iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by TK (Takashi DY) Kozai

Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The immediate threat of the EO seems to have passed, but the greater attack on science by this administration is almost certainly not over. Some good thoughts on what we should be doing. I would add: get organized. Build connections and community. Many voices are louder than one.

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 24/09/2026

The Trump admin keeps trying ways to break and take over NIH and we keep pushing back and winning. Two takeaways: 1. Together we have power; your voice matters. 2. This isn’t over; they are going to keep trying more ways to take over NIH and science for their political ends. Be ready!

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Touch evoked by cortical stimulation dies within minutes. Tired neurons get the blame. However, inhibitory cells in mouse cortex keep firing while the excitatory ones fall silent. BRIDGE-STIM 2027 puts the human, monkey, and mouse teams in one room. Pittsburgh, May 17–19.

BRIDGE-STIM 2027 flyer. Headline: A human can tell you what stimulation feels like, a mouse can tell you why. May 17 to 19, 2027, University of Pittsburgh. Abstracts due March 1, 2027. $75 trainees, $250 faculty, meals included. NSF travel awards. 15 speakers listed. stim.bioniclab.org

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 04/09/2026

On the diversion of several billion dollars from #NIH to the Department of Defense (NYT today reports it’s up to “one third of the NIAID budget” and that Trump NIH director Bhattacharya signed the deal.) The big question I have: Is this is an end run around peer review? 1/

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD •
E•5h
NIH funds should be used to improve the health of Americans.
X
Far from siphoning money away from research, this partnership between @NIH and @ DeptofWar focuses on research projects that will drive discoveries to improve the health of American citizens and members of the military. Led by the National I Show more
NOTUS
NOTUS 2 @NOTUSreports • 20h
As the military faces a war-driven cash crunch, Rep. Rosa DeLauro said it would be "outrageous" to siphon that money from disease research. notus.org/congress/delau...

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Insights from inside NIH on the proposal to hide scores and instead bin applications into broad score categories. Please read and comment on the RFI. 27unihted.substack.com/p/nih-wants-... Link to RFI: rfi.grants.nih.gov?s=6a2b1c22c3...

27unihted.substack.com

NIH wants to shroud peer review scores. Here’s what you can do about it.

Authored by anonymous current and former NIH workers with experience in peer review

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Reposted by TK (Takashi DY) Kozai

Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Of course this RFI drops late on Friday. NIH proposes to stop providing specific scores and instead bin grants into 3 broad categories: most competitive, competitive, not discussed. A score would be calculated but not provided to the PI (or PO). grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

grants.nih.gov

NOT-OD-26-088: Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer Review

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Request for Information (RFI) on Proposed Changes to Reporting Outcomes from NIH Peer Review NOT-OD-26-088. NIH

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

When I interviewed at Michigan for their Biomedical Engineering PhD, the chair told me I was an experiment. He meant it descriptively. The program had only ever accepted engineering majors. I had a biology degree from Colorado. 🧵

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

9 lessons from Bethesda Declaration organizers on how to rescue US science: www.ovid.com/jnls/dartmou... 1. Scientists can no longer safely claim the privilege of being outside of, or above, politics 2. Inaction can be riskier than action. 3. Progress requires work. 4. Do not wait for someone else.

ovid.com

Nine lessons from Bethesda Declaration organizers... : Dartmouth Journal of Healthcare Delivery Science

Abstract was not provided for this article.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

496,769 people commented on OMB's rewrite of how federal research grants are awarded. Rules like it normally draw a few hundred, that gap is the whole story.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Robby: Nah, it's dance till you drop! Duke: Then what? Robby: Teach the kids the steps before you do. Duke: And then what? Robby: Hope they make it farther than you.

