fMRI leaps forward….

A fantastic paper just out about relating the cellular microenvironment to the R2t* component of the signal relaxation constant, here. The authors did two really clever things: first they related the signal from the brain microenvironment (think, the area around individual synapses) to the Default Mode Network–a signature of resting awake cognitive activity. Second, they used the Allen Gene Brain atlas to look at the interplay between this brain imaging signal and the gene networks that define the molecular biology of the nervous system.

Definitely an important result. All of this out of the outstanding group at Washington University St. Louis that has been pushing the limits in this field.

The curse of soft money….

UCSF’s Henry Bourne has an interesting piece out in PNAS about the boom/bust cycle in biomedical research and specifically how the most recent version played out with vast over-building of infrastructure combined with a shift to soft-money support for PI’s. The documentation of the problems is very impressive, however the notion that this can be fixed piecemeal at a few “pioneer” research institutions I think is dead wrong. To my mind, such elitism is exactly how we arrived at our current situation. And in fact, I’m pleased to report that it’s actually at non-elite institutions where the hard money regime still exists, supported by tuition and, in the case of publics, some state support.

Do I have a solution? Here’s a possibility: I urge my biomedical colleagues to take a hard look at the decadal surveys of other fields (e.g. astronomy or oceanography) where hard prioritization choices are made nationally on the basis of evidence.

Another White House science appointment…

Princeton emeritus professor Will Happer, more here.

I’ll simply note his views on climate are at variance with the global scientific consensus. His question about whether increases in CO2 result in the carbon sink of plant life on the planet is interesting. Since the Carbon Cycle is coupled in various complex ways to plant growth (e.g. through the Nitrogen Cycle), I’d say the answer is not obvious.