Davi Bock
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dddavi.bsky.social
Davi Bock
@dddavi.bsky.social
2.1K followers 440 following 300 posts
Rural neuroscientist. Connectomics. Protists.
caveat emptor: https://bsky.app/profile/dddavi.bsky.social/post/3k5bnogiq5r2j
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dddavi.bsky.social
Beautiful light this morning on my walk to the EMBL Heidelberg campus
morning light through rising fog in beech woods above Heidelberg, Germany
September 29, 2025 at 3:21 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Pogo, by Walt Kelly: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
September 29, 2025 at 6:02 AM
dddavi.bsky.social
You had me at "supergiant cannibals." 😱 Gotta love the world of ciliates. Good🧵⬇️
Fig 1 Euplotes gigatrox displays marked phenotypic polymorphism including supergiant cannibal cells. (A) A cartoon diagram illustrating basic cellular morphological characteristics of Euplotes species, including ventral cirri used for walking locomotion, membranelles (membranelles of the adoral zone, AZM) used to generate flows for swimming and feeding, sensory caudal cirri, and macro- and micronuclei. (B) A phase contrast image displaying genetically identical “normal” and “supergiant” morphs of E. gigatrox in close association in a culture flask. Scale bar = 50 µm. From https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.19.671124 Regulated development of cannibalistic supergiant cells Larson et al 2025 bioRxiv
August 26, 2025 at 11:38 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Krugman too
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-wi...
Krugman: Yeah, I won't say who, but I know some academics who are required by the nature of what they do to go back and forth. They're European-born and they travel with burner phones now, just so they don’t have to worry about their phone being inspected and it being discovered that they have texted their friends saying things critical about Trump, which is amazing.
August 18, 2025 at 2:32 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Over a decade after reading it, I think about this Neil Young profile at least 1-2x/mo. especially this quote.
www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/m...
“For whatever you’re doing, for your creative juices, your geography’s got a hell of a lot to do with it. You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.”
August 17, 2025 at 3:38 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
It was a good experience to step back and briefly take stock of the amazing progress in connectomics since I started working on this stuff (20 years ago!)

thanks as well to @natrevneuro.nature.com for the constructive editorial interactions.
August 14, 2025 at 7:40 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
framed it very similarly but w/ smaller aperture... of course I like yours better :)
August 13, 2025 at 4:56 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Things are starting to get Very Green around here
picture of an abandoned beaver pond in late afternoon light. Early summer, Northeastern Vermont.
May 29, 2025 at 12:33 AM
dddavi.bsky.social
Nice movie! Now I want that 3D model to integrate SEM photogrammetry of the leg surfaces :)
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Fig. 5. 3D surface reconstruction. (a) Cloud of points in a three-dimensional coordinate system approximate the mean surface of the sample. (b) Triangle mesh model with added texture. (c and d) Individual points (c) and triangular mesh (d) become visible in the enlargements. ((a), (c) Point cloud calculated by PhotoScan and (b), (d) mesh calculated by Recap 360 Photo.) from Eulitz, M. and Reiss, G., 2015. 3D reconstruction of SEM images by use of optical photogrammetry software. Journal of structural biology, 191(2), pp.190-196.
May 19, 2025 at 3:01 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Nice, thanks for pointing this out! "Saw the preview, don't have to see the movie" isn't always true. :)
The approach is simple and smart and allows one to sidestep the problem of how to losslessly subdivide a whole brain. Good.
We first imaged partially overlapping volumetric tiles arranged in two dimensions (2D) to obtain a first slab of LICONN data. We then used a conventional vibratome to slice off most of the imaged hydrogel layer, while placing the cut within the imaged slab. In a subsequent imaging round, we obtained an axially offset multi-tile volume situated more deeply in the tissue, featuring a continuous region of axial overlap with the first multi-tile volume. We then computationally fused the individual imaging volumes in 3D in a voxel-exact manner
May 14, 2025 at 5:06 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Late April, northeastern VT. Satisfyingly enough, it just decided to start snowing. Maybe why the Siberian squill under our old apple tree keep their flowers pointed down all spring :)
April 27, 2025 at 4:42 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
My 13yo son just told me that for his "Classic Film" club at school they just watched Airplane. I can't tell if this is a sign that the apocalypse truly is nigh, or that actually things are going to turn out okay.

At first I thought the former, but then I had to laugh.
Still from the movie Airplane
April 18, 2025 at 12:17 AM
dddavi.bsky.social
Also, I didn't know/remember he was looking at pericyte-neuron interfaces in retina. Neat. :)
screenshot of David Berson's Youtube video on connectomics, showing relationship between neurons and vascular pericytes in retina
March 25, 2025 at 1:28 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
and another bit of salve, 15 taps on a warm spring day
first tap of season already flowing the little row of buckets on the old maple trees
March 11, 2025 at 7:23 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
A timeline cleanse of sorts - nice headline in a local paper (The Hardwick Gazette, hardwickgazette.org)
“Civil Discussion Marks Uneventful Meeting” Hardwick Gazette March 5 2025
March 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
R.I.P. Floyd Bloom, promulgator of the famous expression, “The gains in brain are mainly in the stain.” A pioneer in the use of autoradiography + EM to selectively label axon terminals by neurotransmitter type. (refs: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...)
“The gains in brain are mainly in the stain” — Floyd Bloom, The Neurosciences: Paths of Discovery, I. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser Boston, 1975. 211-227.
