Demetrio Ferro

www.sciencefocus.com/news/cow-too...
Tool use - when idiot humans land clear, what's a cow gotta do to keep preened, hey?
#sentience #philsci #animals #philsky #welfare #climate

🚨 #FENS2026 NEW DATES 🚨

First, Formula 1 sent us from Madrid to #Barcelona. Now the Tour de France Grand Départ has us switching gears again—we're updating our dates to 6-10 July 2026! 🗓️

Find out more 👉: https://loom.ly/zMkMKcA

🔔 Stay tuned!

Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991-2020 average.
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...

Why the global economic system should value life on our planet, not exploit it To preserve the natural world, economists should account for forests and wetlands as much as for factories and farms.

Book review 📚 Why the global economic system should value life on our planet, not exploit it

go.nature.com/4oj1dke

This 2017 preprint by @suryaganguli.bsky.social is foundational: the dimension of a neural code can't be > that of the experiment used to measure it. Yet it is not very widely known. Maybe because people don't like the message? And because it's "unpublished"? (After writing it, Gao left for SpaceX)

Part of a Lancet Infographic summarising the findings from the Lancet Series on Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health.

Part of a Lancet Infographic summarising the findings from the Lancet Series on Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health.

Part of a Lancet Infographic summarising the findings from the Lancet Series on Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health.

Ultra-processed foods – what’s the impact?

In a new Lancet Series, experts warn a global rise in #UPFs presents a growing public health threat.

Read the evidence & policy recommendations ⬇️
spkl.io/63327AduhR

Universities should be more ambitious in the climate transition, according to The Young Academy - De Jonge Akademie News

Proud to share our manifesto - with a vision and concrete steps towards just sustainability transitions in Dutch academia!

With @rogierk.bsky.social, De Jonge Akademie, Green Young Academy

www.dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...

Years ago I started the Green Young Academy with @sanlifaez.bsky.social & @anne-urai.bsky.social. Across meetings, zoom calls, pitches and even a meeting with the King, this grew into 2 projects launched today: A report on Universities' sustainability plans & a manifesto with sustainability pledges

Very proud to have launched our manifesto and report to make Dutch academia more sustainable - a moment to celebrate after two years of hard work with the Green Young Academy, DJA and many inspiring colleagues

dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...

Is academic research becoming too competitive? Nature examines the data Applications for European research grants increased in 2025. Scientists say they’re feeling the competition.

“Is academic research becoming too competitive?”

Alternative framing:

“Is academic research becoming too unsupported?”

The former suggests the blame is on the researchers. The latter highlights underlying causes.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New article “Disentangling Metabolic & Neurovascular Timescales Supporting Cognitive Processes” by CIMeC_UniTrento in collaboration with leading partner institutes
Congrats F.Saviola, S. Tambalo, L. Beghini, A. Ferrari, B. Cassone, D. Van De Ville, J. Jovicich!
#PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2506513122

This is the kind of public intellectualism that makes the public hate intellectuals. Instead of showing what ideas have to teach us about life, Pinker holds a gun to life’s head and demands it conform to his thought experiments. And he does it with the patronizing tone of someone telling his readers what to think from on high. In one passage, prompting us to imagine increasingly higher-order levels of knowledge about knowledge, he virtually pats us on the head. “Now let’s try four layers,” he writes. After we’ve tackled four, he asks, encouragingly, “Think you can handle a fifth layer?”

This new book sounds interesting

Public engagement: building common ground How can we help to bridge this divide? Simply producing more excep­ tional science will not be enough to rebuild public trust. Rather, we must adopt a new model that recognizes communication and advocacy as core pillars of science, on a par with rigor and reproducibility. Public engagement efforts should be valued for faculty promotions, much like obtaining grants and publishing our findings in scientific journals. Researchers should be recognized and rewarded for activities such as giving public talks, working with local schools, engaging with policy­ makers, developing social media campaigns and platforms or writing accessible articles for general audiences. Developing these skills must be an integral part of scientific training, reinforcing the notion that the responsibility to champion science lies with us. Courses that teach graduate students and postdocs to communicate complex ideas clearly, to use social media effectively and to advocate for evidence­based policies must be deemed critical and supported by our universities. These efforts should not be viewed as distractions from research but woven into the fabric of what we do as scientists. Rebuilding public trust requires a cultural paradigm shift: scientists must see themselves not just as producers of knowledge, but also as its ambassadors and translators. Such a fundamental change will occur only if it is embraced by our scientific leaders and institutions, emphasizing the critical role of public engagement for science to succeed.