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Reposted by TK (Takashi DY) Kozai

DrDinD.bsky.social @drdind.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Infectious disease researcher Jason Walsman, facing cuts to National Science Foundation funded research, has decided to leave the University of Pittsburgh for China

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Monday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

cutting pure science to prioritize applications is fundamentally like asking farmers not to waste time producing grain, cheese, and tomatoes and focus on making pizzas

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

🧵 Every entry in this series featured science that outsiders called ridiculous. This one is different. Here, the scientific establishment itself said it would fail. 🔬

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

🧠 Memory held even where the plaques never cleared. In an aged Alzheimer's model, boosting oligodendrocytes kept spatial working memory at wild-type levels (56.7±2.5% vs 39.5±2.1%, P=0.0004), without lowering amyloid. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

One current pulse drives a single cortical column in a mouse. The same waveform in a paralyzed human BCI user yields a different percept, or none. That cross-species gap is the problem BRIDGE-STIM 2027 is built to close. 🧵

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Reposted by TK (Takashi DY) Kozai

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

A statement from the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the proposed OMB regulations. www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majorit... 1/3

appropriations.senate.gov

Sen. Collins Asks OMB to Withdraw Parts of Grant Rule, Extend Comment Period | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

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Reposted by TK (Takashi DY) Kozai

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Absolutely this. Bell Labs was very productive when I was a kid. But they, as a monopoly, basically had the ability to tax the entire US population. Moreover, while they published or otherwise disseminated some of their findings, they kept some just for A T & T.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

🧬In 2001, a member of the National Academy of Sciences told my 400-person lecture to watch Jennifer Doudna, because she'd probably win a Nobel. What he didn't say: taxpayers were already paying for the work that would get her there. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

🧠 NSF just funded BRIDGE-STIM 2027 (Award #2624028, CBET). May 17-19, Pittsburgh. The workshop assembles experimentalists running intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) in mice, NHPs, and humans, addressing the cross-species translation gap stalling sensorimotor BCI restoration.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

📊 NIH NOT-OD-26-086 proposes capping RPGs per PI at 2, 3, or 4. The cap counts grants rather than dollars controlled, so an MPI on a five-site U19 spends a full slot for a fraction of a budget while a sole PI spends one slot for an entire R01.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

⚡ A brain implant delivers a microsecond pulse to cortex, and the textbook answer is that the neuron fires. The biology turns out to be far richer, which matters for every patient feeling through a prosthetic hand, suppressing a seizure, or treating depression by stimulation.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Roughly half of intracortical microelectrodes lose recording capability within a year of implantation. The B.I.O.N.I.C. Lab at Pitt is hiring a postdoc to attack the mechanism on two parallel grant-funded threads. 🧵 (1/7)

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

🔬 Your tax dollars once paid a physicist whose own colleagues told him he was wasting the university's money. In 1951, Charles Townes sat on a D.C. park bench and worked out, on the back of an envelope, how to force molecules to release coherent radiation. 🧵 1/5

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

In 1944, Vannevar Bush handed FDR "Science: The Endless Frontier," arguing federal investment in basic research was a national security requirement. Eighty-two years later, the FY27 NDAA biotech amendments make the same case. 🧵 (1/8)

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

youtu.be/0UD278aJ-VE?... Thomas Jefferson said, "We must not be afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead." Scientific truth ennobles us. It tells us who we are, where we've been, and where we're going. I believe the truth will only be found when all scientists are free to pursue it.

youtu.be

Nepotism Accusations Upset President Bartlet | The West Wing

YouTube video by The West Wing

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

🌊 High school biology. Teacher plays a clip. Frame one, ATP synthase, the protein that makes ATP from a proton gradient in every cell. Frame two, a water turbine. Nearly identical structures, 14 orders of magnitude apart, identical mechanism. Biology was an engineering system. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

🛩 Every commercial pilot trains on simulators. None earns a license through simulators alone. The simulator is not the airplane. On July 10, 2025, NIH announced future funding opportunities will no longer be issued exclusively for animal models. The shift is now active policy.🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

