Brain Drain

I've been following the story of Charles Lieber and see it as the proverbial canary in the coalmine. He was once the most cited chemist of his generation, former chair of Harvard's chemistry department, a man who brought in over $15 million in federal research grants and was widely considered a Nobel Prize contender, is now running a state-funded brain-computer interface laboratory in China. There might be a satisfying spy-thriller angle to his story but it seems like Charles Lieber didn't defect because China recruited him. He defected because America failed to keep him. More likely than not, the same system that failed him is the same system that is quietly failing hundreds of researchers whose names we don't yet know.

Colleagues who knew Lieber have described him as a man of almost pathological ambition, someone who worked six days a week, grew the largest pumpkin in Massachusetts because if he was going to grow a pumpkin it was going to be the largest one, and who had, by his mid-50s, done nearly everything a scientist in America could do except win the one prize that mattered most to him. The Nobel. People who knew him well believe the China relationship was, at its core, a Nobel strategy. A larger network, more graduate students, more prolific output, more international prestige. The $50,000 a month the Wuhan University of Technology paid him in cash, sometimes in brown paper packages, was almost beside the point for a Harvard professor of his standing. China was offering him scale, speed, and the infrastructure to do science at a level the American system had stopped being able to provide. He lied about it, repeatedly and on the record, and he paid a price. Two days in jail. Six months of home confinement and a $50,000 fine which is roughly one month's Chinese salary.

What Lieber found in Shenzhen is what an entire generation of American researchers is discovering: that the gravitational center of serious science has begun to shift. His new laboratory, i-BRAIN, gives him access to dedicated nanofabrication equipment and large-scale primate research facilities that were effectively unavailable to him at Harvard  because the American research model has become structurally incapable of deploying capital at the speed and scale that frontier science now requires. The fragmented US system of competitive grants, regulatory approval processes, shared equipment, and institutional bureaucracy was designed for a world in which America had no serious rivals. That world is long gone. China named brain-computer interfaces a national priority in its 2026 five-year plan. The Shenzhen ecosystem surrounding Lieber's lab has been funded with billions of dollars of government money. The building his institute will eventually occupy covers 750,000 square meters and is still under construction. The sign at the entrance to the broader campus reads, with a bluntness that almost demands respect: "Innovate with the Party." America's equivalent message to its scientists, delivered through the NIH grant review process and the indirect cost rate negotiations and the replication crisis and the adjunct crisis, has been considerably less inspiring.

This would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. For most of the twentieth century and well into the twenty-first, the traffic in scientific talent moved in one direction. The best minds from everywhere in the world came to America. They came for the universities, the funding, the freedom, the meritocracy whether real or imagined, and the simple fact that America was where the best science happened. China was a place you left to do serious work, not a place you went to. The researchers who returned to China from American institutions were going home, making a sacrifice, trading opportunity for family or patriotism. Lieber is something categorically different: a native-born American, a Harvard institution unto himself, who looked at what China was building and concluded it was the better bet. 

Lieber was never charged with transferring a single piece of intellectual property to China. He was convicted of lying about his involvement, which he did, on video, in terms that made his defense attorney's job nearly impossible. The prosecution made enough noise to damage American science's relationship with Chinese researchers for years but it did not stop Charles Lieber. He served his sentence, waited out his house arrest, and is now in Shenzhen doing the work he always wanted to do, with better equipment, more funding, and the full backing of a state that has decided his field is a national priority. A former NSA general counsel called him Exhibit A in the failure of American legal deterrence. He is also, less comfortably, Exhibit A in something else: what happens when a country decides that winning a geopolitical competition is more important than actually building the conditions in which its best people want to stay.

Anxiety Roots

As someone who has limited social bandwidth and has experiened social anxiety, I found this article on the topic fascinating. New research into social anxiety reveals that the condition is more than a psychological personality trait; it is deeply rooted in our biology. Scientists have identified three specific brain networks that malfunction in those who experience social fear. The salience network, which includes the amygdala, often becomes hyperactive and causes people to interpret neutral facial expressions as hostile. Simultaneously, the executive control network struggles to maintain focus on conversations while the default mode network fuels an internal monologue of self-criticism.

