Paul Francois

I liked everything as a kid, but thought I was much better at maths. Then realized before grad school that I did not want to spend my life proving theorems, switched to physics. Realized that ‘traditional’ physics was very well known at that point so embraced the wilderness of biological Physics.

Montreal, best city in North America.

Magnifique, mais comment as tu réussi à avoir une photo de cette rue *vide* !?!?

What really bothers me in those weird times : people in Europe/US do not realize that we are living on borrowed time (on health, democracy, peace, climate …). For now things only degrade ‘slowly’ or people simply deny them, but it will be extremely difficult to go back once big cracks are obvious.

Québec figure dans un palmarès des 30 villes les plus favorables au vélo dans le monde Elle se classe deuxième en Amérique du Nord, derrière Montréal, dans le classement de Copenhagenize.

Montréal et Québec, les deux premières villes pour le vélo en Amérique du Nord, et dans le top 30 mondial !🚲 www.ledevoir.com/actualites/t...

C’est le substrat rocheux sous le Mont Royal ! Le tunnel est à 60 m de profondeur, deuxième plus profond en Am Nord, rien que ça c’est incroyable !

La roche de la station REM

Premiere experience REM pour un rendez vous centre ville. J’ai fini mon cours à 11:20 au Pavillon Claire Mc Nicoll. À 11:40 j’étais à la station McGill. On s’y fera sans doute mais là tout de suite c’est tout bonnement incroyable.

Copilot and ChatGPT are dead. I also tried to download a supplementary information from a journal for a paper I have to review, and even that is dead. This almost tastes like freedom 😃

The wonderful @audreymoores.bsky.social wrote an opinion piece about the dangers of this for chemistry, I guess it extends to other sciences … www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow, merci Antoine :)

@economeager.bsky.social

OMG, you are so very lucky, we have to stick to 2-player games with my son …

Bill Bialek introducing Hopfield’s seminal papers

Very happy to participate in the ‘Physics of Hopfield’ meeting in Princeton. With a fantastic introduction by Bill Bialek

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't kno...

how did i go so long not knowing we were literally teaching people to read wrong. i knew something wasn't right but jesus christ www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

Also, even with password managers, I have to reset my password 50% of the time. Working on multiple Apple computers still is too much of a challenge.

It still amazes me that, despite all the 'advances', most commercial websites are extremely clunky to the point of being unusable (BestBuy, why ???)

Mon jardin sous la neige !

Ça fait presque 20 ans que je vis à Montréal je pense que c’est mon record de neige la plus précoce ! Bonhomme de neige de Novembre à suivre ?

Over-the-top headline from the NYT, saying, in part: "Lights All Askew In The Heavens / Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations..."

Happy "Lights All Askew" Day to all who celebrate! (Headline in the New York Times from Nov. 10, 1919, brings Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity -- along with its alleged incomprehensibility -- to the public.) 🪐🔭🧠📰 #physics #science #histsci #lightsallaskew

Vue de Montréal depuis le Belvédère

Superbe vue depuis le belvédère ce matin, j’adore cette lumière d’automne !

Haha, this from the New Yorker is getting passed around the math dork community. I did a comic about this kind of thought a few years ago: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/commut...

My reviewing style has changed over time. Rather than litigate every little thing, and pushing my own ideas, I focus only on 2 things:
(1) Are the claims interesting/important?
(2) Does the evidence support the claims?

Most of my reviews these days are short and focused.

Congratulations !

When q.e.d was released I was a bit afraid it would be used for ‘peer’ review. That was only 3 weeks ago. Still not sure if q.e.d is a good or bad thing, but do we need to move so fast ?

Notice of award on the APS website.

Congratulations to @fxpbourassa.bsky.social for his Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Biological Physics Award from the American Physical Society, following his Oustanding Doctoral Thesis award from @biophyscanada.bsky.social ! @mcgill.ca www.aps.org/funding-reco...

Annonce du prix de François sur le site de l'APS

Félicitations à @fxpbourassa.bsky.social pour l'obtention du prix de thèse de la division 'biological Physics' de l'American Physical Society ! Le doublé après le prix similaire de @biophyscanada.bsky.social ! @mcgill.ca www.aps.org/funding-reco...

Of course.

And of course we already have very high quality research and training. But we need more money to pay people (especially with inflation and everything else).

In fact I would even argue that Canada is very well positioned for this. 15 years ago the best Canadian students wanted to go to the US. Now many of them want to stay, and I am sure we can attract and retain some of the best US students. Hire young profs to train them.

If we want science ‘stars’, I sincerely think the best strategy is to grow them locally. Create assistant profs positions, with generous start up packages. Increase Discovery Grants, create generous programs for ECRs.