Posts by Peter Pelka
Absolutely horrible for the children and absolutely despicable of the parents who are supposed to protect them. Sadly, there are many cases like this when there should be none. Depressingly, even education often does not stop this type of abhorrent behaviour from caregivers/parents.
Can't wait! But biology has a funny way of making your best predictions be wrong, especially those AI generated ones... so not holding my breath.
My mom died of multiple myeloma 16 years ago despite receiving state-of-the-art treatment at the time. The progress we've made with immuno and other cancer therapies since then is nothing but astounding! Fantastic to see this.
Join UM experts as they explore how discoveries in the microscopic world are advancing viral defense, combating antibiotic resistance, and addressing environmental contamination. Reserve your spot for the UM Knowledge Exchange on March 25: umanitoba.ca/research/kno...
The Horse Head nebula in red against starry background.
So #CIHR is considering going to annual project grant competitions. The idea is to increase success rate and reduce grantee/reviewer burden. Neither will be accomplished. Without more funding, this wil result in either more grants streamlined or increased reviewer burden, solving nothing.
Pleiades caught from my back yard with the Celestron Origin telescope last night. Not bad for light polluted Winnipeg. Note faint nebulosity around Maia and Merope.
CIHR funding rate: 13.6%.
Early 2000s: 30%+.
Canada’s new $1.7B Impact+ program recruits talent — but without increased Tri-Council base funding, we risk further strain on an already stretched system.
We’re calling for $1B over 5 years.
Support here: tinyurl.com/33c5av46
Image of a field and trees covered in hoar frost with clear blue sky in the background and snow on the ground.
Beautiful hoar frost (not "horror" frost as my student thought) this morning in Winnipeg.
Very nice study explaining what caused VITT in patients who received adenovirus-based COVID-19 vaccines. Turns out that the viral protein VII has some similarity to Platelet Factor 4 and in very rare cases antibodies against pVII bound strongly to PF4, driving clotting.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
Reviewers just don’t give grants their due because there’s no accountability. F2F panels must return. In similar vein, I’ve had reviewers ask for things that were ahead in multiple parts of the proposal.
Text showing Nest cameras turned off due to cold.
Winnipeg temperature of -32 degrees Celsius on January 22, 2026
Welcome to Winnipeg, where it’s so cold that my Nest cameras quit working!
🤦
This is a terrible idea and will make funding in Canada even harder to obtain. Instead of this, the government should invest in the Tri-council agencies to increase grant success rates, and organically attract talent from abroad.
I urge fellow scientists to write to their MPs and express how they feel about this, I did. Although I support attracting new talent, this is the wrong approach. We must increase Tri-Agency funding levels first so that they want to come here. This will simply makes things worse for all of us.
Excited to share my acting debut with Ontario's public broadcaster TVO (@tvodocs.bsky.social @therundowntvo.bsky.social & more). I was in an episode on fever for the TVO Kids series 'Burps, Butts, and Bones' (do they know their audience or what?). I learned about acting from the +++talented Ryan.
View of farm fields with distant trees covered with hoarfrost.
Winnipeg autumn with hoarfrost.
Canada has lost its measles elimination status. This is an unfortunate consequence of vaccine resistance/hesitancy and unnecessarily puts vulnerable at risk of a very serious illness. We need to do more to educate the public about how truly safe these vaccines are.
www.cbc.ca/news/health/...
Our latest article on the role of ARGLU1 in adenovirus infection is now out at the Journal of Virology, #ASM, check it out here and congratulations to the team!
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
A V3P team photo with all who attended the retreat.
It was fantastic to see everyone's project at our CBRF-funded V3P project retreat last week! Thank you all for coming, presenting, and participating. And thank you to the organizers for making it such an awesome event!
Got my COVID and flu shots yesterday in Winnipeg. Could not have been easier, in and out in less than 20 minutes and totally free. Get yourself (and your kids) vaccinated!
Get the Facts. National Vaccine Summit Explained Oct 23, 2025 register at everythingexplained.ca
What the latest on adult vaccines? Come join me and and exceptional panel at Zoomer media to get the lowdown.
• Recommended Vaccines & How To Get Them
‣ Navigating Provincial Health Systems
‣ The Role Your Pharmacist Can Play
‣ Emerging Science
‣ Fighting Disinformation & Vaccine Fatigue.
Free!
If you don’t get your child vaccinated against measles, it can put them at a high risk of this serious infection, which can lead to severe complications or even death. Make sure your child’s measles vaccination is up to date.
If you don’t get your child vaccinated against #measles, it can put them at a high risk of this serious infection, which can lead to severe complications or even death.
Make sure your child’s measles vaccination is up to date.
Our new paper on the transcriptomics of S-phase induction in adenovirus infected cells is now out in PLOS One with important implications for adenovirus-based vectors:
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
This is a dangerous move that will promote spread, mutation, and needless suffering amongst those that are unvaccinated, especially younger children.
Go to a cemetery. See all the baby graves there before the 1950s and 1960s? That’s when people started vaccinating their kids. If you are unsure, the answer is literally, written in stone.
Model fit to K2-18b's JWST MIRI transmission spectrum. The model including CH4, CO2, and C3H4 provides an excellent fit to the data.
Preview of a table from Welbanks+2025 listing 90 different hydrocarbons and the quality of their fit to K2-18b's MIRI data. Propyne (C2H4) provides the best fit.
Welbanks+2025 try 90 hydrocarbons, finding 5 provide a better fit than DMS or DMDS. Propyne (C3H4) offers the best fit.
Propyne has been seen in Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Titan, so it is plausible for K2-18b.
In other words, DMS and DMDS *vanish* once you include C3H4 in your model.