Fascinating new studies also suggest a link between the gut microbiome and social behavior. Researchers discovered that people with social anxiety disorder have distinct differences in their gut bacteria compared to those without the condition. In laboratory experiments, transferring these specific microbes into healthy subjects resulted in an increased fear of social interaction. This suggests that the bacteria in our digestive system may influence how nerve cells communicate in the brain, potentially by altering how the body processes nutrients like tryptophan.

Understanding these biological drivers opens the door to new ways of reversing the condition. While traditional methods like gradual exposure and reframing nervous energy as excitement remain effective, the future of treatment may include dietary interventions. Early evidence indicates that consuming fermented foods and probiotics could support a healthier microbiome and reduce symptoms. By combining these biological insights with established psychological strategies, it is becoming increasingly possible to recalibrate the brain and regain confidence in social settings. If folks like me only needed to step up their consumption of yogurt and kimchi before heading out to a networking event.

Performative Science

The comments on this Ars Technica post say everything that needs to be said. The stance on display is so bizarre that it strains credulity that someone in public office could hold it in good faith. At some point, one has to accept that certain people are willfully choosing alternate “facts” and realities, not out of ignorance, but in defiance of their own better judgment, but for reasons the rest of us are left to reverse-engineer.

A friend of mine who’s a history buff found the whole thing depressingly understandable. History, after all, is littered with precedents. She pointed to Elizabeth I. During the reign of her Catholic sister, Mary I (“Bloody Mary”), the Protestant Elizabeth lived under constant threat of execution for heresy. To survive, she dutifully attended Catholic Mass and publicly professed Catholic devotion, even as she remained the great hope of the Protestant cause. The reward for this performance was survival, long enough to inherit the throne, at which point she promptly reversed course and established the Church of England. To contemporaries, her piety may have looked like betrayal; in reality, it was self-preservation.

If that is the template being followed here, then rest assured: these very people will be first in line to vaccinate the infants in their lives against polio, with every trace of evidence scrubbed away afterward so the performance can continue uninterrupted.

As the article notes, Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, declared—without irony—“I don’t like established science,” and that “science is what I observe.” He went on to dismiss the evidence-based methodology that previous ACIP panels used to carefully and transparently craft vaccine policy. We have now arrived at that point in this spiral of madness where personal intuition is allowed to trump epistemology in science.

My grandmother, with her second-grade education, used to hand out amulets to keep her grandkids from having bad dreams. Everyone humored her because she meant well. I’m sure she had “observed” the efficacy of her method for decades, why would any evidence be needed at that point? The only real difference is that she didn’t hold public office. Perhaps that was the mistake.

Seeking Biology

I grew up in a family of engineers and experienced skepticism from folks around me about biology as real science. The "real" seemed to apply for math, physics and chemistry. Being quite deplorable at biology myself, I never got to the point where I could hold an informed opinion. My family and social network followed a well established pattern of thinking. For centuries, our understanding of reality has been dominated by the Newtonian paradigm. It calls for a vision of the universe as a giant clockwork machine unfolding according to fixed, deterministic laws. Newton’s framework taught us to identify key variables, write universal laws, and define the relevant phase space in advance, a recipe that works spectacularly well for classical physics and even underpins modern quantum theory, which, despite its probabilistic elements, still operates within fixed phase spaces and deterministic evolution of probability. This worldview brought structure and predictability but subtly implied that everything, even apparent randomness, was just a matter of incomplete knowledge.

Yet, biology quietly refuses to fit this mold. The evolution of life on Earth shows us a system that perpetually reinvents itself in ways no set of pre-written equations can capture. The biosphere is not a static assembly of predetermined possibilities. Organisms continuously repurpose their environment, invent new uses, and bring genuinely novel adaptations into being, forever expanding what is possible. This evolutionary creativity can’t be encompassed by a fixed phase space or predetermined variables; instead, it demonstrates that order, complexity, and meaning arise through open-ended, unpredictable processes. The emergence of new species, ecological interactions, and traits are not only beyond prediction but can’t even be fully specified in advance.

