Accountability is a way to determine truth

Imagine your car won’t start. Your mechanic has a theory: “The battery is dead.” Now, they have several ways to share that theory:

Option 1: Launch a podcast. They passionately argue their…



Precision of evaluation

To what degree of precision can your evaluations of grants, papers, or applicants be quantified—if forced into a single numerical score?

How many bits of resolution can we reasonably expect in…



10 quick start items for Overleaf to Typst

If you have been using Overleaf to write grants and papers, and are thinking of trying Typst, here are some points to get you started. Typst updates live, while you code up a document, and it is much faster than Overleaf. Plus, it has a lot more functionality. Some of Typst will look…



Switching to Typst

I’m switching to Typst. Just started. Let’s see if it lasts. But so far so good.

Years ago, I switched from Word to Overleaf for preparing manuscripts and grants….



Changes to NIH publishing policies

Changes are afoot. Amidst the destructive chaos of the past six months, much is uncertain, but one clear trend is that NIH is going to continue to influence the ecosystem of…



More notes on lab data storage

I was walking around an aquarium a couple of days ago and I saw a young person taking long videos of the fish in the tanks. Through the glass, glare and all, in…



Integrity and sales

Screenshot

When I was an undergraduate, my older sister got me a job: working in the complex carbohydrate chemistry lab of a prolific heparin and heparan sulfate chemist, Bob Linhardt. In…



Volumetric Imaging meeting (hybrid)

Volumetric Imaging of Neural Circuit Connectivity and Dynamics

?Tuesday, July 22, 2025
14:00–17:00 BST (UK time)?
Hybrid | Join us online or in person at Imperial College London (South Kensington, Royal…



Real advance, fake podcast

This is a silly thing, but I’m going to post it here anyways. We just released our latest work on laser scan engine technology. It’s focused on how…



Brilliant people working together

Much gratitude from me to this group of brilliant people pushing the frontiers of what is possible in multiphoton imaging.



Glass is dead

Humankind is overdue for moving past glass for state-of-the-art optics. We’re never going to be completely rid of glass, but we have been coasting on 17th century technology for 21st century applications. We have been…



ELIZA.EXE

When I was a kid, maybe about 12 years old, I was in my bedroom (in the basement), at my computer that I bought with my paper route money…



Fighting for science effectively

Pushing the frontiers of medicine, science, and technology takes highly trained people and extensive specialized infrastructure. You can’t just hire a self-taught coder off the internet and hand them…



Executive orders

Executive orders are powerful actions that can have catastrophic consequences. They merit thoughtful analysis and research prior to enactment.

EO 9066 interned US citizens and resulted in their loss…



Indirect costs are research costs

I am disappointed to read comments from people who have been PIs on NIH and NSF grants for years, sometimes decades, and they don’t understand what indirect costs pay for. They’re not necessarily…