Sara Benham

Science is under attack and so much damage has been done. Building community and engaging with the public is a critical step.

Sharing a video by Meghan Puglia, Asst. Professor of Neurology at the U of Virginia. Please share widely.
meghanpuglia.com/savingscience

Love her 🧚

Who gave this chump a microphone??

OECS thematic collections.

If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind.

Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!

Petals or pedals?

Is the ‘failed experiment’ in the room with us? That’s super cool!

Saving this little nugget for a rainy day - thank you

I’ve created a website to look up phonological features (frequency, age of acquisition, neighbors) of real and nonwords. rpomper.github.io/phono/

It’s still in progress (manuscript coming) please let me know if you have any recommendations or feature requests!

(It takes 1-2 minutes to load)

This is lovely! Is there a pattern for this?

Would love to be added!

It came out lovely!

A hand holds a northern saw-whet owl up close

A person smiles as she holds a northern saw-whet owl

Here I am with a #SuperbOwl, participating in Project Owlnet. I have been fortunate to have many mentors in my life, many of them ornithologists, funded by public dollars to promote conservation and education. I only wish that these projects continue to inspire young souls for generations to come.

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%.

I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

@lizneeley.bsky.social is publishing a weekly newsletter to track the ongoing attacks in science and higher ed. If you want to keep abreast without drowning in the news, I recommend it: buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

list of banned keywords

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

Do you think phone call or email is better?

I write random words on slips of paper and put them in a bucket. Then my very talented husband picks one and draws them for daily art practice. As someone who cannot draw well, it never ceases to amaze me how effortlessly and creatively he does this! Follow his page for more ‘prompts of the day’

💡 Latest research shows that babies are already learning how sounds are physically produced BEFORE tuning in to their native language.

This discovery challenges previous beliefs and opens up new possibilities for early intervention.

🔗https://tinyurl.com/msx2vw7a

@eylemaltuntas.bsky.social

A picture showing a woven textile of pink, red, and greens in a small picture frame.

A picture showing fabric of pink, red, and greens being woven on a loom.

Recently deleted my IG account where I posted my weavings. I’d like to keep sharing and learning. Do I have fiber friends on BlueSky too? #weaving #fiberart

😱😔I hate this. You’re not alone. Will be waiting for more information!

Even in a small, rural state like VT, the impact felt by NIH support is huge. So deeply alarmed by this move to halt NIH activity.

www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

Why should the public care about the freeze on the NIH? Aside from the need for scientific pursuits to make our society better…
-For every dollar we invest in NIH research, there is a $2.5 return.
-Research dollars help fund universities that employ non-academics. (1/)

Trump hits NIH with ‘devastating’ freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring Researchers facing

What happened at NIH today www.science.org/content/arti...

Phase Transition xkcd.com/3025

@cephalopunk.bsky.social

Illustration of an orange cat

Illustration of a sheep

Need illustrations for your research? A reminder that you can hire artists to create *original* pieces and interpret instructions like: “child friendly but not too cartooney…but realistic…but still cute.” My husband @cephalopunk created images like these for a study and you can hire him too!

I just discovered LMU's sounds of the world's languages website, which has some different sound files from A Course in Phonetics, as well as an online visualization tool (emu-WebApp) that's nice for classroom use. I'm going to use it today!
www.phonetik.uni-muenchen.de/studium/skri...

Sharing the Vermont Complex Systems Institute starter pack!
A list of core members, alumni, and external faculty 🤝
go.bsky.app/D46bnkS

Looks like a great way to kick off 2025!

This looks fantastic!