The realization that life and perhaps reality itself transcends reductionist, law-bound frameworks has profound implications for science and philosophy. Rather than seeking a “theory of everything” grounded solely in physics, we may need to embrace the unpredictable, self-creating aspects of biological evolution as a fundamental feature of reality. Creativity, emergence, and surprise become central threads in the fabric of existence, inviting us to see biology not as a messy specialization, but potentially as the true key to understanding how the universe invents, adapts, and flourishes beyond the boundaries of deterministic laws.

Finding Home

There is a gloomy way to read this story about scientists fleeing America and then a more hopeful one along the lines of a rising tide lifts all ships. If there were great options for research all around the world, science might come out ahead. The talent from America would be fused with the local talent that may have ideas that could not have come without them being a product of that society and culture - things that did not get exported by just remained there. 

One hopes most if not all of the research will be published and accessible around the world. In that scenario, the world benefits from the mashup of talent and intelligence at a scale that had not happened before. Who know how reality will unfold in years to come but I like imagining the better, more hopeful outcome anyway. It is great to see that there are harboring arms for our best and brightest around the world. 

Last month, France's CentraleSupélec announced a $3.2 million grant to help finance American research that had been halted in the states. And Netherlands Minister of Education, Culture and Science Eppo Bruins wrote in a letter to parliament that he requested to set up a fund aimed at bringing top international scientists to the Netherlands.

There is some evidence that these entreaties are reaching curious ears.

It is possible that there will come a time, when these folks will have a reason and incentive to return to America and bring back a lot more than they had felt with.

Imagining Concepts

Interesting reading about concept neurons and the idea that there could be a single cell at the heart of your most intractable troubles. So if that "problematic" cell could somehow be identified and treated then you'd become free. The trick is to find the one as this researcher did in the context of actors any famous things

..he found a neuron that responded to the actor. That raised a new question: “Is it responding to this picture of Jennifer Aniston, or is it responding to the concept of ‘Jennifer Aniston’?” he recalled. In a follow-up experiment, he showed patients seven different pictures of Aniston, and found that the same neuron fired for all of the photos — but not for images of other actors or objects. He then started to identify neurons for other famous places and people. He found one that responded only to Halle Berry, and another that fired only for the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Imagine, there was a way to stimulate a person's brain with the things that made them anxious, angry or sad and see how those feels coalesced at a cellular level. Even knowing seems like a great first step - it would afford the person more agency and not feel like they can be triggered in ways they have no control over.

Testing Love

 Reading this article made me wonder if the next step would be to scan your loved ones brains to check if they love you as much you love them. Maybe grandma is just faking her affection and really can't stand the clingy grandkid and wishes to be left alone to enjoy her retirement. Maybe the boyfriend is going through the motions in the relationship and will even propose but his heart is not in it. 

..brain scans of close friends doing the same activities are actually much more similar than those of less connected people. You literally are on the same wavelength as your besties. 

All of which means that when it comes to human-to-human connection, you can gauge the extent of a pair's attachment by looking at a brain scan. Can the same be said of human-dog pairs? 

A trust but verify love idea is fraught with dangers. Sometimes, you have to make peace with whatever love you can get from a person you care about - specially if that relationship is immutable. If you have a complicated relationship with your sibling but believe there is real love at the core of it, that is an article of faith to hold on to, not dissect and destroy upon finding contraindications. Sometimes a lie that you want to overlook is the best way to cope with a truth you do not want to face. 

Coming Together

 It was a bit surprising for me to see Ritalin and psilocybin mentioned somewhat interchangeably in this article. Poking around some more it seems while both influence brain function and connectivity, their mechanisms, effects, and subjective experiences are quite different. Psilocybin's profound impact on brain desynchronization are quite unlike the more focused and less transformative effects of Ritalin. 

The idea that psilocybin can scramble our brains for a while until we lose our sense of individual identity and become indistinguishable from others could have interesting outcomes (if done right and everyone consents) for team building efforts. If people are not getting along and see themselves as too different and apart from each other, then perhaps they could benefit from a period of cohesion and harmony that they can't fight off.

Bringing people together in such times as we live in seems to be truly magical. 