🧮 We built a computational model that predicted which electrode channels would fail in human BCI participants before they failed. The mouse data isn't misleading. The biology of failure is the same in humans, and now we can map it.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Your tax dollars once paid a doctor at a VA hospital in the Bronx to study the venom of a poisonous lizard. It produced Ozempic, Wegovy, and a $38.6 billion therapeutic class. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

🧬 In 1995, Katalin Karikó was demoted at UPenn because her grants weren't landing and her papers weren't cited. The mRNA chemistry she developed over the next 20 years (modifying uridine to pseudouridine) became the COVID-19 vaccines and the 2023 Nobel Prize.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

🧪 I came up under peer review. The people who built it did not. Senior colleagues told me what it replaced: strong proposals from capable researchers going unfunded, not for weak science, but because the path to money ran through personal proximity to the program officer who held it.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Musk's DOGE "saved" $15 million by cutting a program dedicated to preventing the spread of screwworm. Now, there is an outbreak, and the administration is spending $1 billion of taxpayer funds to combat the preventable outbreak.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

🔧 As a kid I was confused and frustrated by school. Japanese and English jumbled together, home unstable. What I could control was small. So I built things: rubber bands, paperclips, then sheet metal and hardwood. Mechanical logic was the one place the world made sense. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

10 years ago, after 10 months of facilities renovation delays, I was finally able to start building my lab.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

🔊 Every intervention we've tried to extend BCI lifespan modifies the electrode or delivers a drug. Both work, both carry tradeoffs, new materials bring new failure modes, drugs go systemic with off-target effects. So we asked: what if we redirect the brain's immune response with sound?

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 11/06/2026

Neuroscientist here, who has talked about the US losing science ground to other countries: The biggest problem for generating future cures for brain diseases is the ongoing utter destruction of US basic neuroscience. It’s not about regulation.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Define "Gold Standard Science" without publication, peer review, conferences, journal access, or international collaboration. You can't. Neither can OMB. The proposed 2 CFR rewrite (OMB-2026-0034) requires compliance with it anyway. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

🖖 Star Trek imagined the most capable AI possible. The ship's computer knew everything, computed anything in seconds. It still never had an idea. A human always asked "what if we reroute through the deflector." The computer only ran the consequences. The seed was always human.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Every technology that reshaped medicine in the last 50 years traces to basic science with no obvious application when funded. MRI from spin physics. CRISPR from bacterial immunity. mRNA vaccines from 20 years of lipid nanoparticle work the field called a dead end.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Called it, and I wish I hadn't. Hours after I posted on the OMB grants rule, NIH dropped NOT-OD-26-086: an RFI for a grant cap that is the 2017 Grant Support Index in its crudest form. Count a PI's simultaneous NIH grants, force relinquishment at 2, 3, or 4.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

In 2017, NIH proposed capping how much funding any single lab could hold. Senior PIs killed it in a month. The trainees who would have benefited said nothing. OMB-2026-0034 is the same fight. This time you're the target.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

🕵️ Your brain's immune system isn't fighting the implant. It's listening to it. The textbook story: immune system sees foreign object, attacks, builds scar. Incomplete. We found microglia monitor what the device does to nearby neurons in real time, then adjust behavior to match. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

In 1981, Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic controllers who walked off the job. The logic held: professional judgment required job protection, and they abandoned the job. Schedule Policy/Career inverts that logic entirely. 🧵

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

⚛️ In 1925, a 23-year-old on a state-funded university post retreated to a rocky island with hay fever and wrote a paper so strange he wasn't sure it was worth publishing. Schrodinger called it "nonsense." Einstein rejected it. It became the basis of modern technology.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

They published it at 412 pages on a Friday afternoon, the slot networks call "take out the trash." OMB-2026-0034 lets political appointees override peer review, ban publication funding, and terminate grants without cause. They gave you 45 days. They're counting on you not reading it.

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

The FY2027 appropriations fight is entering the House markup right now. If you're a federally funded PI and you haven't contacted your rep's office this cycle, here's a 6-step thread that takes less than 80 minutes to start. 🧵

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