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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Physics Nobel 2026 prediction: Andrei, MacDonald, Jarillo-Herrera for twisted 2D materials. (I feel like it ought to be something in cosmology this year, but honestly no idea what so I will go with condensed matter again)

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I agree with all your points, but not sure if you are incorporating that they raised the amount of the DP2 to $475k direct costs per year. So that may explain some of the drop in N_awards and means 700M ~ 200 awards.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Sucks, sorry. IME, a sizeable fraction of bathroom visits during lower div physics exams have been for cheating. (They have been in general quite rare even for 2 hr exams).

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Love this topic, thanks for covering it in your blog! I left a comment on there on a small aside regarding energy resolution limits.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

NIH is the biggest and by far the most transparent agency we've got. Good luck getting DOE or DoD numbers like this.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Prediction: these markets will follow the path of chess, backgammon, poker. Now that real money is involved, advantage traders will swoop in, teenagers will make huge bags, and then the action will dry up pretty soon after. It's not the same as betting on sports--little entertainment value here.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Yeah, I see your point that it devalues ref letters if reviewers would ordinarily be familiar with you and know how to calibrate based on your choice of words. But that's an edge case for most review scenarios, no? Most of the time reviewers calibrate off of "typical UG research advisor" or whatever

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

In my experience it isn't that hard both as reviewer and applicant. Just a change that folks have to get used to. identities can sometimes be guessed but not enough to kill concept. But I don't know exactly what applicant characteristics it selects for/against. might not be exactly what we'd guess.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

I think it's cool that they do blind review. Curious what the various breakdowns are before and after they started that.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

There's nothing like cold hard experimental data from experimentalists you trust.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Woohoo! Second year on a row I got one right! John Clarke is a giant. it was a privilege to occupy the same building as a grad student, he was always kind to us.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

I'll go with John Clarke and two others (Devoret + Martinis? not enough of a historian on the topic) for SQUIDs and superconducting qubits for 2025 Physics Nobel.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Link to the Lauer blog post? I couldn't find it for some reason

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Trend: paper reviews that appear to be LLM generated. Used to get reviews like "pg5, 2nd par. You say XYZ but don't back it up/it's confusing" I loved these. Now: "the paper lacks [something vague + not obviously relevant], explain how this will be implemented" (Rev's still polite and unpaid!)

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

I don't get it. Gerrymandering is just as much of a both sides, race to the bottom issue. And far more entrenched, solutions are harder than scotus walking back the relatively recent Citizens United case.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Love your blog, but this really ought to say RF pulse amplitude

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Not my field, but the actual arxiv paper didn't seem so bad to me (except for the 3 column format!), was it? This computer-generated clickbait article jumbled the words up.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Sounds like an "epiphany" college kids have smoking weed and philosophizing late at night. But I guess now it's NIH policy?

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

I'm sorry, but the PhD is not just a "training" degree. For me, any definition must include a marker of academic achievement for creating and disseminating new knowledge.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

People on here are need to focus. Bhattacharya appointment is one of the least insane things going on out there. Folks quibbling about his h-index and nunber of R01s...Look who we elected president!

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Great review, cool photophysics--I learned something new!

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

New paper, led by postdoc Janis Smits: -Introduces a “Ramsey-Mz” protocol for NMR spectroscopy using diamond NV centers -In principle, works at arbitrary field. Well suited to moderate fields (0.3-3 T) -Resolved ethanol chemical shift structure with negligble distortion arxiv.org/abs/2503.02140

arxiv.org

Chemically resolved nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy by longitudinal magnetization detection with a diamond magnetometer

Non-inductive magnetometers based on solid-state spins offer a promising solution for small-volume nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) detection. A remaining challenge is to operate at a sufficiently hig...

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Because almost all his political positions were formed in the 80s and he doesn't update them. In this case he took the Reagan position opposing "unfair trade" with Japan.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Please do not use an llm to review my papers. I much prefer you just paste whatever bullet points/notes you were going to put into the llm prompt into a txt file and submit. No flowery verbage needed!