Initially, the study authors found that each person had a highly defined and completely unique pattern of network connectivity, like a kind of neural fingerprint that could be used to identify any given individual. Immediately after taking psilocybin, however, connectivity patterns became more chaotic, to the point that participants could no longer be distinguished from one another based on their brain activity.

“The brains of people on psilocybin look more similar to each other than to their untripping selves,” explained study author Nico Dosenbach in a statement. “Their individuality is temporarily wiped out. This verifies, at a neuroscientific level, what people say about losing their sense of self during a trip.”

Seeing Red

There is science that explains why relitigating the past and going through dark feelings is bad for your health. It seems obvious that you feel bad mentally though if stirred up enough emotionally, it can feel awful physically as well. Reading this reminded me of the the cycles of anger I have been through in my younger years over events that where I had been hurt without cause. It was like being a victim for the second and third time without gaining any clarity or being closer to resolution. The whole episode was a waste of mental energy. 

"We saw that evoking an angered state led to blood vessel dysfunction, though we don't yet understand what may cause these changes," Shimbo said. "Investigation into the underlying links between anger and blood vessel dysfunction may help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular events."

I am thinking about the people in my life who have suffered heart attacks - all of them without exception in my small sample size were pretty quick to anger. They would be described as emotionally volatile. Maybe there could an intervention strategy that slows or blocks the blood vessel dysfunction.

Major Impact

I had a chance to watch a Neil deGrasse Tyson show recently and had the most enjoyable time. Tyson balances erudition with entertainment with perfect grace. He can amuse and educate by turn. There were many young kids in the audience and he engaged with a few of them directly. I could not help imagining how lucky they might have felt and how privileged they were to have adults in their life who thought to bring them out to such a show. There was plenty to think about after the show but I mostly mulled over the impact an educator like Tyson can have. 

Every time he goes on the stage talks about hard concepts in a way that is accessible to everyone, he must turn a few young people to math and science - not just for the sake of a degree but to love the subjects. Some others might feel compelled to make their time on earth because life is such an infinitely small blip. Those like me experiencing midlife angst and feeling like time is slipping away without any outcomes, he might inspire to break out of the rut and do something useful. Every good teacher has the ability to bring meaningful change to the lives of those they teach but when the teacher has the star-power of someone like Tyson, the effect is disproportionately large. I was glad to have had the experience. 

Whole Body

This essay on how all cells in our body can think and not just brain cells made for an interesting read. 

It turns out that regular cells—not just highly specialized brain cells such as neurons—have the ability to store information and act on it. Now Levin has shown that the cells do so by using subtle changes in electric fields as a type of memory. These revelations have put the biologist at the vanguard of a new field called basal cognition. Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence—learning, memory, problem-solving—outside brains as well as within them.

Recalling sad or painful memories can make the heart ache quite physically - we have experienced that. Maybe the cells in the heart can act on the memory and be triggered in a way that manifests a pain. People do have gut feelings about things and are known to act on it and often to their advantage. 

..a team of scientists at the University of Western Australia and the University of Firenze in Italy conditioned the plant by jostling it throughout the day without harming it, it quickly learned to ignore the stimulus. Most remarkably, when the scientists left the plant alone for a month and then retested it, it remembered the experience. 

I do believe that houseplants can tell when they are truly forgotten and abandoned versus when you genuinely help them thrive but missed a watering or two for reasons beyond your control. In the later case, they often rally and get back on track even they got in bad shape. If there is actual, willful neglect they won't bother. Maybe there is more than just wild imagination to such observations. 

No Inhertiance

Sad story about how the meek don't infact inherit the world even if they have done pathbreaking work that sets the not to meek up for a guaranteed Nobel Prize. I have no idea how scientific research works and the institutional politics that come with that territory. But what I read here is very relatable to what I have seen happening in business over and over again

The bright but demure analyst has a great insight and steps forward to share it. The way they go about it is too boring, steeped in technical or engineering detail and fails to capture the imagination of the audience which often is not at the big decision-making level anyway. People tell the analyst they did fantastic work and everyone is on their way. If they are very lucky they may even get a raise or promotion for their efforts

But someone there in that group, takes an interest in the analyst's work and works up a business case around it to sell to the powers that be. All at once this person goes from being a nobody from nowhere to the next visionary in the company. They get the project funded and are on their way to greatness. The analyst is long forgotten and never receives any credit. 

