Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Tyler Ryan Sizemore

Davi Bock @dddavi.bsky.social · 1d

I love this piece!

It shows the many ways a connectome can be put to use, AND the many complementary modalities that are needed, beyond the connectome, to answer real questions.

And it makes me feel good about having helped to generate the thing. :)

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 1d

To celebrate the first anniversary of the release of FlyWire, we asked nine neuroscientists to share how they are using connectome data in their research and what they hope is in store for the future of fly connectomics.

By @franciscorr25.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/3Wx5nt3

How FlyWire is redefining Drosophila research, one year in

Nine Drosophila researchers share how the connectome transformed the field and what additional new tools they would like to see.

bit.ly

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Philip Hubbard @philiphubbard.bsky.social · 2d

Rendering this video was a nice test for #Blender3d, as the full set of bodies visible by the end involved almost 1.1 billion polygons. It all worked out well on our H200 cluster.

Janelia Research Campus @hhmijanelia.bsky.social · 2d

🪰 A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system—a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the millions of connections between them.
🔗 https://hhmi.news/4o3EJnk

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Sweta Agrawal @hokuba.bsky.social · 7d

The Agrawal lab is moving! This January we will be setting up shop at #UBC in Vancouver, in the department of #Zoology! We are actively recruiting at all levels, especially masters and PhD students. These position are #funded! Please send anyone interested my way!

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Ainsley S @americanbeetles.bsky.social · 5d

one more keyence post, OBVIOUSLY you gotta capture the elegant eyebrows of the rhysodid

deeply red, glossy wrinkled bark beetle in the genus Rhyzodiastes. There's one named after our own Bob Davidson, and there's one named after, uh, Xi Jingping

close-up of the head of this creature, showing glorious, golden, bristly eyebrows (probably actually some kind of glandular seta cluster, I don't know)

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Richard Benton @bentonlab.bsky.social · 3d

Having personally sworn for years that insects don’t use GPCRs for odour detection, Suguru Takagi (@sugurutakagi.bsky.social) discovers that, in fact, they sometimes do …

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

A GPCR signaling pathway in insect odor detection

Odor detection differs fundamentally in vertebrates, which use G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), and insects, which employ ion channels. Here, we report the first evidence for a GPCR defining tunin...

www.biorxiv.org

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 3d

K-Pop Demon Hunters is legitimately the global cultural phenomenon of 2025 and honestly there are far worse things to be a cultural touchstone this year than a trio of young women fighting literal soul-sucking hegemony through the power of their art

E. Perkins 🎃 @hauntedpumpkin.bsky.social · 3d

Oh crap, it's back at #1 in movies again today on Netflix too. That's awesome!

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 3d

Nice that it got back to the top before Taylor Swift sets up shop at the summit for the rest of the year

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Returns to No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart share.google/oQAsZTuGGnXf...

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Returns to No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart

The "KPop Demon Hunters" soundtrack is back at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 while five albums debut in the top 10, led by Doja Cat's latest.

share.google

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Mehmet Keles @flyman.bsky.social · Apr 8

I am proud to share that our work of 4+ years has finally been published. We wondered if there are distinct behaviors that mark sleep in 🪰, where sleep has been defined as prolonged immobility.
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

FlyVISTA, an integrated machine learning platform for deep phenotyping of sleep in Drosophila

A machine learning platform identifies and characterizes the dynamics of microbehaviors during fly sleep.

www.science.org

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Anita Devineni @anitadevineni.bsky.social · 3d

Everything is terrible but we're 2 days away from the most fun event on earth, the CSHL Fly Neuro Meeting!!! @cshlmeetings.bsky.social

My last blog post about it was 8 years ago (www.brains-explained.com/fly-neurobio...) but I think it still holds up, especially the abstract book roller coaster

Graph showing level of excitement about the abstract book as a roller coaster based on different events

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Greg Jefferis @jefferis.bsky.social · 3d

Comparison with previous female connectomes reveals sex differences across the adult brain at synaptic resolution for the first time. Full news story and preprint describing this massive team effort coming soon!

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Greg Jefferis @jefferis.bsky.social · 3d

This dataset provides two major advances. It is the first fully proofread and annotated brain and nerve cord connectome with 166,696 proofread neurons annotated with 11,691 cell types. It is also the first connectome of a male brain.

