Alexandra Rosati

7 million people took to the streets across the nation to protest in defense of our democracy.

This country belongs to the people. We will fight for it with everything we've got.

Thousands of protesters march down Michigan Ave in Detroit to participate in the nationwide No Kings protest on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. Video by Finn Gomez #NoKings #Protest #Detroit

Check out this online seminar on #applying to grad school from UMich's #Psychology Department (open to all; register her: lsa.umich.edu/psych/underg...)

Did you know #chimpanzees love to #play?

To learn more, check out this paper by our contributors @kris-sabbi.bsky.social, @zeppypearl.bsky.social, and others!

"Ecological variation in adult social play reveals a hidden cost of motherhood for wild chimpanzees"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy World Chimpanzee Day, and pant hoots from the group at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary!

Proud of UMich grad student Rosa Muñoz for being awarded an @leakeyfoundation.org grant for her dissertation research on "The evolution and psychology of possession in macaques." Congrats Rosa, and all the new grantees!

leakeyfoundation.org/introducing-...

MERKLEY: How do you feel about being responsible for hundreds of thousands of kids dying because of your sudden interruption in these key programs?

VOUGHT: I reject the assertion

MERKLEY: I find your response both ignorant & callous. Few Americans have had a more devastating & disastrous impact

Check out the whole special issue of Philosophical Transactions B @royalsocietypublishing.org on ‘Selection shapes diverse animal minds’ chock-full of intriguing articles, and thanks to @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social‬ & @ellileadbeater.bsky.social‬ for organizing it!

We also applied a 'scaling ToM' approach from developmental science and found that - surprisingly - gaze following seemed to be the most 'difficult' task for monkeys to pass, and knowledge attribution the easiest (thanks to Henry Wellman for the suggestion!)

We found that rhesus and Barbary macaques are similarly successful at several metrics of social cognition, including gaze following, goal attribution & knowledge attribution, but rhesus are much bolder. This is despite major differences in their social behavior.

Tolerant and despotic macaques show divergent temperament but similar theory of mind | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences The social intelligence hypothesis proposes that the demands of social life shape the evolution of cognition, but different aspects of social interactions may be relevant. To test how competitive vers...

Check out our new paper comparing #socialcognition in #tolerant and #despotic #macaques, by @awad-schwob.bsky.social, Rosie Bettle, Megan Mulhinch & @zeppypearl.bsky.social!

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1929

Selection Shapes Diverse Animal Minds: our special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org Phil Trans B on the diverse evolutionary processes underlying cognitive evolution is out today. Thanks to all our contributors! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

If this is how this administration responds to a Senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, and to day laborers throughout California and across the country.

We will hold this administration accountable.

Trump’s stunning streak of losses in lower courts Read more here.

The Trump administration lost a shocking 96% of rulings in federal district courts last month, according to a recent analysis by Adam Bonica, a professor of political science at Stanford.

www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Kennedy guts CDC's vaccine panel of independent experts The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices helps the agency make recommendations on who should get certain vaccines.

An outspoken vaccine conspiracy theorist just fired every last member of CDC's vaccine advisory committee.

RFK Jr. is paving the way to reshape vaccine policy based not on decades of science, but on his own unhinged fanaticism.

This is unprecedented, and unthinkably dangerous.

White House aide calls Los Angeles anti-ICE protests an 'insurrection' Senior White House aide Stephen Miller on Saturday condemned protests in downtown Los Angeles against federal immigration raids as an "insurrection" against the United States.

President Trump's deployment of federalized National Guard troops is unnecessary, inflammatory, and an abuse of power.

The Trump administration is putting people in LA in danger and undermines the democratic principle that the military should not police civilians.

www.reuters.com/world/us/whi...

The Los Angeles Police Department has stated that demonstrations in the city have remained peaceful. Let that sink in.

Exclusive: FEMA staff confused after head said he was unaware of US hurricane season, sources say Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

Exclusive: FEMA staff confused after head said he was unaware of US hurricane season, sources say reut.rs/3SxBvuL

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

George Takei: How the Alien Enemies Act Was Weaponized to Incarcerate My Family | ACLU

President Trump is using the same law to deport immigrants as the U.S. government used in WWII to justify the internment of Japanese Americans, including George Takei.

We're fighting Trump’s unlawful use of the Alien Enemies Act in court.

State Department Halts Interviews for Student and Exchange Visas

What an embarrassment, and so destructive.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/u...

Some context for my comment above about higher ed as a valuable export: In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Secretary Rubio can't answer the question because there's no constitutional reason why Rümeysa Öztürk was detained.

Writing an op-ed is not a crime.

World’s first personalized CRISPR therapy given to baby with genetic disease Treatment seems to have been effective, but it is not clear whether such bespoke therapies can be widely applied.

Possible due to years of US #federal #grant #funding, both to understand and develop CRISPR in the first place, and for this specific baby's treatment

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

Two woman walking and embracing each other in front of an ICE detention center. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress and heels. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. Members of the press are in the background.

Two women standing, smiling, and embracing each other with grass, water, and the sky in the background. The woman on the left is wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. The woman on the right is wearing a black dress.

Two woman stand next to each other and hold onto one another. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress. The woman on the right is smiling and wearing a white hijab, glasses, and a pink garment. In the background is the fence of an ICE detention center.

Today, our client Rümeysa Öztürk was released on bail from ICE detention in Louisiana, and she will return to New England to continue her studies.

📸 Giancarlo D’Agostaro

Federal court says First Amendment bars government from arresting, deporting foreign students on basis of pro-Palestine advocacy. Important ruling from Judge Young just now in case brought by @aaup.bsky.social @mesa1966.bsky.social @knightcolumbia.org. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...

Interestingly, chimpanzees become more #selective in where they use tools with #age: younger chimpanzees are more likely to try tools at alternative locations than older ones, suggesting they learn over #development where to most efficaciously use drinking tools

KCP chimps primarily drink from streams without tools, & also rarely use tools at puddles. But when they drink from tree holes they preferentially use tools like #leafsponges, also at similar rates for males & females. We argue chimps use tools to access out-of-reach (rather than stagnant) water.

Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Use Tools to Access Out of Reach Water The use of tools to drink water is well-documented in wild chimpanzees, but the specific function of this behavior is unclear. Here we use a large data set of drinking behaviors spanning 14 years of ....

Check out our new paper on #drinking #tools in wild #chimpanzees! We looked at the contexts where the Kanyawara chimpanzees use tools to drink in a project started by Charlie MacKenzie as an undergraduate with senior author @zeppypearl.bsky.social, along with @kris-sabbi.bsky.social & many others!

NIH terminates $13 million grant on dementia A $12.9 million grant for a study on dementia risks among at-risk U.S. populations was terminated by the National Institutes of Health.

Major study of dementia risks involving a 20 year follow-up terminated:

"The most salient, I think, to why this grant was terminated is because it is the only nationally representative sample of Black Americans that’s ever been collected to assess health status in this group”