Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 5h

Yes a priori for the first one, no for the second one (although of course this does not hurt given the intended location !)

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Olivier Niquet @olivierniquet.com · 1d

Montréal à l’honneur dans le Time et L’Economist

BIXI Montréal reconnu par le "Time" parmi les meilleures inventions. Au Cameroun, Paul Biya brigue un 8e mandat. Trump se targue d'un accord Israël-Hamas.

www.tourniquet.quebec

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 1d

We are hiring ! If you want to become professor of Bioinformatics in the best city of North America, check the announcement below ! Also you do need to speak French (as long as you commit to learning it :) ) www.umontreal.ca/public/www/d...

www.umontreal.ca

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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 4d

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

blog.genesmindsmachines.com

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James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 4d

Very sad news, John Gurdon has died.

A developmental biologist's developmental biologist, Nobel prize winner

His work is the foundation of much of today's dev & stem cell bio.

An inspiration to many, including me. Always asking questions & wanting the answers

www.magd.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

Professor Sir John Gurdon FRS (1933-2025) | Magdalene College

Magdalene College is deeply saddened to announce the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon FRS, who served as Master of the College from 1995 to 2002.

www.magd.cam.ac.uk

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 5d

oui les Etats-Unis c'est une catastrophe qui semble s'accélérer ... Le Canada résiste mais on ne pèse rien globalement. Impression de décadence globale. La Chine est en plein boom, mais évidemment .... Il faut espérer que quelque chose s'inverse, il ne nous reste que ça, l'espoir.

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 5d

Même si je n'y vais plus très souvent, la France c'est mon pays, j'y suis né et toute ma famille est là-bas. Encore une fois je suis très très inquiet et j'ai du mal à imaginer autre chose que le désastre annoncé pour 2027 ...

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 5d

Tout cela me rend très triste et très très inquiet pour le futur, de la France et de l'Europe ...

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 5d

I guess the current problem of France is that a government can lose a vote of no confidence without any costs for the political parties (while it is very costly for the country). In Canada we hear regularly that parties cannot afford frequent elections.

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 5d

It would be beneficial for French politicians to learn from other established parliamentary democracies. In Canada, there is a long-standing culture of minority governments, but a significant difference is that elections are called as soon as a vote of no confidence is lost.

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 7d

Best time of the year

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James Briscoe @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social · 8d

Mechanical constraints disrupt gastruloid polarisation without changing gene expression - uncouples morphogenesis & patterning

Gregor & co use tunable hydrogels to show cell motility, not gene expression, drives axis formation in gastruloids

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Fine-tuning mechanical constraints reveals uncoupled patterning and gene expression programs in murine gastruloids

Highlighted Article: A bioinert confinement system enables dissection of how stiffness and timing shape gastruloid development, revealing uncoupling between polarization and transcriptional programs.

journals.biologists.com

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 8d

Suite à cet article Radio Canada vient d’annoncer qu’on aurait pu avoir les Bleus en camp de base à Montréal en 2026 mais que la ville a refusé parce que trop cher… c’est un peu rageant, il y aurait eu un soutien enorme !!! www.lapresse.ca/sports/chron...

La MLS veut un meilleur soutien de la Ville pour le CF Montréal

Saviez-vous que Montréal aurait pu recevoir un petit morceau de la Coupe du monde de soccer de 2026 ? Pour moins de 1 % du coût d’un match, en plus.

www.lapresse.ca

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 9d

So much this (the "but" part).

Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 14d

New analysis of a 1-million yr old fossil skull captured worldwide media attention this week, with many headlines saying it requires a complete rewrite/rethink of human evolution. This is an intriguing study & it's brilliant to see so much public enthusiasm for deciphering our origins, but....1/n 🧪

Image shows just two example headlines from prominent media outlets earlier this week, heralding a newly published discovery that supposedly "rewrites human evolution". Left side, from the BBC: "Million-year-old skull rewrites human evolution, scientists claim"; right side, from the New York Post: "1M-year-old skull discovery could change everything we know about human evolution".

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Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 14d

This is just astonishing. Amazing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRzg...

Making A Billion-Year Lego Clock

YouTube video by Brick Technology

www.youtube.com

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 14d

Après sur la pratique le vélo c’est quand même super populaire au Québec (et de plus en plus, suffit de voir la prolifération à Montréal) donc je pense que la victoire d’aujourd’hui va avoir pas mal de retentissement chez les amateurs.

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 14d

Ben moi je suis plutôt vélo, mais oui je pense que beaucoup de gens vont regarder le rugby, les média en ont pas mal parlé (sur le mode on n’a pas de moyens mais on a quasiment les meilleures du monde)

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 14d

Magdeine Vallières, allez allez ! Énorme exploit !!! Ça va être le feu demain !!!

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 14d

I felt very moved by this too. Not because we yet have a cure, but because of the reminder of the passionate and humane commitment that goes into such research, contrasted with the vicious idiocy with which medical research is being treated right now by the US administration.

Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 14d

In reporting this piece on the new trial for a Huntington's treatment, I was struck by one thing in particular:

The joy.

One of my sources wept for joy. He has spent his entire career studying this disease, he said it was the happiest day. www.sciencenews.org/article/hunt...

Huntington's progression slowed by experimental gene therapy

An experimental gene therapy slowed Huntington’s by up to 75 percent in a small clinical trial. While not a cure, it may give patients longer lives.

www.sciencenews.org

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 17d

c'est aussi fascinant dans l'autre sens : malgré le fait que les LLMs dominants aient virtuellement déjà ingurgité la totalité des données et travaux produits par l'humanité, on est quand même (à mon avis) assez loin de l'efficacité de l'intelligence humaine.

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gquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 17d

"After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how the animal looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant" www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anth...

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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 20d

In France we call him ‘Guillaume le Conquérant’ to remind people where he came from and what was conquered :) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_...

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The Company of Biologists @biologists.bsky.social · 22d

In our Forest of Biologists we fund the restoration and preservation of ancient woodland and dedicate these trees to our peer reviewers.

There are now over 10,000 trees for peer reviews!

Thank you to all our peer reviewers. Find out more:
forest.biologists.com

#PRW2025 @peerreviewweek.bsky.social

Lots of illustrated trees. A sample image taken from the Forest of Biologists website.

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Venki Murthy @neurovenki.bsky.social · 21d

(edited repost) Thrilled to see our computational work on adaptive shaping of behavior (we call it outcome-based curriculum learning) in PLoS Comp Biol! @wl-tong.bsky.social, @gautamreddy.bsky.social & I formalize curricula in any RL task that can be framed as sequential simple-to-complex behavior.

Adaptive algorithms for shaping behavior

Author summary Animals are commonly trained by ‘shaping’ their behavior using a sequence of simpler tasks towards a complex behavior. Numerous schools of thought have proposed heuristics for shaping b...

journals.plos.org

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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 22d

Only single cell sequencing of the all these post docs will reveal why

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