Inhibitory neurons are among the most transcriptomically diverse class of neurons in the CNS, with some brain regions having 60+ distinct cell types. Do humans share the same repertoire as rodents? Birds? Fish? 1/13

Here I was worrying about the death of universities, but it’s already happened thanks to a series of actively hostile governments and a neoliberal management culture. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

To date, social media companies (yes irony) have dodged accountability for their engineered addictiveness. Our Federal Govt responded with a blanket ban for teenagers, as if the companies were above the law, a force of nature. #Auspol Heartened to see this US lawsuit: www.wired.com/story/meta-g...

An important question addressed with beautiful neurotechnology - hard and eminent work by very skilled researchers- I am so proud! 🤩👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Still keaposting

"Myrtle oranges" are a really striking #fungus (Cyttaria gunnii). The myrtles (Nothofagus cunninhamii) at a roadside stop on the #Tasmanian west coast were being hammered by these.

A good day to highlight women whose science has educated, challenged and delighted me - Leah Krubitzer, Nicole Le Douarin, Patricia Goldman-Rakic, Almut Schüz, Kathleen Rockland, @shubhatole.bsky.social, Ruth Benavides-Piccione, @kdmicheva.bsky.social, @sherculanohouzel.bsky.social, Barb Finlay

Never change, Tasmania.

#JUNO #Jupiter orbiter #JIRAM Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper Perijove 72 Target: #Jupiter atmos.nmsu.edu/PDS/data/PDS... NASA/JPL/SwRI/JIRAM/ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DI ASTROFISICA/j. Roger

Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday. Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.

You don't have to dirty your soul to be a successful academic or a scientist. Have some fucking pride. Have some fucking principles. If you think you DO need to do that, all I can say is that I beg you not to go into academia or science.

Enormously significant if it holds up - lifelong inhibitory cortical neurogenesis via resident SVZ population in humans. What a potential avenue for addressing disorders attributed to cortical E/I disproportion. Via Holly Barker in @thetransmitter.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/tou...

Amid the hype around prattling "AI" models, astonishing research into living minds gets overlooked. Wonderful piece by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social about bats navigating in a natural environment, decoding the sense of direction. www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-...

“Some forms of speech generate days of outrage, wall-to-wall commentary and urgent demands for action. When Aboriginal peoples are targeted with an explosive device in a public square, the response barely registers. Lives are not valued on the same scale.”

Just staggering, really. Watching the beacon of attention sweeping ahead of an exploring rat.

Any comment from @ausgov.bsky.social of @vicgovau.bsky.social on this? Your multiple, excited press releases about your collab with Moderna for vaccine tech in '24-'25 should now be defended LOUDLY. If there's no pushback to JFK's misinformation, we might as well all pack up and go home.

Excited to discover that the renowned Prof Marian Stamp Dawkins recently released a book addressing one of my most pressing interests – consciousness in nonhuman animals – and that it's available open-access from Oxford University Press. Will read with great interest. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

stop using AI to do your research. it hallucinates too often. if you want an answer to something, post something arrogant on the appropriate subreddit. something like: "this item performs 10% better than everything else. only idiots deny this." this will bait nerds into doing your research for you.

If four million pigs or chooks died on farms in a year, questions would be asked. Last year's death toll of Tas #salmon sparks calls for companies to be fined under animal welfare law, to avoid 2025 mortality rates becoming the "new normal". #politas #auspol tasmanianinquirer.com.au/news/more-th...

Says everything I wanted to say, and more comprehensively!

Accessible, insightful, detailed and friendly primers on “AI” and LLMs from Prof Andy Perfors. I’ve been looking for such a thing to inform my students, but he goes above and beyond! Absolutely worth your time.

I am recruiting a research assistant for a vaccine project. This will be a laboratory study that involves making viral vectors and testing in the lab. Find my @utas.edu.au @menzies-research.bsky.social email and contact me if interested. #WildImmunology careers.utas.edu.au/cw/en/job/50...

It's hard to convey the delight of a 1944 monograph leading you to a German research paper from 1878 making reference to a Latin tract published in Prague, 1868, for the anniversary of Purkinje ... and finding out it's been scanned and preserved on the Internet Archive. @archive.org

Following coverage over the weekend of Sir Paul Nurse's comments that suggested that the only reason that a Fellow should be expelled from @royalsociety.org is scientific misconduct, I have written to him to explain the risks such an attitude poses of increasing sexual harassment in STEM.

A thought for communicating neuroscience: if you're talking about (e.g.) behavioural motivation, just call it that. Don't try to "neuro it up" by referring to dopamine instead; although there's a link, if you're talking about motivation then dopamine is adding jargon, and doesn't explain anything.

The more I wade through credulous opinions about "AI", the more I think this essay by @benjaminjriley.bsky.social should be mandatory reading for anyone using the term. This blog opens with others' reactions, but the essay is reprinted after that. buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/large-lang...

Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A major part of our future health & prosperity lies in medical research. There are billions of available dollars that can be used for vital medical science. Please join the campaign for our government to act urgently to fully disperse these funds: aamri.org.au/mrff/ www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...

Every week, Nature publishes yet another breathless puff piece about some AI startup, based only unpublished claims from the company and interviewing only those who work there. How can the leading scientific journal publish piece after piece that would make Kevin Roose blush? I think it's that...

林間さん

anyway here's my attempted synthesis, VNO really seems to be wrapped in by a weird bone cage that sits above the bone of the roof of the mouth

Never ceases to amaze me - debris from Mercury is pushed by the solar wind into a tail which emits yellow light from trace amounts of sodium. I haven't seen it photographed this well.

Another blow for the “brain lights up” believers - www.tum.de/en/news-and-...

That’s the good stuff!

In my case, this painstaking labor in the process through which the science gets done. Science isn't measuring stuff in a lab. It's thinking deeply, extracting the heart of idea from the soup of thoughts running through my mind, molding it, and finding a way to communicate that idea to others.

Yup. Some of us want students who can think for themselves and do research for themselves.

I didn’t vote for the social media ban; the real issue has always been tech companies allowing harmful behaviour to run rampant on their platforms. But with the ban in place, the Govt mustn’t forget to ensure social media platforms also clean up their act. #auspol #politas

Nothing like the joy of crows riding a southern squall.

I know it’s like shouting into a hurricane, but this is a sobering read. The grotesque expediency of leaning into “AI” in the climate of “universit[ies] that no longer ask what education is for, only what it can earn.” www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Can all the folk who just got reminded that they’ve listened to a tonne of music on streaming this year, have a look at the music they heard and buy some on bandcamp today? 🫡🙏🏼

I’m keeping this one for the next time someone asks what harm it could do using “AI” to get started on some research.

Here’s my Spotify Wrapped 🎵✨

Your periodic reminder that science is not done by a few selected "stars scientists". Science is done by hundred of thousands. Siloed money mean a few flashy discoveries and a lot of waste. Want to change things? Make funding accessible and stop funding calls with less than 2% success rate.

What a great idea. www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/artic...

Embarrassing, tone-deaf and unethical; reminds me of another recent failure from @royalsociety.org

Who better to sing the blazing soul of Horses than @jennpelly.bsky.social? Nobody, that’s who. pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...

Amid squabbles, bombast and competing interests, what can Cop30 achieve? - by @fionaharvey.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Fascinating piece sifting the historical evidence to reinstate Franklin’s status as a co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, not the less-insightful also-ran portrayed in Watson’s popular history.