Yannai A. Gonczarowski

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Aurora - Little, Big Science Other than light and heat, electrically charged particles, such as electrons, are expelled from the Sun’s corona, its outer layer, and race through space at high speeds in every direction. This stream...

🧪Join us for Physics 101 through the magnificent colors of the aurora:
✨🎨
www.lbscience.org/en/2026/03/0...

@lbscience.org

Frozen Zoo - Little, Big Science *This article was inspired by a family visit to the San Diego Safari Park and a “behind-the-scenes” tour of the Frozen Zoo laboratories. Zoos are an inseparable part of the effort to restore ecosystem...

🧪How is cutting edge biotech being used to conserve endangered species?
🦏 A family visit to the @sandiegozoo.bsky.social and a tour of their “frozen zoo” sparked inspiration for my latest article on @lbscience.org

www.lbscience.org/en/2026/02/2...

Explaining Superbowl commercials to kids is quite a teaching moment. "No, this car doesn't turn into a robot. This commercial tries to make people buy the car because in the commercial it seems like it turns into a robot, even though if you buy it, it won't. Silly, huh?"

And another hurray! In another wonderful decision, Ariel Procaccia elected fellow of the @acm.org! Ariel isn't just a wonderful researcher with impeccable taste, but is also such a kind colleague and mentor.
Tis a day of celebration for the @acmsigecom.bsky.social community and beyond!

Hurray! Noam Nisan elected fellow of the @acm.org! So well deserved. A wonderful teacher, mentor, researcher, and person. A source of pride for us his students, for the @acmsigecom.bsky.social and SIGACT communities, and for all of CS! Congrats to the ACM for having Noam as their fellow.

Finally

Insulin Without Needles - Little, Big Science Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which immune cells attack the pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. As a result, patients cannot make insulin—the hormone that regulates the entry of ...

🧪What if people living with diabetes could say goodbye to needles, and get their insulin by using an ointment? A new study published in @nature.com, describe a smart polymer carrier that can smuggle large molecules through the skin:

www.lbscience.org/en/2025/12/0...
@lbscience.org

New term just dropped:
Vibe proving

Credit goes to Tomer Ezra

(This is not an endorsement of this practice)

How Do Planes Fly? - Little, Big Science When I was a kid, I was astonished that a big car with wings could take off and cruise through the air. “How does an airplane manage to take off?” I asked, like any curious child, and the adults repli...

🧪There are lots of misconceptions around the mechanism that keeps planes up in the air.
✈️ So how is lift generated? And what are some of the popular theories that are actually wrong? A quick read for your next air travel:

www.lbscience.org/en/2021/05/0...

@lbscience.org

The Virtues of a Snack - Little, Big Science Peanut allergy comes from an inappropriate immune response to a protein found in peanuts and can trigger symptoms ranging from a runny nose to anaphylactic shock, which can be fatal if not treated pro...

🧪A decade ago pediatricians started recommending that babies be introduced to food allergens in infancy. Now, peanut and other food allergy rates have plummeted dramatically. The change was sparked by a series of studies inspired by an Israeli snack:
www.lbscience.org/en/2024/07/0...
@lbscience.org

Tylenol and Autism – Setting the Record Straight - Little, Big Science Autism is an umbrella term for neurodevelopmental conditions that manifest, among other things, as difficulties in communication and social interaction. The diagnostic criteria for autism and other fo...

🧪We joined the party and provided a detailed response to RFK and Trump's latest statement on Tylenol use during pregnancy and Autism:

www.lbscience.org/en/2025/09/2...

@lbscience.org

The New Life-Form That Never Was - Little, Big Science All known living organisms on Earth share a common biochemistry based on six chemical elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. These six elements are the principal compone...

🧪 A story of flawed science, responsibility of prestigious journals and research institutions, and infatuation with one’s own “groundbreaking” discoveries 🧫. The paper that took over a decade to be retracted from Science:

www.lbscience.org/en/2025/09/0...

@drorbarnir.bsky.social @lbscience.org

We Miss the Forest for the Concrete - Little, Big Science The first comprehensive quantitative estimate of global biomass was published in a 2018 study led by Dr. Yinon Bar-On and Professor Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute  [1]. Global biomass refers to th...

🧪 The toll we are taking on our Earth🌎 is quite literally weighing on it. The mass of human-produced materials far exceeds the total biomass. For more info, check out our article: www.lbscience.org/en/2025/08/1...

Does the Brain Have an Aura? - Little, Big Science The human brain is an extremely complex organ. Billions of neurons and other cells, which communicate with each other through a wide variety of electrical and chemical signals, underlie all of our emo...

