Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Rik Henson @rhens.bsky.social · 2d

Very useful tips…

profserious @profserious.bsky.social · 3d

Here are your 10 -essential- AI prompts for academics ... make your life easy with help from @profserious.bsky.social profserious.substack.com/p/10-ai-prom...

10 AI Prompts for Academics

making those hard jobs a little easier ...

profserious.substack.com

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Rik Henson @rhens.bsky.social · 2d

Such a loss for Mother Nature, but a message of hope…

KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 3d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Rik Henson @rhens.bsky.social · 7d

Very much enjoyed a day helping with the @drcmr.bsky.social training programme in development and aging www.drcmr.dk/news-events/... - great questions from attentive students!

PhD Course in Tracing brain and behavioural changes across the life span: Influence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors

The PhD course is offered by the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance in collaboration with the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Aim and content This course i...

www.drcmr.dk

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Karen Campbell 🇨🇦 @karampbell.bsky.social · 7d

The brain represents the world around us as a series of neural states - stable patterns of activity that change as we move from one event to the next.

New paper by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social showing that neural states get longer as people age. #PsychSciSky

nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08792-4

Temporal dedifferentiation of neural states with age during naturalistic viewing - Communications Biology

Movie fMRI data reveals age-related lengthening of neural states in visual and prefrontal regions, reflecting reduced temporal differentiation while preserved alignment with perceived events suggests stable coarse event segmentation.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Randy McIntosh @ar0mcintosh.bsky.social · 13d

Wow! This is amazing news. Having friends who are confronted with Huntington's, this brings a ray of hope.

bbc.com/news/article...

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time

One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

bbc.com

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Francesco Caporusso @czesco.bsky.social · Dec 28

That reminded me of a favorite quote from Lester Pearson, a former Canadian Prime Minister and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

"If a man has an apartment
stacked to the ceiling with newspapers we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation,we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend they are role models.” – Lester B. Pearson

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NewsThump @newsthump.com · 15d

NEWS! Nation capable of spotting spurious link between paracetamol and autism still baffled by obvious link between guns and mass shootings

Nation capable of spotting spurious link between paracetamol and autism still baffled by obvious link between guns and mass shootings

The United States has once again demonstrated its unique talent for scientific deduction by confidently declaring there may be a link between pregnant women taking paracetamol and children developi…

buff.ly

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Dave Lee @davelee.me · 19d

Dutch late night TV has its take

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Cam-CAN @camcan-2010.bsky.social · 21d

"CamCAN 15 years on" - a new preprint reviewing all findings about the cognitive neuroscience of ageing from sharing CamCAN data, led by @rhens.bsky.social : osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Christian @ceebarnacles.bsky.social · 23d

Written by a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital, London after the Tommy Robinson march on 13/9.

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Reposted by Rik Henson

olafhauk.bsky.social @olafhauk.bsky.social · 23d

Here we go again - a room full of attendees from all over the world at #COGNESTIC 2025, excited to learn about #neuroimaging analysis. Kshipra Gurunandan starts it off with a Primer to #Python. @mrccbu.bsky.social

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David A. Sbarra @dsbarra.bsky.social · 26d

This was a true mess with a ton of AI-generated word salad slop being submitted as preprints. The field owes these moderators a huge thanks for all the work and energy! 🙏👏

Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) @improvingpsych.org · 26d

PsyArXiv's amazing team of 100+ moderators has now approved all preprints that meet the requirements outlined in the updated PsyArXiv policies (is.gd/paxpolicy). Thank you to everyone who volunteered, this was a true community effort! #PsychSciSky

About PsyArXiv – PsyArXiv Blog

What is PsyArXiv? PsyArXiv (psychology archive) is an open preprint archive designed to facilitate rapid dissemination of psychological research. PsyArXiv is a creation of the Society for the…

is.gd

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James O’Brien @mrjamesob.bsky.social · Sep 5

Oh.

Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · Sep 5

“Farage claimed last year to have “bought a house” in his constituency but the property is actually owned in the name of his partner, meaning he legally avoided higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home – given he already owns other properties”

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Nigel Farage uses private company to pay less tax on GB News earnings

Exclusive: Reform leader’s use of personal services firm is a practice criticised across the political spectrum

www.theguardian.com

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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · Sep 1

Carl Sagan’s Profound ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Speech Set to a Beautifully Calming Classical Soundtrack laughingsquid.com/carl-sagan-p...

