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lexy

@lvdlab.org

1.2K followers 670 following 220 posts

asst prof in the star of the north

single-molecule microscopy and genetic manipulation of meiotic recombination @ lvdlab.org

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lexy

@lvdlab.org

technically, it's a crop of this image, so I have to assume it's trying to parse the nuclei

figure 1 from our 2024 paper - not much that looks like a face tbh

April 14, 2025 at 4:02 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

wow... AI really is so powerful

me posting a subpanel with two graphs into powerpoint. suggested alt text at bottom: "A collage of images of a person's face" with approve/edit buttons for my consideration

April 14, 2025 at 3:56 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

Even still, Spring is beautiful.

Sunset from the East Bank campus last night, with a view of an art museum and train tracks running across the Mississippi. A thin (cirrus?) cloud cuts across horizontally.

April 9, 2025 at 4:21 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

#handsoff the next generation of scientists!

Francesca Walsh, 28, is in the last six months of earning her Ph.D. in neuroscience and behavior. She wants to study how the brain functions when making economic decisions, in an effort to protect economic markets and consumers from financial harm. The postdoctoral jobs she planned to apply for have suddenly disappeared. “I felt the door of an entire sector of jobs, including federal research jobs, slam overnight,” she said. “It’s very disheartening, and sometimes I wish I just became an accountant.”

Young scientists’ careers are inextricably tied to the grant application cycle. Carole LaBonne, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University, recently told the podcast “Odd Lots” to think of labs as small businesses that run on very tight operating margins. A grant that provides funding for, say, four years would need to be renewed in the third year. And if they can’t do that, people must be let go quickly — which almost always means junior members of the lab. Peter Jacobs, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is unsure whether Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants that help fund his program will be renewed; he’s not certain he can keep on his three postdocs, all of whom are already looking at other positions, including in Europe or Asia.

At Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where nearly 40 percent of the student population identifies as Native American, one researcher said he and his colleagues were told not to bother submitting a renewal application for an N.I.H.-associated grant that funds increased representation in the biomedical sciences and that has helped at least a dozen Native Americans earn Ph.D.s in the past 15 years. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University was expecting $7 million in National Science Foundation funding meant to train scientists and engineers with autism, but those awards have been rejected or are in limbo. “It is heartbreaking having to tell these students — who have persisted through challenges throughout their lives for the opportunity to apply their talents for their own careers but also for their country — that they aren’t so valued after all,” said Keivan Stassun, an astrophysics professor and the center’s founding director.

America had also been an attractive destination for science because of its express support for free inquiry — the ability of researchers to study what mattered most to them, even if there wasn’t a straight path to success and profit. That commitment appears to be crumbling. “I mourn a world in which science must defend itself through its end products, rather than its underlying search for truth and beauty,” said Daniel Bauman, a 25-year-old Stanford University graduate student studying evolution. “When efficiency is mandated, current and future careers are lost or abandoned. If science funding is made contingent on immediately beneficial results, who will be left to tell the story of nature? Will anyone even be listening?”

April 5, 2025 at 2:59 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

Whatever else is going on, we've been getting some great data, and the world outside looks golden. Feeling grateful.

photo of the sunset in Minneapolis. an art museum, classroom, and the west bank skyline are visible.

March 13, 2025 at 12:22 AM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

post from @saramchenry.bsky.social: I love leaving voice mails for my senators where I say things like "the USPS is very important to our country" [...]

March 4, 2025 at 4:04 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

one of those days you could just leave your enzymes outside and they'd be fine

weather info in minneapolis, currently -24°C

January 19, 2025 at 7:09 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

the world if we only worried about this stuff during official "worrying about stuff" hours

April 1, 2024 at 11:32 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

at least we get this gem of reporting

January 13, 2024 at 3:34 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

bizarre how the courts just roll over to enforce laws. gotta get rid of that loophole

“The courts have been really weak on this,” Kirk told the America Fest crowd. “Federal courts just yield to the Civil Rights Act as if it's the actual American Constitution.” The law is ultimately a way to “re-found the county” and “a way to get rid of the First Amendment,” according to Kirk.

January 12, 2024 at 2:22 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

it's actually stupider than that: she didn't provide it in terms of "all other names you've used." the party of oppressive bureaucracy

context from https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/transgender-ohio-house-candidate-disqualified-for-not-listing-birth-name-loses-appeal/ar-AA1mI7q9
key line:
Last week, the board cited a rarely-invoked state law requiring anyone who files to run for public office in Ohio to list both their current name and any other names they went by in the past five years, with the exception of people who changed their name after getting married and/or any state or local elected officials who previously complied with the law.

January 10, 2024 at 2:25 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

oh, so *that's* what we should call Parable of the Sower.

Happy 2024 everybody :)))

excerpt from Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler 1993)

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Sunday, July 21, 2024
[...]
We got up early this morning because we had to go across town to church. Most Sundays, Dad holds church services in our front rooms. He’s a Baptist minister, and even though not all of the people who live within our neighborhood walls are Baptists, those who feel the need to go to church are glad to come to us. That way they don’t have to risk going outside where things are so dangerous and crazy. It’s bad enough that some people—my father for one—have to go out to work at least once a week. None of us goes out to school any more. Adults get nervous about kids going outside.

But today was special. For today, my father made arrangements with another minister—a friend of his who still had a real church building with a real baptistery.

Dad once had a church just a few blocks outside our wall. He began it before there were so many walls....

January 1, 2024 at 12:26 AM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

image of text from article:
Another staffer said it did not occur to her superiors that some constituents would have personal ties to Gaza, which she realized when a caller said the bombardment had just killed most of his friend’s family.

“The statement we’re authorized to use doesn’t contain any sympathy,” the staffer said. “It isn’t part of any statement to say, I’m so sorry that happened to you.” She went off script to tell the caller she was sorry.

November 10, 2023 at 3:10 AM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

Lilith from Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996). Her huge white crucified featureless form closely resembles Tan's art.

October 13, 2023 at 1:03 PM

lexy

@lvdlab.org

If you live in one of these states, ESPECIALLY consider telling your senator and other reps to fight this. it's pretty easy: act.eff.org/action/tell-...