https://measuredthinking.nl/about/
skeptic
Recently, in a journal club, we discussed the paper Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Mediates Axon Initial Segment Shortening: Implications for Diabetic Brain Complications (Shelby et al., 2026), and something in Figure 2C and 2D caught my eye. In the paper, they compare the length of axon initial segments (AIS), which are
I wrote about making a L'Oaf AI and learning strategies from it a week or so ago. In the article I mentioned letting readers play against the AI, and after getting permission from the game's designer, Bart de Jong, I was able to put something together
simulations
Modeling in climate science is a complicated topic. These models have to do very difficult tasks - modeling climate, and are expected to inform future directions of climate change, air pollution, nitrogen deposition, and other questions that have huge consequences. The only way to deal with systems this complex is simulation.
skeptic
I was watching a Mrwhosetheboss Youtube video in which he showed off some Korean tech, including a red-light scalp massager. While watching I was getting a bit annoyed, as he pretty much just parroted the sales pitch of the red-light craze. It goes a little like this: shining
l'oaf
For E. coli, the trick is chemosensing: it swims in straight runs, occasionally tumbles around, and biases that run-tumble pattern so it slowly gets closer to a food source. It does this by trying to increase the amount of gradient it senses, ie. following the attractant gradient. There'
simulations
Teaching an AI to play L'oaf and seeing what a human can learn from it.
science-news
I was interested in learning about the scientific core of Genmab’s business model. Looking for this, I found two key papers: the 2013 controlled Fab-arm exchange paper and the 2013 scale-up and manufacturing paper. The conceptual origin sits a bit earlier, in the IgG4 literature, where Fab-
model
If you ask why we age, you can easily end up in the weeds of mitochondria, telomeres, senescent cells, cancer suppression, and a dozen other mechanisms that sound like the culprit. Biology offers many proximate causes of decline, and it is tempting to treat them as competing explanations. The risk
veganism
I read Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith because it sits right at the intersection of my interests: sentience, evolutionary biology, and good popular science. I also think a lot about animal welfare. As a vegan, I care about where experience might show up across animals, and what the evidence
skeptic
A friend recently explained their excess of empathy by confidently talking about their mirror neurons, and my internal skepticism alarm went off in my mind. So I thought I'd write a little article about this topic to figure out why it irked me so much. A single word
antibody
I have a soft spot for methods that turn messy cell biology into something that is more quantifiable. When a tool works, it helps bring true progress into our understanding of fundamental biology. When it fails, you can lose weeks to cloning, expression quirks, or reagents that behave differently every