Kevin Mitchell

A titan of vaccine development sees his field’s achievements slip away Stanley Plotkin, the 93-year-old "godfather of vaccines," is watching his field’s achievements slip away.

“In a pair of recent interviews with STAT, Plotkin expressed dismay at seeing the achievements of his career & his field slip away. He knows what lies ahead…
“All I can say is that I’m beginning to regret having lived so long —because we’re going downhill,” Plotkin said” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

Minnesota would like a word.

The pattern will continue until we transition to renewables.

I wonder how Hegseth’s presser will go, hmmm:
“USA! USA! Let’s fucking GOOOOO!!! Maximum lethality yeah baby, let’s go, USA USA!!! Oh yeah and oops some little people died WARFIGHTER HEROES LETS FUCKING GO!”

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

A good contribution to the debate about mental/neural representations

You cannot talk like this about any other minority in America.

And if it was any other president’s adviser who said something like this about any other minority, it’d be the instant end of their presidency.

Creative Brain Week starts today! Don't miss out on some fascinating talks and workshops, click here for events:

creativebrainweek.com/event/creati...

#creativebrainweek

The impact is already hitting science agencies hard. The NIH—the world's largest public biomedical research funder—has had to rely on leftover stopgap funds.

New grant awards have slowed to a trickle — exacerbating the effects of a record-long shutdown in October.

(h/t @jeremymberg.bsky.social)

ICYMI - part of special issue of @phimisci.bsky.social on Representations in the Neurosciences and AI
cc @tjryan.bsky.social @gualtiero.bsky.social @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social

The islands go so much further down too. Philosophy -> ethics, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, aesthetics. And each of those have so many subdisciplinary islands. There’s a need for generalists to stitch together the best of the specialists, but that is unsupported as far as I can tell.

Cover of the Research Ireland Strategy, showing an aerial photograph of Ireland, with the Research Ireland and Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science logos; and the text: Curiosity, Capability, Competitiveness - Charting Ireland's Research and Innovation Future

Research Ireland's new Strategy: Curiosity, Capability, Competitiveness – Charting Ireland’s Research and Innovation Future, aims to build a research and innovation system that delivers prosperity for the people of Ireland. Read the full Strategy: www.researchireland.ie/strategy/

#ResearchIreland

Research Ireland’s new five-year strategy targets talent, economy, society Research Ireland has unveiled its inaugural strategy for development of the country’s research and innovation landscape over the next five years, ‘Curiosity, Capability, Competitiveness – Charting Ireland’s Research and Innovation Future 2026–2030’, to create “prosperity for the people of Ireland” through stronger enterprise performance and enhanced national competitiveness.

Research Ireland’s new five-year strategy targets talent, the economy and society.

Post from Julia Fine that says, "Write the book you want to read because you will have to read it 75 times."

#writerslife

Many cultures do actually eat it… 😬

Nice theoretical paper on animal play. As Tinbergen wrote in The Study of Instinct: exploration (like play) crucial when animals need to learn new things, or refine known behaviors.
(With young roe deer with the zoomies, from yesterday here in Stockholm)
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

... and for a little glimpse of comparative data, see figure 4. These are EPG neurons (head direction cells of the central complex) across a range of species, from earwigs to bees.

After 5 years of developing, a new preprint from the lab - introducing our workflow for comparative insect connectomics, aimed at democratizing connectomics. @erc.europa.eu @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social Read it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧵 New publication from the PGC Anxiety Working Group. Our GWAS meta-analysis of anxiety disorders is now published in @natgenet.nature.com! 🔗: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Really excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩
@poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

YouTube video by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator

Government-Funded infomercial from Norway striking back at US corporations and the tech Bros for filling the Internet with slop.
youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ?...

We think of white matter as the highways of the brain. But when we followed development along those highways, we were surprised. The journey is more complex than we thought. My final PhD paper, “Two Axes of White Matter Development”, is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! 🛣️🧠✨
🔗 bit.ly/wm2axes

White matter myelination during early infancy is linked to spatial gradients and myelin content at birth - Nature Communications Myelination in early infancy develops at different rates. Here the authors describe this process whereby the back and top of the brain, as well as sections that are least mature at birth develop the f...

Our findings align with evidence that deep WM myelinates early in infancy bit.ly/infwm, potentially reducing electrical crosstalk and stabilizing signal transmission. The protracted, hierarchical maturation of superficial tract regions may help fine-tune neural timing. 11/n

Lastly, we zoomed out: what’s the overall pattern of superficial tract development — where the developmental drama happens? Tract ends near sensorimotor cortex mature earlier; those near association cortex mature later. Our second axis: Sensorimotor ➡️ Association. 10/n

We truly didn’t know what we’d find. The pattern we saw was striking – and replicable. Across nearly all tracts, we saw the most developmental drama at superficial tract regions near the cortex. Deep regions showed little age-related change. Our first axis: Deep ➡️ Superficial. 4/n

There's lots of good philosophy that looks like the diagram on the right, but many philosophers really do spend a lot of time on their own little island...

The costs of this Iran war debacle will likely be more than the cost of extending the ACA health insurance subsidies.

If you asked Americans, which do you want: another war in the Middle East or lower health care costs at home, is the margin 90 to 10? 95 to 5?

For ppl who aren't aware:
Old temperate forests are insanely rare nowadays and extremely important ecosystems lost forever once cut.
They're not just "old trees" but intricate networks of trees, fungi and all kinds of living creatures.
You CANNOT replant this!! Once it's gone it's lost FOREVER!!!

Photo of a very small honeyeater perched on a branch with a large red callistemon (bottlebrush) flower in front. The bird is black and white with a bright scarlet head, black mask, and mottled red on its breast.

Same subject, side view. The bird's youth can be identified by the shortness of its beak and its light-coloured gape.

Same subject with the head raised and the breast feathers clearly visible.

A lifer in my very own garden!
I've heard Scarlet Honeyeaters before but in my 13 years living here I'd never actually seen any until this young male visited one of our callistemons. They're Australia's smallest honeyeaters!
#birds

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

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