Smrithi Sunil

How to speed up medical breakthroughs YouTube video by Roots of Progress Institute

In October, I gave a talk titled How to speed up medical breakthroughs.

It's now available on YouTube.

More interactive maps here: smrithisunil.com/posts/USA_te...
So much more to explore here: www.zelma.ai/data

There’s a ton of publicly available school test scores data on zelma.ai, with some states’ records going back a decade. Spent some time this break mapping math proficiency rates by adding school district boundaries to the data.

More here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
And here: www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Each of the roughly 200 eyes of the scallop contains a concave mirror tiled with tiny square guanine crystals. Unrelatedly, I used a digital micromirror device almost every day of my PhD, and didn’t know about the scallop’s eye.
Yes, I’m reading An Immense World.

Inside a scallop’s eye (left) and a digital micromirror device (right).

An #astrocyte made from red oak. #brainart

Michael Nielsen on the idea of creative contexts. Connected with this very much!
michaelnotebook.com/creative_con...

What Would It Take to Recreate Bell Labs? For most of the 20th century, AT&T was almost entirely responsible for building and operating America’s telephone infrastructure.

I found this piece interesting too.
"Being a subsidiary of a government-sanctioned, vertically integrated monopoly gave Bell Labs a broad research scope and freedom to pursue long-term research projects unavailable to most other industrial labs."
www.construction-physics.com/p/what-would...

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of doing something new. First time trying my hand at neuron carving with inspiration and guidance from @neurowoodworks.bsky.social. Neuron made with cherry and frame with red oak.

Mo Pandiarajan, founder of Eden school, shows students a view of a specimen in a Foldscope, which he's attached to his mobile phone. Photo credit: Viraj Nayer for NPR

A.Santhos inserts a slide into the foldscope. He is a former student who lives in the neigbourhood and keeps in touch with the students of his alma mater, often taking them for nature walks to examine the world around them through the foldscope. Viraj Nayer for NPR

Students at Eden School select specimens to examine with their Foldscopes. Viraj Nayer for NPR

Ramana Rajeesh Kumar, 11, Meenakshi, 8, and Magathi Yazhini, 9, with their Foldscopes. Ramana has been fascinated with bugs for a while. "They look even cooler under the Foldscope," he says. "Especially their eyes and hairy feet!" Viraj Nayer for NPR

My favorite NPR story blog - “Goats and Soda” sent a writer and photographer to a rural school in India; an early adopter of Foldscope. A wonderful photo story of kids “reading nature”. In this current challenging climate - the kids show us the way with joy and wonder.

www.npr.org/sections/goa...

Would love to be added!

🩵 sky views from the Allen Institute this morning