A thought-provoking piece in Nature Neuroscience by many neuroscience colleagues: "Science must break its silence to rebuild public trust". Lots to think about here.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Postdoc depression and anxiety rates are rising, finds survey of 872 researchers The Max Planck Society is good at attracting international postdocs but struggles to retain them, survey finds.

'Postdoc depression and anxiety rates are rising, finds survey of 872 researchers' @nature.com Career News 🧪🎓

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

3000 genes to understand autism and other neurological disorders - El·lipse An international collaboration between researchers at the PRBB and at Yale University shows how genetic alterations happening during early neurodevelopment can translate into neurological pathologies later in life.

🧪 @grib-barcelona.bsky.social & Yale scientists analysed 3.000 genes linked to brain disorders, finding early-life origins for autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and more.

Read the full article 👇

La carn i els lactis, els principals culpables alimentaris dels danys ambientals que afecten a la nostra salut - El·lipse Un estudi liderat per investigadors i investigadores d'ISGlobal ha quantificat per primera vegada els danys a la salut causats pels impactes ambientals de la nostra demanda d'aliments.

🍽️ Segons un estudi d’@isglobal.org, a Espanya la carn i els lactis generen més de la meitat de l’impacte ambiental de la dieta sobre la salut.

Llegeix-lo ara!👇

Un estudi del Clínic-IDIBAPS ha demostrat que, en animals sans, càrregues moderades d’exercici físic poden desencadenar fibril·lació auricular, una alteració del ritme cardíac caracteritzada per batecs auriculars ràpids i irregulars

👉https://f.mtr.cool/yghyhfyhij

#CCN2025 was fantastic!! It was great to meet and catch up with many of you in Amsterdam – Feeling really inspired now by all the cool work I've seen over the past few days @cogcompneuro.bsky.social! Until next year!

CCN has been fantastic so far! Such a nice community and great science! Including two neurosmiths posters so far. Last one today: @ C89 Alex Price presenting on shared algorithms in human neurons and RNNs. #CCN25 #CCN2025

Camila is doing a very good job at presenting her poster "Long Range Cortical Interaction during comparison of sensory and cognitive information" today at #CCN2025!

Sad to miss #CCN2025. It will be the 1st conference where a PhD working w/ me will speak 😭

go see Lubna's talk (Friday) about distributed neural correlates of flexible decision making in 🐒,

work done in collaboration w/ @scottbrincat.bsky.social @siegellab.bsky.social & @earlkmiller.bsky.social

If you are around for #CCN2025, come to B71 poster to know more how we (internally) forage for information and how RL can explain it!

@davidpoeppel.bsky.social points out the elephant in the conference: whichever direction of the planet we look, things are bad.

Einstein, chomsky and arendt point out to us that silence is not neutral

👏 #CCN2025

Oh look, tech company emissions are already up 150%, and the AI data center build out has just gotten started.

BARCCSYN 2025 - Centre de Recerca Matemàtica DEADLINE FOR TALKS OR POSTER PRESENTATIONS April 21st, 2025 REGISTRATION FEE 130 € (100 € for Members of the Catalan Society of Mathematics or Members of the Catalan Society of Biology) Barcelona Comp...

🎉 Excited to announce #BARCCSYN2025 – May 22–23 in Barcelona!

Keynotes by:
🧠 Matteo Carandini ( @carandinilab.net )
🧠 Megan Carey ( @megancarey.bsky.social )
🧠 Chris Summerfield ( @summerfieldlab.bsky.social )

Submit your talk/poster by April 21 & register by May 11!
🔗 crm.cat/barccsyn-2025

Accumulation of virtual tokens towards a jackpot reward enhances performance and value encoding in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.03.640771v1

Just posted a @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social preprint! 📝
Accumulating tokens towards a jackpot enhances decision speed and accuracy, as well as value encoding in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex 🧠. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Thanks to @morenobote.bsky.social, @benhayden.bsky.social, and @upf.edu

Accumulation of virtual tokens towards a jackpot reward enhances performance and value encoding in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.03.640771v1

Yes, Southern Europe and other regions shaded grey here will face extreme heat at 2.7C (and already are even at 1.2C). Grey does not mean OK. This study is focused on serious extremes, like 80+ days per year with max temps above 40C.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6

This image breaks me. At 2.7 degrees of warming, which is our present policy trajectory, two billion people will be exposed to extreme heat.

99.7% of those people live in the global South. People who have done nothing to cause this crisis. The injustice is staggering.