🧪 Does our 🧠 light up like a 💡? Well.. not quite, but neurons do emit photons in the visible-light spectrum. These brain “biophotons” may serve another layer of complexity in the marvelous world of neuronal function. Read more about the brain’s “aura” here: www.lbscience.org/en/2025/08/2...

Happy RNA Day! - Little, Big Science Every year, we celebrate World RNA Day on the first of August. Why on August 1? Because August is abbreviated as AUG, which is also the start codon in most RNA molecules from which the ribosome produc...

🧪August is the month of RNA🌞 in honor of the first codon AUG. For more about the fascinating world of RNA, which is at the forefront of new therapeutics from RNAi, to mRNA vaccines, check out our article: www.lbscience.org/en/2024/08/0...
#WorldRNADay
@lbscience.org

🧪Our organs-on-chips for personalized cancer treatment. #MedSky

An Immune Cell Swallowing “Bad” Cholesterol - Little, Big Science In atherosclerosis, fatty deposits containing cholesterol molecules carried by proteins form on the walls of blood vessels. One of these protein-cholesterol structures is LDL, which is colloquially ca...

🧪🫀In this "Picture in Science" we recreated the cellular process happening in plaques to model #atherosclerosis in a dish.

www.lbscience.org/en/2024/09/1...
#microscopy #macrophages #hypercholesterolemia

Computational Competition Law and Public Policy Workshop CLES@UCL Second Workshop - Organised and chaired by Ioannis Lianos (UCL)

Amazing workshop at @laws.ucl.ac.uk yesterday. Presented work w/@sarafish.bsky.social @yannaigonch.bsky.social ‬in panel w/speakers from the European Commission, CMA, AdlC, & HCC. So gratifying to see our research making positive impact in the world. Thanks much @ilianos.bsky.social for inviting us!

Sticking to Life - Little, Big Science Rare hereditary diseases that affect as few as one newborn in a million pose a special challenge for patients and their families because so little information and research are available. These conditi...

🧪 Within dark times, there is some light for children with rare diseases🌈 🦓
#genetherapy success in treating the deadly hereditary disease of leukocyte adhesion deficiency.

www.lbscience.org/en/2025/06/1...

@lbscience.org

The purest form of pride is when our children surpass us.
@eleeshimshoni.bsky.social

Keep Politics out of the International Mathematical Olympiad To Members of the IMO Board, We are writing in response to a petition calling for the suspension of Israel’s membership in the International Mathematical Olympiad: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A petition to keep politics out of the International Mathematical Olympiad. I signed, and encourage you to sign too.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The Dark Side of Antibiotics - Little, Big Science It may surprise some of you to learn that the inside of your digestive tract, from the esophagus and all the way through your intestines, is actually part of the body’s external environment. Much like...

🧪 How do antibiotics negatively affect the intestines? Surprisingly it's not only by throwing our microbiome out of whack. The answer lies within the sticky mucus layer that serves as our first line of defense against the outside world:
www.lbscience.org/en/2024/09/2...
@lbscience.org

🧬אנחנו בתחילתה של מהפכה בתהליך פיתוח התרופות. בתקווה שגמישות ובחירת מודלים למחלות לפי המתאים ביותר יקרבו את היום שבוא תרופות חדשות יגיעו לחולים.

#econsky

National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members - NAS WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 120 members and 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original res...

Congrats to Sergiu Hart, perhaps the quickest thinker I know, and a wonderful mentor, coauthor, and person, for being elected as an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences!

www.nasonline.org/news/2025-na...

Just FYI, the below code, despite passing the Turing test, doesn't count as an "AI tool."

if (emulateEconReferee):
print("What's the economic interpretation?")
else:
print("What about a more general combinatorial structure?")

Great talk by @t8el.bsky.social at our econ theory seminar. As an added bonus, he publicly credited me for what he called two "Yannai tricks" in his slides:
1. Adding photos of his kids
2. Using memes
Happy to see my efforts of enriching econ with computer science techniques are bearing fruit!

The problem isn't the people who are skeptical about everything they read online today because it's April 1. The problem is the people who aren't skeptical about everything they read online every other day.

Looking forward to talking tomorrow to this wonderful community about my new paper with @ellasegev.bsky.social.

Thanks much for the invite, Maya Eden and @pgpiacquadio.bsky.social.

Tomorrow, Normative Economics and Economic Policy webinar by @yannaigonch.bsky.social!

Join us at 5pm Paris time (11am EDT) to hear about:
"Quantifying Inefficiency," joint with Ella Sagev.
Link: arxiv.org/abs/2412.11984

For the zoom invite, email us!