it's so visually engaging. I had the pleasure of organising an image competition at the GRC last March, and share this passion. You can now check out these images on @the-node.bsky.social: thenode.biologists.com/grs-developm...

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, male & female (and red headed woodpecker)

A small tree has a dense green core of foliage, but at the ends of each branch, those leaves shade to pink and yellow in a continuous color gradient that corresponds with proximity to the trunk and leaf size. A grey house with composite roof is nearby, and some other garden plants and shrubs.

Do not adjust your screen. Viewing this tree does not require special 3-D glasses.

That's just what the 'Rising Sun' redbud (Cercis canadensis) looks like. Native to North America, it was found growing wild & propagated.

The trippy 3-D movie effect is a consequence of two factors:

The STIM paper is out! We build on established computer vision techniques to automatically create 3D volumes of spatial transcriptomics datasets with human-level accuracy, and useful, interactive visualizations.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@hhmijanelia.bsky.social @mdc-bimsb.bsky.social