Maithe Arruda Carvalho

Canada’s Measles Setback Is a Symptom of a Larger Illness Raywat / blog, epidemiology / 0 comment

My latest post:

"Canada’s Measles Setback Is a Symptom of a Larger Illness"

medium.com/@deonandan/c...

Unions condemn federal government’s plans to change collective bargaining rules Federal public service unions are condemning the government’s proposed amendments to collective bargaining rules — though they admit they know little at this point about what those changes could entai...

www.ctvnews.ca/politics/art...

Incredibly weak statement from Canada at COP30. It says “effective action starts with detailed planning” and points to this week’s climate competitiveness plan as proof of Canada’s efforts. Weird given that plan has no target, no GHG modelling, dismantles policies policies and calls LNG low carbon.

It’s hard not to feel insulted by the Canadian federal budget’s implication that researchers currently working in Canada aren’t good enough, so they’ll spend a bunch of taxpayer money to bring in “top talent” from elsewhere.

Cover of this week's Nature showing a brain rendering Cover caption from the journal: Brain development: Our ability to process information into complex emotions, behaviours and decisions relies on the rich diversity of cell types that make up the human brain. Uncovering the molecular and cellular events that take place during brain development could reveal not only the mechanisms that give rise to this diversity but also shed light on how this process might go awry in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. In this week’s issue, the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) builds on its previous work creating atlases of cell types in the adult mouse, non-human primate (NHP) and human brains to present cell-type atlases of the developing human, mouse and NHP brains. Across a suite of papers, nine of which are published in Nature, the researchers uncover the complex programs through which cell types emerge during brain development in humans and animals, revealing both the shared and unique features of the human brain. The latest work, along with future research directions, is summed up in a Perspective article by Tomasz Nowakowski and colleagues

New issue of Nature - with NINE studies on #brain #development from the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) 🧠🧪🔬

An amazing set of resources for all scientists working on the brain!

🧠 Immersive feature:
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

🧠 Perspective:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The 🇨🇦 Standing Committee on Science and Research passed a modified resolution this afternoon that the requested ricouncil applicant and reviewer data can be aggregated and anonymized. Thanks to the many researchers who signed letters pointing out legitimate data privacy concerns. 👏👏

Study permit exemption for graduate students...

This feels like a fundamental realignment in Canadian politics.
The Conservatives are completing their regression, begun in the 2015 “barbaric cultural practices” election, to their Reform Party roots.
The Liberals now resemble not the Mulroney PCs but the Harper Conservatives.
And the NDP is MIA.

So Canadian researchers are left fighting over the same ol’ 🍯 but we will attract more international talent w big bucks & no sustainability plan 🤔
#budget2025 3/

It’s insulting to tell 🇨🇦 scientists we need international scientists to run to our rescue & ensure innovation.

🇨🇦 scientists have exceeded expectations with paltry funding. If the gov funded Tricouncil > & sustainably; imagine how innovative we’d already be!! /End

Increasing support to researchers already in Canada by allocating this $1B to tri-council funding and infrastructure would go a VERY long way.

Research labs provide training and employment, strengthen innovation, and produce findings that can benefit all Canadians.
2/

Two large studies have been commissioned by the
@liberal_party
on how to improve and enhance the Canadian research ecosystem, and it is almost as if they were after thoughts deemed irrelevant.

Instead #budget2025 seems to focus more on provide tax breaks for industry.

3/

If #Budget2025 is supposed to be one that is "generational," it is a shame that investing in those who are already here and contributing to Canada's future have been completely overlooked.

/fin

Those 1000 new researchers will also compete with the rest of us for the same amount of tricouncil funding. So, expect grant success rates to get worse

1 billion dollars for 1000 researchers means 1 million per researcher! Starting assistant professors in the US get 3x that! Imagine what this could have done tri-council success rates instead!

There are very real people who rely on Canada’s global health spending for their daily HIV medications, for contraception, for the midwife that delivers their baby, for food aid that keeps their kids alive

It is callous to say we’re cutting lots of this but can’t say where, how much, why or when

7 basic science discoveries that changed the world Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

A chemical extracted from carrot roots helped pave the way for flat-screen TVs, and six other discoveries that unintentionally changed the world.
Perfect talking points for when you need to defend basic science, whether it’s to your grumpy uncle or your MP.

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

Canada budget update: A $2.7bn cut to international assistance over 5 years, or about 10-12% of the budget. Particularly focusing on global health, which is worrying because it's a core Canadian priority

Not sure we need a resurgence of polio on top of everything, but what do I know

Congratulations to Sheena Josselyn @sjo09.bsky.social, contributing editor at @thetransmitter.bsky.social, on winning the 2025 Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize in recognition of her profound impact on memory research.

#neuroskyence

The only reason to violate the confidentiality of peer reivew is to undermine it. The only reason to demand this kind of information is to abuse it.

How much are MPs entitled to know about research grants? Not as much as they think A parliamentary committee is asking for academics’ private information on a strange anti-DEI crusade

a gross parliamentary overreach — article by @picardonhealth.bsky.social in the globe and mail; #academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/91587b9...

Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models - Nature Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differ...

When ChatGPT was asked to rate 40,000 résumés, it ranked the older male candidates as better quality than the younger female applicants.

The legitmacy of this depends on extending unearned trust to political actors who have demonstrated an unstated agenda completely orthogonal to "research excellence." It's an overreach of parliamentary authority, and there is no reason to seek personal/confidential information except to abuse it. /7

I encourage you to contact your MP, the Minister of Health, and your institution. This has already been bulldozed through with a 15 day requirement to meet the request. Watching politicians vandalize scientific institutions is distressing enough next door, let's not start here.

Open Letter to Protect Tri-Council EDI Data Why do we need urgent action to protect our data? The mandate of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research is to review and report on topics relating to science and research in ...

If you are a Canadian scientist 🧪 alarmed by the unfair targeting of academics working on research related to EDI in the US ➡️

Turn your attention to our own House of Commons' Standing Committee on Science and Research and consider signing this open letter:

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

Canadian researchers should be aware the there is a motion before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research to force Tricouncils to hand over disaggregated peer review data on all applications:
Applicant names, profiles, demographics
Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores

Molecular mechanisms mediating engram ensemble retrievability state in mice Engrams, ensembles of neurons that store memories, exist along a continuum of retrievability. Normally, sensory cues can reactivate a latent engram to…

Excited to share the latest from the lab on the molecular mechanisms of silencing and un-silencing a hippocampal engram ensemble. Was fun using a variant of the EPSILON technique developed by Adam Cohen's lab.
(1/2)

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I think a lot about the chance we had at the start of COVID to finally become a more compassionate, collectivist nation, and how profoundly we were failed not only by the sociopathic greed of the ruling class but by each other.

It doesn’t mean we won’t get there, but the lost opportunity haunts me.

Sabotaging Prevention: Alberta’s ‘Preventative Health’ Ministry Is Anything But The Alberta government has justified its new protocols for distribution of COVID-19 vaccines by claiming they will minimize wastage, save money, and prioritize the most vulnerable. In this blog, Parkl...

Parkland research manager Rebecca Graff-McRae exposes how Alberta’s new COVID-19 vaccine policy undermines the very idea of public health. #AxeTheVaxTax #Ableg #Abpoli

www.parklandinstitute.ca/sabotaging_p...

Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.

Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...