The fact that a significant publication is stating clearly Zhuo-Hua Pan invented optogenetics first. is already a win but it is far from enough. 

About Hair

Interesting reading about things that human hair can be turned into. The versality and usefulness of something we take for granted and so is so freely available is amazing:

As it turns out, hair is tensile enough to be braided into rope, flexible enough to be woven into felt, and resistant enough to be pressed into a panel that resembles wood. 

For those in the know, there is nothing particularly novel about using hair in a variety of ways. Among a myriad of things

human hair/clay mixture (along with other binders) is used in plastering house walls, lining ovens, making wheels, and so forth. The addition of hair significantly reduces cracking and prolongs the life of these structures. Research shows that human hair reinforcement enhances the structural strength as well as the thermal insulation capacity of the clay structures

Reading about many good things that human hair can do for the world, reminded me of a rather silly poem on the topic

Delia, the unkindest girl on earth, When I besought the fair, That favour of intrinsic worth A ringlet of her hair, Refused that instant to comply With my absurd request, For reasons she could specify, Some twenty score at least.

Sixth Sense

The science of how birds navigate is complex and for now an unproven theory. Fascination with the migratory patterns of birds and their ability to stay in formation is not new. Ancients had their way of explaining what they saw. It would be interesting if human's could develop magnetic sixth sense like birds or perhaps we already have it and don't use it enough

..In 1978, he and Gould found magnetite in the abdomen of honey bees. Then, in 1979, in the heads of pigeons. Unbeknownst to Kirschvink, across the Atlantic Ocean a young, charismatic University of Manchester, U.K., biologist named Robin Baker was setting his sights on the magnetic capabilities of larger, more sophisticated animals: British students. In a series of experiments, he gathered blindfolded students from a "home" point onto a Sherpa minibus, took them on a tortuous route into the countryside, and asked them the compass direction of home. In Science in 1980, Baker reported something uncanny: The students could almost always point in the quadrant of home. When they wore a bar magnet in the elastic of their blindfolds, that pointing skill was thwarted, whereas controls who wore a brass bar still had what appeared to be a magnetic sense.

Exchanging Cells

Found this article about transfer of cells between mother and fetus specially how long the cells can remain there fascinating. It explains the strength of the bond which for better or worse is one that cannot be shook off. As with any other phenomenon, it is likely that the nature and extent of exchange varies between different pregnant mothers resulting in different outcomes. 

If the mother's natural instinct to to protect the baby and her body works in tandem to help her achieve this goal, perhaps she acts as a lightning arrestor that diverts and consumes all harm that comes her baby's way. She would need to absorb it all if she it not capable of releasing it from herself. It is no surprise to see women become entirely different versions of who they used to be after childbirth - specially those that had to go through situations that called on and depleted their mental and physical resources to make it to the finish line.

“If these fetal cells are interacting with maternal physiology, where in the maternal body would we expect the greatest effect on function? That’s been a big question mark. Putting this into an evolutionary context was incredibly clever and novel and very exciting. It’s a beautiful example of theory driving testable predictions."

Unpleasant Magnetism

Interesting read on why some people are mosquito magnets (like me). Having a higher metabolic rate leading to greater production of carbon dioxide seems to the big factor. From what I can recall of my childhood in my grand parents' house where there was the greatest abundance of mosquitoes, the kids were more impacted than the elderly. My grandmother's physical activities were confined to cooking a few dishes and supervising the domestic help on the rest. Once those chores were done she was mostly stationary and not attacked by mosquito swarms like us kids were.

The human mosquito magnets you can spot at summer parties may have a genetically high metabolic rate or may be more physically active than other attendees. They may also be undertaking other activities that increase their metabolic rate, such as the consumption of alcohol. Increased metabolic rate is why runners attract more mosquitoes during their cooldown stretching exercises. Pregnant women, perhaps due to their increased metabolic rate, attract a disproportionately large number of mosquitoes as well.