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Greg Jefferis @jefferis.bsky.social · 3d

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

Male CNS Connectome

A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

www.janelia.org

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Tyler Ryan Sizemore @tsizzle2.bsky.social · 3d

😯😯😯 youtu.be/TAphyUYHo5k

Live imaging of regenerating crustacean leg

YouTube video by Michalis Averof

youtu.be

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Kevin Terretaz @kwolbachia.bsky.social · 5d

I’m happy to share some plugins I’ve been developping this summer: "Channels and Contrast" and LUTs Manager!
I can’t find new bugs and ideas by now so I need your help to please test them in your machines and report bugs, feedbacks and ideas! forum.image.sc/t/looking-fo...

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Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 4d

Started in Jan 2020 and haven’t caught a break since. But you can bet P&T committees don’t care - taking any world circumstances into account is “lowering the bar.” I’ve been told all standards for grants and publication remain the same. And I have too much service.

AZ Faust @azfaust.bsky.social · 5d

A couple of related-unrelated thoughts that have swirling in my head:

1. This is a bad time to become a new PI in the US. Probably the worst since WWII. If you're negotiating for a position, know your road is way harder than it was for the people on your TT committee. Negotiate accordingly.

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 4d

The Ig Nobel is incredible , one year an Indian guy won it for calculating the average surface area of an elephant and during his acceptance they had an elephant hold up a sign with the surface area of the scientist on it, they do showbiz better than the Oscars

Jeffrey J. Hall @mrjeffu.bsky.social · 20d

Video: a Japanese scientist was attacked by flies while giving the acceptance speech for his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research paper that proved painting Zebra-like stripes on cows led to a decrease in biting fly attacks.

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The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 5d

Federal officer blasts chemical spray into vocal but nonviolent Portland protester, video shows

The interaction illustrates how federal law enforcement officers do use aggressive tactics against protesters who yell and needle officers but don’t appear to present clear physical threats.

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Alick Simmons @parliamentarygoose.bsky.social · 4d

Eurasian Griffon Vulture, Catalonia, April 2025. #birds

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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 4d

"You're in charge of the autoclave"

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Tyler Ryan Sizemore @tsizzle2.bsky.social · 5d

Congratulations David and the whole Stern lab crew!

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David L. Stern @gallseeker.bsky.social · 8d

It's official! We are moving to Stowers!
Very exciting opportunity to expand our studies of insect-plant interactions. We have many opportunities available in biochemistry, development, behavior, genetics, evolution, genomics, AI, and even pest control. Interested in any of these things? Reach out!

Stowers Institute @stowersinstitute.bsky.social · 8d

NEWS🎉 We’re excited to announce @hhmijanelia.bsky.social Investigator David Stern will join the Institute from Janelia Research Campus. His lab studies how aphids transform plants at the genetic level, uncovering secrets of #evolution & new strategies for pest control. @hhmi.org bit.ly/4np96Fb

Stowers Institute recruits renowned developmental and evolutionary…

David Stern, Ph.D., brings groundbreaking research on insect–plant interactions for next-generation pest control to the Institute.

bit.ly

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 6d

Two Graeme Davis UCSF alums publishing in @plosbiology.org in consecutive weeks. Congratulations on this fantastic work, Kira!! 🎉

Kira Poskanzer @kiraposkanzer.bsky.social · 6d

Congrats to Charlotte Taylor and team for dissecting how astrocyte networks integrate histamine to modulate adenosine over sleep and wake in unexpected ways:

dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

@vincenttse.bsky.social @maxine.science @trishavv.bsky.social

Cortical astrocyte histamine-1-receptors regulate intracellular calcium and extracellular adenosine dynamics across sleep and wake

While histamine-1-receptor (H1R) signaling in neurons regulates arousal, these receptors are also abundant on cortical astrocytes. This study shows that astrocytic H1R signaling modulates calcium acti...

dx.plos.org

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Siegenthaler Lab @siegenthalerlab.bsky.social · 6d

Listening to the new Taylor Swift album & working on figures, sharing a 🤩 image for #FluorescenceFriday

[penetrating 🐭 cerebral arteriole at the pial surface, aSMA in yellow = smooth muscle cell, pan-laminin in cyan = basement membrane, fibroblast in magenta...squeezing in to cover that vessel 🫂)