Krithika Venkataraman

We are so excited to include these new Fellows-to-Faculty Fellows in the Simons Foundation fold!

calling all neuroscience courses and conferences - request for applications open!

Simons Foundation Autism & Neuroscience Conferences and Courses Awards The Simons Foundation’s Autism and Neuroscience division is accepting applications for funding of courses or conferences that align with our mission.

We are accepting applications for funding of courses or conferences in autism research, healthy cognitive aging, and systems and computational #neuroscience. Deadline is 5/22/2025: www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons... #science #autismresearch

BuzzWatch: uncovering multi-scale temporal patterns in mosquito behavior through continuous long-term monitoring Understanding the temporal dynamics of mosquito behavior is essential for developing effective interventions against pathogen transmission. However, limited knowledge exists about the environmental, p...

Thrilled to share 'BuzzWatch', my post-doc work with Felix Hol and @lambrechtslab.bsky.social

➡️Filming mosquitoes in a cage with a €15 camera but for 700h(1month) revealed fascinating insights into their behavior⌛🦟🎥⏳

preprint🔍 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
DIY guide 🛠️ theomaire.github.io/buzzwatch
🧵⬇️

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. Here we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipiens form m...

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cross-modal sensory compensation increases mosquito attraction to humans Mosquitoes enhance sensitivity to human body heat by a sensory compensation mechanism when their sense of smell is disrupted.

AT LAST OUR PEER-REVIEWED PRE-PRINT IS PUBLISHED
We finally vanquished Reviewer #3 - with great support from the academic editors @ScienceAdvances
Cross-modal sensory compensation increases mosquito attraction to humans | Science Advances
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are Atlas Obscura Wild Life, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, Every Living Thing, Alien Earths, Becoming Earth, and Deep Water

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are Frostbite, The Inner Clock, How to Kill an Asteroid, The Great River, The Last Fire Season, and Hoof Beats

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are The Serviceberry, Not the End of the World, Nature's Ghosts, Meet the Neighbors, The Light Eaters, and Our Moon

A collage of book covers of new nature & science books. Featured here are Turning to Stone, The Weight of Nature, What If We Get It Right?, Waves in An Impossible Sea, The Tree Collectors, and Why We Remember

I was deeply disappointed by the lack of nature/science/climate/enviro on many major end-of-year book lists—so I decided to make my own!

Introducing: ✨🎁📚 The 2024 Holiday Gift Guide to Nature & Science Books ✨🎁📚

Please share: Let's make this go viral in time for Black Friday / holiday shopping!

Learning resources for scientists · eLife A collections of articles that provide practical resources and guidance for researchers and academics

1/ 🧵 Free resources for scientists

💡 Covering research skills, careers, #SciComm, leadership, activism and more, everything in this thread appears on our Learning Resources page, with tips for researchers and academics at any career stage. #AcademicChatter #ECRChat
https://buff.ly/4f8vIpk

2 new studies on brain aging with sex-specific findings
—Angiogenesis factors
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
—Loss of gray matter
press.psprings.co.uk/jnnp/novembe...

Hoping for some of this this week!

I am somewhat biased towards lantern bugs and often make little trips searching for them. Here's Pyrops pythicus, endemic to Sumatra. How many colours do you see?

An overturned stick is held upright in an autumn forest and covered in mature Splitgill mushrooms, one stacked above the next, each of their gills radiating above the next

Here are some nice mushrooms

Ru-upping this thread from last year since the paper is now out! @chenshuliu.bsky.social identified a Piezo-dependent mechanism that enables C. elegans to sniff out “bad eggs” and target them for destruction. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Aging starter pack!

go.bsky.app/5UXXaDA

A thread on NIH Reorganization and the Scientific Management Review Board (SMRB)

Disclosure: I was involved with the SMRB since its inception and have very strong feelings about how it was used, misused, and abandoned. My passion on these issues will undoubtably show through.

1/n

This is an essential and immensely clarifying piece.

You should read anything and everything Dara writes, but this in particular.

How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero | Quanta Magazine Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how the brain creates something out of nothing.

A really nice write up of the recent studies looking at how the human brain handles the unique number zero! Featuring some words and work by me and @smfleming.bsky.social, as well as many others.

Check it out👇0️⃣🧠

#PsychSciSky #neuroskyence

In my latest newsletter, I'm excited to announce my 3rd book!

THE INFINITE EXTENT. A book about life at different scales--of size, time, geography, longevity, connectivity, individuality, & more.

I see it as the conclusion of a trilogy of books.

More details: buttondown.email/edyong209/ar...

Two carved pumpkins, lit from within, photographed at night. The larger pumpkin is carved with a detailed, stylized image of the sun including prominances that arc off the limb of the sun. The smaller pumpkin is carved like a planet, resembling a stylized Jupiter.

Happy Halloween 🎃

Here are the pumpkins I carved this year: An active red dwarf star and its gas giant planet. I call it an exo-pumkin. 🧪🔭

I am hoping my 🟦 to be more science-y 😜 but hey, check this preprint out: median base rate for Indian women in STEM is 16.7% 🫢. Thrilled to spot biaswatchindia folks here 💪🏽

👀 Are there any south asian women scientists I'm not following yet? Feel free to say hi! Let's connect! 🧪🔬

#WomenInSTEM

A graphic created on Canvas that features center text that says disabledInSTEM 2023 Mentorship Program is Live, applications due December 1st, 2023. On the yellow background, there s a DNA helix in the upper left corner. The upper right corner has a globe. On the bottom of the graphic are various cartoons of scientists, holding notebooks, beakers, and a microscope while wearing lab coats.

It's time to recruit for the 2024 #DisabledInSTEM Mentorship Program, which is our fourth year!

Mentee form: forms.gle/tryM66LaKGM5...

Mentor form: forms.gle/ncCcoNxYkJhN...

Applications are due December and placements will occur by mid-January!

Reach out with any questions!

Your regular reminder that pandemics are social problems, which cannot be solved by the products of biomedical research if the social infrastructure necessary for delivering said products is in fucking tatters.

Representations of information value in mouse orbitofrontal cortex during information seeking bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

Absolutely thrilled to share my postdoc work in the Axel lab. We found odor-evoked representations of the intrinsic value of information in mouse orbitofrontal cortex and showed that mice desire knowledge as its own reward. Now on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Such an interesting story by @jenbussell.bsky.social from the Axel lab: mice want to know more!

Congrats, Jen! Beautiful story!

Thank you!