February 19, 2025 at 3:05 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Choose your own information bubble
February 12, 2025 at 1:35 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse: Dog currently venting heat from belly as she bakes herself next to the wood stove.
February 8, 2025 at 1:22 AM
dddavi.bsky.social
But this does call to mind Buchanan et al.'s observation that oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) can ingest and break down axon bits via phagolysosomes: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
from Fig 2 Buchanan et al 2022 PNAS: Phagolysosomes (PLs) are abundant in OPC processes and contain vesicles. (A) 3D rendering of OPC with numerous ramified branches. Boxed area same as micrograph shown in (B) (Scale bar 15µm.) (B) OPC branch contains PLs, lysosomes (L), and mitochondria (M), and an ingested axon (yellow arrow) (Ax). (Scale bar 1.5 µm.) (C) 3D rendering of same OPC in (B) in pink and axon (Ax) (green) arrow (yellow) points to piece of ingested axon outlined in white and PL (white oval). (Scale bar 2 µm.) Inset shows 3D rendering of the same green axon (Ax) bouton with small, ingested protrusion outlined in slice view (yellow arrow). (Scale bar 500 nm.) (D) Twelve ultrathin 40-nm serial sections through a phagolysosome show the distribution of 40-nm vesicles within the organelle. Nine of the twelve sections have vesicles inside the phagolysosome. (Scale bar 300 nm.)
February 5, 2025 at 5:17 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
"The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, has said that Victkor Orban’s Hungary is, quote, not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model, end quote." -- slate.com/transcripts/... @kimlanelaw.bsky.social @dahlialithwick.bsky.social
"And if you have been watching authoritarianism around the world, the moves are very familiar now, as are the players. Two thirds of the President’s Day One executive orders are lifted from Project 2025. Project 2025 is authored principally by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, has said that Victkor Orban’s Hungary is, quote, not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model, end quote." From https://slate.com/transcripts/eUZ2dmo2alF6Z2gxOXBhSTF4dEl1NFRiSS9iaFFBNUJxRmFiNDNwdFFBUT0=
February 5, 2025 at 2:33 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Lenses ('ocelloids') in predatory single-celled organisms are structurally beautiful, and very weird and understudied. How is the image these lenses can make transduced into behavior? Nice to see some attention will be paid!
Fig 4 from "Photoreception in Phytoplankton", Colley & Nilsson 2016 Int & Comp Biol. Legend: Anatomy of the Erythropsidinium ocelloid. (A) Schematic representation of the Erythropsidinium ocelloid and (B) longitudinal section of Erythropsidinium ocelloid ( 3900). t, microtubular layer; mit, mitochondrion; micr, microcrystalline layer; g, periocelloid gallery; cr, constricting ring; pig, pigmentary ring; stf, striated fibre; ff, fibrillar formations on the floor of the ocelloid chamber (microtubules make up the fiber layer); l, highly ordered lamellar membranes of the retinal body (paired thylakoid membranes); v, vesicular layer of the retinal body (vesicles containing melanoid and carotenoid pigment); r, reticulum; mit, mitochondria; M, mela- nosome; f, ocelloid channel; sc, scalariforme plate; H, hyalosome; sc, scalariforme plate; Cr, crystalline body; OCh, ocelloid chamber; C, core. (A) Reproduced from Greuet (1968) with adapted labeling from Greuet (1987) with copyright permission from Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons Inc. (B) Reproduced from Greuet (1987) with copyright permission from John Wiley & Sons Inc.
February 3, 2025 at 1:08 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
Nice work, need to read thoroughly, but first rxn: I would really like to know more about these Fig 5E ensembles. How strong are they really? What is their connectivity? Big EM target? Song et al.’s “Strong Connections forming a Skeleton Immersed in a Sea of the Weaker Ones” apposed for inspiration.
Gonzales Jayant et al 2025 Sci Adv “Touch-evoked traveling waves establish a translaminar spacetime code.” Crop & markup of Fig 5: “ Enhanced L2/3 sparsity supports late wave dynamics” Song Nelson Chklovskii et al 2005 PLoS Biol “Highly Nonrandom Features of Synaptic Connectivity in Local Cortical Circuits” Fig 9: “ Statistically Reconstructed Network of 50 Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons Illustrates That Stronger Connections form a Skeleton Immersed in a Sea of the Weaker Ones”
February 3, 2025 at 12:56 AM
dddavi.bsky.social
Yes I feel like we are in very dangerous territory overall. In my limited experience, it can take a while to realize you're in a fight even once it has started.
www.politico.com/news/2025/01...
Democrats’ jaws hit the floor Wednesday when former Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — released by Trump from an 18-year prison sentence for conspiring to violently stop Congress’ role in the transfer of power — strode nonchalantly into the Capitol complex, took a seat in a Dunkin’ Donuts and held court with reporters in the same building he gleefully watched under attack. “My only regret is they should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said in a Jan. 10, 2021 recording played at his seditious conspiracy trial in 2022. “We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang fucking Pelosi from the lamppost.”
January 28, 2025 at 3:13 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
A windy 5°F twilight here in northeastern VT. Monochrome + survey tape.
January 8, 2025 at 9:58 PM
dddavi.bsky.social
when it's 0°F and dark outside and I'm about to go to bed, sometimes it's nice to look at the ommatidia on a fly from two Septembers ago
Common drone fly (?) on an aster in northeastern Vermont crop of previous pic showing eye details
January 6, 2025 at 3:51 AM