James introducing his work on neural patterning
James advertising Development and its initiatives
Editor in chief of Development @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social opening the floor today at the Allen Institute Lake Conference 2026 meeting ! @biologists.bsky.social
Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment.
So here's a 🧵. /1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Preprint: What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory - arxiv.org/abs/2604.13344 - how to teach and think about what modeling contributes to science. How does it fit into the scientific method? This is often misunderstood.
Do you want to know how to build an organ from a single cell?
Check out our paper about phyllid development in moss by Weney Lin @irbv.bsky.social
Colaboration with Yoan Couder @ensdelyon.bsky.social and and Richard Smith @johninnescentre.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Vitrine ‘Printemps’ du Valet de Coeur
J’aime tellement les vitrines saisonnières ou thématiques du Valet de Coeur. Le Printemps s’en vient ! #rueStDenis
Saw a talk yesterday claiming there were about 6 million Covid death for 600 million cases. That would be a 1% fatality rate. I understand there is likely some undercounting on both sides but even if billions of people got it, it would still be a pretty big rate …
New paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: we apply linguistic tools to sperm whale vowels.
The result: sperm whale vowels do not just look like human vowels. They also behave like them.
We found several parallels. Like in Latin, whales have short and long vowels.
No. I don’t want to tell you about my stay, my meal, my visit, my purchase. The way I told you about it was by exchanging money for the thing. That was the end of our relationship!
L'aéroport de Genève a lâché un très bon premier avril cette année.
Can we have JD Vance come and support Bardella/Le Pen in 2027 please
Très loin de défendre les américains, mais il y en a qui suivent et pas des moindres … bsky.app/profile/mark...
Jack Szostak "All of these things frighten me, and they should frighten you as well. I made the decision to create a life for myself here, because I viewed this as a place that rewarded determination, hard work, and integrity. It still has a chance to be that place again."
Un monument (au moins personnel) de la rue Saint Denis ferme : au Festin de Babette. Beaucoup d’émotions pour toute notre famille . Une cagnotte est organisée pour les aider à tout boucler … merci pour tout Nathan 🥹 ❤️ www.gofundme.com/f/aidons-bab...
Good article pointing out the issues with the very rushed Impact+ program. We are certainly all playing this game right now (who would not hire excellent colleagues for free ?), but many people are indeed concerned www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Je ne vais pas souvent au théâtre, mais hier je suis allé voir ´Que notre joie demeure ´ au TNM. Le roman était bien, la pièce est extraordinaire, honnêtement la meilleure que j’ai vue dans ma vie. tnm.qc.ca/2025-2026/qu...
In Korea, when the president declared martial law after midnight and erected barricades in Seoul, congressional reps from all parties ran into the streets, yanked ak47s from the army at the barricades, broke down the locked door to Congress, repealed the martial law order, and arrested the president
I might be a very poor strategist or a know-nothing but it still baffles me that no one is even attempting anything (from the Democrats to other countries with soft power, eg it could be a good idea to leverage a FIFA world cup boycott at some point)
Some reports say over 500 schools, 55 libraries, & 25 universities hit.
You can debate the numbers, but hitting Sharif University & Beheshti is like hitting MIT & Stanford. I keep wondering: How would the scientific community respond differently if it was those universities? What’s the difference?
So, thing that is apparently better understood inside academia than outside of it:
International students pay sticker price. Most domestic students do not. International students are subsidizing the education costs for domestic students, as per student governmental funding drops.
Le premier astronaute de l’histoire à parler français à destination de la Lune : le Canadien Jeremy Hansen 🇨🇦
pour mes tweeps francophones - voici l'article dans Le Devoir (pas mal!)
Je l’ai lu hier, bel article, et super travail ! C’est amusant de se rendre compte qu’on lit un article sur le travail de quelqu’un qu’on suit sur les réseaux sociaux …
A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)
More context on this #Artemis II image:
* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right
* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕
That's home. That's us.
This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew.
Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right.
Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman
“It’s exasperating when the conduct of a privileged, tone-deaf multimillionaire is paraded as proof of “anglo arrogance” or a “rejection of French,” when most of us happily speak it daily.”
montrealgazette.com/opinion/colu...
Postdoc opening!
Come work with us on deep learning theory relevant to AI safety
Deadline: 7 Apr 2026
Details and application: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
My main gripe with the alphafold example is how it shows you need decades and decades of high quality data, well structured, open and accessible to train a model -- and yet they always gloss over it and pretend it's just AI and magic. No, we need to continuously invest in real data and FAIR data.
ah ah, still thinking about the colleague who had something like 10k off travel expenses that he never claimed ...
Almost the exact title, but I absolutely loved it as a teenager, and it is a fantastic Cliffhanger
oui c'est fondamentalement différent, je suis d'accord. Mais venant d'Europe ça me surprend toujours comme je dis. Je me suis déjà retrouvé à expliquer à des gens qu'apprendre le français ce n'est pas une perte de temps (et en fait on le voit en ce moment avec le backlash Air Canada/Rousseau).