Some forms of magnetism may be good and welcome but being a mosquito and bug favorite is absolutely not specially when you really enjoy being outdoors and this becomes a significant barrier

Learning Joy

 Interesting read about how our brains tag experiences as good or bad. It would be great to extend the study to see what interventions a person could make in their lives such that they tag fewer things as bad and consequently have a sunnier disposition, better mental health, Serving others in whatever way possible seems to be one way to get there - it expands a person's world view seeing others tagging things very differently from them. For me personally, one particular experience stands out as a recalibration trigger in my brain. The guy was a fish-monger in the small town I grew up in. He had very little going for him - sat in the corner of the market for the smaller vendors who could not afford to hold big fish in their inventory. He was maybe ten years older than me and supporting his family who lived in a nearby village. My father would chat with him every time we bought fish - I was frequently there with him. K was one of the most cheerful people I had seen.

Never saw the brightness of his smile diminish as he struggled to eke out a living. By the time I left to college he had moved to the stalls where the bigger fish-mongers sat. He would tell my father about how he was slowly improving his village home and when we was done adding the extra room he would get married. He also talked about troubles which seemed endless but he had a way of finding the silver lining which I clearly could not see. His brain was clearly set up to tag most things as good and just about nothing as entirely bad. I was in awe of how K did this and in times of trouble tried to recall those conversations between him and my father, how he processed information and came to conclusions I would not have been able to. I am nowhere close to his abilities but to this day, I use his example as inspiration on how to deal with adversity. 

Prime Unready

Feel good story about scientific research that left me with some questions as a layperson reading this. The fact that Vice picked it up was an interesting data point. So we talk about how this will solve for over a tenth of the waste being generated in the world - that is a staggering number and gets you engaged. It's built on work done since 2005 so you pause to wonder why in almost 20 years the problem was not solved. 

They throw in AI as it it was the magic wand that ultimately revealed the answer that was being sought in vain for decades. But AI has existed for many decades and the data used in this particular model is not novel either. The article closes with the reality check that makes you wonder why this was being reported in the first place - we are not talking about the high school science fair winner here. 

First, Alper says, he and his team must test FAST-PETase on the wide range of different types of PET found in the waste stream, and the detritus that’s often found in plastic bottles or on top of plastic containers when it’s recycled. Should the researchers find an enzyme or group of enzymes with the robustness to be used practically, they believe it can help tackle the “billions of tons” of waste in our environment. 

Slowing Clock

The scientific basis of why trying to attract a mate can age a person is interesting but this is self-evident. There is a lot of stress involved in finding the right partner no matter which way a person goes about it. That and the lack of a stable domestic life can wear the person out, make them age. In a stable partnership, those stressor fade away and people are likely to be happier and healthier leading to slower aging.

Evolutionary biology predicts that investing in reproduction causes aging indirectly. Imagine that your body has protective mechanisms which can let you live longer, but that they’re energetically costly. Evolutionary theories of aging would say that there’s a trade-off between investing energy into those mechanisms, or into reproduction. Animals in the wild suffer high levels of mortality from things like predators and accidents, so are unlikely to live to late ages. So it makes sense for them to invest heavily in reproduction, even if that accelerates the aging process, because they will usually be dead by the time aging occurs anyway.

Love Addiction

Interesting essay on the addictive power of love. It got me thinking of my own life experiences and those of others I have known over the years -  women particularly because it makes it easier to relate. Some girls can spin out over relationships where as others can stay very grounded. 

Love addiction is not the same as cocaine addiction at the neurological level: important differences, like how long it takes for the desire for another "hit" to occur, do exist. Rather, the authors see this as an opportunity to reconsider our approach to addiction in general and to think about how we can help the heartsick when they just can't seem to get over their last relationship.

Lot of good advice on how the brain can help in the process of building and sustaining a happy partnership. Putting personal observations together with this essay, it seems that the tendency to spin out in the intense period of romantic love could be related to the target being unattainable in some way and often for good reason that we don't want to accept. What we cannot and must not have can get us to various degrees of longing and desperation - depending on the type of personality. It can get a person to act love-sick and mopey or love-crazy and manic or something in between those. In a stable situation - where both sides are in and for the right reasons, it would be unlikely that anyone acts like an addict anymore.