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Reposted by Victor Marcel Acosta

Jane @gingercrone.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

He's not a student of history, is he? As well as being an utter cockwomble.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Watched the oval office meeting. First 40 min is standard Trump BS, Zelensky is used to it and nods along. Then Vance starts bloviating, speaking with entitlement about shit he absolutely has no idea about. Zelensky loses it. Weve all been in Zelenky's shoes, its impossible to bite ur tongue there.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Alright I'll say it. The Microsoft Majorana craziness is what you get when you let theoretical physicists run your device R&D agenda based on the "beauty" of the idea instead of what actually works.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

How does that even work tho. Country is devastated and they just volunteer to turn over 3 years worth of GDP? I haven't followed the news much but sounds like a classic trump BS empty threat.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Hopefully it ends up not mattering, we'll see. That notice is great fodder for convincing students to work on their technical writing.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Maybe I'm not caught up, working off the original notice from Friday: grants.nih.gov/grants/guide... It doesn't mention any changes to the formula, just says new IDC rate is 15% and refer to the current de minimis rate, so I assumed it intends to still apply the rate to modified total direct costs.

grants.nih.gov

NOT-OD-25-068: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates NOT-OD-25-068. OD

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Why do you say the "former" (proposed 15% flat IDC rate) is a percentage of total cost?

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Well, not a conversation while under siege. But if IDC negotiation is all about ending up at 27% IDC/total costs, then maybe there is a less convoluted formula that can be applied someday.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Fascinating thread, I agree with most of it. But I don't think you can use the 27% figure to say that IDC rates at Boston Children's are fair. If the MDC formula is fair, then one shouldn't consider excluded costs to assess fairness. Perhaps universal 27% reflects quirks of IDC negotiation process.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I guess. But not sure the mechanics of it. Seems like they would need to issue amended award docs for every single existing award, those need to be vetted/signed by both parties, then each award needs to be updated in Reporter/era commons. Thats a lot of work and hard to see how it can be backdated

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

The clincher: "We will not be applying this cap retroactively back to the initial date of issuance of current grants to IHEs, although we believe we would have the authority to do so under 45 CFR 75.414(c)." Just completely orthogonal in tone and content to any NIH/NSF notice I've ever read

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I'm confused. If IDC rate is now 15% on all existing NIH awards as of now, does the total award amount also change? Or do we now just have more allocated to direct costs? I'm guessing they intended the former, but arent total costs listed in the award documents and public disclosure (ie Reporter)?

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Magnetic Resonance News @nmr900.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Postdoctoral Research Associate (solid-state NMR) The Carbon and Composites Group, the Separations and Polymer chemistry section, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Oak Ridge, TN, US jobs.ornl.gov/job/Oak-Ridg... #NMRjobs #NMRchat #NMR 🧲

jobs.ornl.gov

Postdoctoral Research Associate- Solid-state NMR Spectroscopy

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Hate how the favorite US policy argument for science funding is Sinophobia.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Nice. I'm tempted to submit a proposal titled "Spin qubits and Inclusive Excellence come try and triage this I'm ready to fight". Just for fun

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Looks a lot like NSF leadership is playing "pick me" to the White House nutjobs.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Haha, I was arguing with Nate tha great from my college dorm room 20+ yrs ago. Huge fan then and now, even if he does get over his skis from time to time.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Long time fan of your blog, thanks for keeping it alive! So why didn't NNCI (which is clearly a great program despite my uni never getting one) get its budget tripled when CHIPS act came through?

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Would appreciate a RT from the scientists for this one! We have 665 scientists in the spring database and I want to get us to about 1000 before we set the teachers loose on the database for January matches.

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Victor Marcel Acosta @acostaphysics.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Doubt it's possible to pinpoint these fluctuations by cause and effect. It's just what happens in highly speculative markets. Can you explain each spike and dip in Bitcoin? Begs the question of what use a publicly traded market is for these firms, hard to see this as "efficient resource allocation"

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