Hacker News: stenl

New comment by stenl in "Making holograms with a pen plotter"

stenl — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:56:32 +0000

Done, enjoy! I posted links to his web site instead of Sotheby’s. Even though his web site is a little broken, it had much more detail on the technical process, which I think HN will appreciate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298723

New comment by stenl in "Self reflected, spatiotemporal brain art by Greg Dunn"

stenl — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:53:51 +0000

Greg A Dunn, neuroscientist turned artist, uses microetching to encode time as a third dimension in his artwork. This piece ”Self reflected” is a depiction of the flow of signals in the human brain, which come to live as you shine light on it from varying directions. I have a copy on my wall and it’s mesmerizing.

His website unfortunately lacks a single landing page for this artwork. Don’t miss the other sections:

Videos: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/videos/

Images: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/self-reflected-gall...

The art and the concept: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/the-art-of-self-ref...

The neuroscience: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/the-neuroscience-be...

The engineering: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/the-engineering-beh...

And of course all his other art.

Self reflected, spatiotemporal brain art by Greg Dunn

stenl — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:53:51 +0000

Article URL: https://www.gregadunn.com/self-reflected/how-self-reflected-was-made/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298723

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by stenl in "Making holograms with a pen plotter"

stenl — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:46:52 +0000

Related: ”Self Reflected” by neuroscientist and artist Gregg Dunn, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/self-reflected-a-giant-...

He uses the third dimension to encode time, so that you get an image of the brain that illustrates how signals propagate dynamically between brain regions.

I have a version of this on my wall and its mesmerizing to look at with the right lighting conditions

New comment by stenl in "Trump Media to sell instant access to 'market-moving' social posts"

stenl — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:08:06 +0000

This seems to be the original:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/b2icontent.irpass.cc/2660/rl168199....

(via CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/truth-api-trump-media/)

So it seems to be precisely as nefarious as BBC reported.

New comment by stenl in "Human Accelerated Region 1"

stenl — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:10:46 +0000

My group published a cell atlas of the developing human brain in 2023, giving gene expression in single cells from postconception week 5 to 13. It’s on github: https://github.com/linnarsson-lab/developing-human-brain

The NIH BRAIN initiative is working on the next generation of that, covering more timepoints and better spatial data.

New comment by stenl in "French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence"

stenl — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 17:48:52 +0000

He was not head of state when the crime was committed and he is not head of state now.

New comment by stenl in "The Longest Sightline on Earth"

stenl — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 14:45:50 +0000

If, like me, you wanted to see the actual farthest distance photo, here it is: https://beyondrange.wordpress.com/

New comment by stenl in "Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children"

stenl — Sat, 31 May 2025 11:09:59 +0000

The average federal tax rate is 14%, and the USAID budget was about 0.8% of the federal budget, so you’ve been paying about a 0.1% tax to fund USAID.

New comment by stenl in "How much information is in DNA?"

stenl — Sat, 10 May 2025 15:13:28 +0000

A much more detailed and thoughtful (and peer reviewed) take on the same question from my colleague Jussi Taipale: https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embj.201696114

New comment by stenl in "Fish have a brain microbiome – could humans have one too?"

stenl — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 20:14:09 +0000

Cool! Has anything similar been attempted in tumor tissue, given the many claims of microbes in tumors? Especially tumors not in contact with the exterior.

New comment by stenl in "Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction"

stenl — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 11:01:21 +0000

And further down: ” Contributions

J.J. and D.H. led the research. J.J., R.E., A. Pritzel, M.F., O.R., R.B., A. Potapenko, S.A.A.K., B.R.-P., J.A., M.P., T. Berghammer and O.V. developed the neural network architecture and training. T.G., A.Ž., K.T., R.B., A.B., R.E., A.J.B., A.C., S.N., R.J., D.R., M.Z. and S.B. developed the data, analytics and inference systems. D.H., K.K., P.K., C.M. and E.C. managed the research. T.G. led the technical platform. P.K., A.W.S., K.K., O.V., D.S., S.P. and T. Back contributed technical advice and ideas. M.S. created the BFD genomics database and provided technical assistance on HHBlits. D.H., R.E., A.W.S. and K.K. conceived the AlphaFold project. J.J., R.E. and A.W.S. conceived the end-to-end approach. J.J., A. Pritzel, O.R., A. Potapenko, R.E., M.F., T.G., K.T., C.M. and D.H. wrote the paper.”

New comment by stenl in "Scientists create a cell that precludes malignant growth"

stenl — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 16:13:51 +0000

These cells won’t divide because they will fail to replicate their DNA due to the lack of thymidine. The use case is cell therapies, where you give the patient cells grown in the lab but you don’t want those cells to potentially divide and cause cancer. For example, CAR T therapy to treat cancer, or dopaminergic neuron replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease.

New comment by stenl in "Anti-aging molecule successfully restores multiple markers of youth"

stenl — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 10:08:15 +0000

TERT activation is one of the most common alterations causing cancer. In fact, the whole point of the normally very low TERT expression in somatic cells is likely to be cancer prevention. It’s the mechanism behind the Hayflick limit, which puts a bound on the max number of divisions a cell can go through, via telomere shortening. Without such a limit, you get cancer. I highly doubt it will make you live longer.

New comment by stenl in "Frozen human brain tissue was successfully revived for the first time"

stenl — Sat, 18 May 2024 20:07:15 +0000

Freezing and thawing organoids is not new, it’s fairly routine. The frozen piece of brain from an epilepsy patient doesn’t retain ”normal function”. There is no evidence in the paper that it integrates into neuronal circuits (this was not even tested), or supports anything like normal neuronal firing. The cells are alive, yes, and likely highly abnormally perturbed.

New comment by stenl in "mRNA Cancer Vaccine Reprograms Immune System to Tackle Glioblastoma in 48 Hours"

stenl — Thu, 02 May 2024 06:08:00 +0000

”The Emperor of all Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukherjee is fantastic

New comment by stenl in "What is the index of an empty string in an empty string?"

stenl — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 19:31:28 +0000

Related: Dijkstra, ”Why numbering should start at zero”

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...

New comment by stenl in "Scientists generate first single-cell atlas of the primate brain"

stenl — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 14:35:52 +0000

No that would be amazing. But we don’t have the technology to map all the connections in large mammalian brains. It was done in the fruitfly just this year: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9330

New comment by stenl in "Scientists generate first single-cell atlas of the primate brain"

stenl — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 09:23:36 +0000

None, that was done 100 years ago, e.g. by Ramon y Cajal (Nobel prize 1906). But microscopic detail does not give molecular detail. What these current studies add is data on gene expression (mRNA molecules), chromatin accessibility (related to gene regulation), electrophysiology (in some cases), etc. We need such detail to connect disease genes inferred from genetics to specific brain cell types, for example.

New comment by stenl in "A comprehensive census of brain cell types"

stenl — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 08:40:03 +0000

Papers are paywalled but most can be found on bioRxiv, e.g. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.12.511898v1