Carl Sagan's Profound 'Pale Blue Dot' Speech Set to a Beautifully Calming Classical Soundtrack

Become Human took the iconic "Pale Blue Dot" speech by Carl Sagan, removed some of the noise, and set it to a calming classical soundtrack.

laughingsquid.com

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Reposted by Rik Henson

MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge @mrccbu.bsky.social · Sep 1

New fMRI study shows the hippocampus signals mismatches only when our expectations are based on episodic memories — not general knowledge. Challenges theories of the hippocampus as a domain-general comparator. We also explore how brain networks respond to surprise: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Cam-CAN @camcan-2010.bsky.social · Aug 29

New CamCAN study led by @praykov.bsky.social used 11 different white matter (WM) measures to show that WM health is multidimensional: 4 latent MRI-derived factors explained 89% of WM variance, were predicted by vascular health, and predicted cognition: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Complementary MR measures of white matter and their relation to cardiovascular health and cognition - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Complementary MR measures of white matter and their relation to cardiovascular health and cognition

doi.org

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Andrew Copson @andrewcopson.bsky.social · Aug 29

Brilliant news for health and happiness of children and their parents in UK! Vaccines are a marvel of human ingenuity, reason, and science motivated by compassion which have transformed our civilisation. We should all do our bit to encourage uptake. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Children offered chickenpox vaccine on NHS

All young children in England and Wales will be offered a free chickenpox vaccine by the NHS from January 2026.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Rik Henson @rhens.bsky.social · Aug 28

www.theguardian.com/society/2025... - don’t allow kids who aren’t vaccinated to attend school?

Vaccine warning for England as one in five children start school unprotected

Experts say country needs ‘wake up call’ with levels far below those needed for herd immunity

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · Aug 28

Join some Nobel Laureates and sign this petition to remove RFK Jr. from office. He is a danger to the people of the United States and a national security threat.

www.change.org/p/demand-rfk...

Sign the Petition

Demand RFK Jr. Resign: Petition for a Healthy America

www.change.org

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Humanists UK @humanists.uk · Aug 28

Tax-funded travel to faith schools is not a necessity – it’s a subsidy for a parental preference. If local authorities continue to provide this benefit, then they must also support families who reject a faith school in favour of a school without a religious character.

humanists.uk/2025/08/28/t...

End faith-schools-only free travel scheme in Wales

Wales Humanists has urged the Welsh Government to stop the discriminatory funding of travel to faith schools, when no equivalent funding is provided to those who go to non-faith schools. It has done s...

humanists.uk

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Cam-CAN @camcan-2010.bsky.social · Aug 27

New CamCAN paper led by @noham-wolpe.bsky.social shows that older adults’ tendency to see facial expressions as more positive may not be the adaptive “rose-coloured glasses” we thought, but could signal early cognitive decline and neurodegeneration: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40854689/

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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · Aug 26

The MAHA assault on vaccines will kill people & usher in a scientific Dark Age. RFK Jr has got to go. Please join me, my fellow @accountabilityji.bsky.social advisory board members, Nobel laureates, National Academy members, & colleagues calling for his resignation.

www.change.org/p/demand-rfk...

Sign the Petition

Demand RFK Jr. Resign: Petition for a Healthy America

www.change.org

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Reposted by Rik Henson

21 Group @21group.bsky.social · Aug 25

Edinburgh University paid out £881789 to its vice chancellor Sir Peter Mathieson for pay & expenses"

The University must offer him a huge pay check or he might leave😲

And then lectures will collapse, research will vanish & the University will crumble😉

www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinbur...

Cash-strapped Edinburgh University paid boss over £800k in pay and expenses

The University of Edinburgh paid out £881,789 to its vice chancellor Sir Peter Mathieson for pay and expenses, including flights to South Africa, Hong Kong and the US.

www.edinburghlive.co.uk

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · Aug 21

Preprint servers are such helpful tools — and they make science so much more accessible to people without university affiliations.

If generative AI kills them, it’d be a loss for everyone… including the people making LLMs who I assume used preprints to train their models. 🧪

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · Aug 21

on arXiv I keep seeing obvious LLM content, and even entire papers generated with LLMs, and I really wonder what the point is and what quality control we can enforce to stop the arXiv getting polluted

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Reposted by Rik Henson

Nature @nature.com · Aug 21

A brain-imaging study of people with amputated arms has upended a long-standing belief

go.nature.com/3Jp9NPG

The brain’s map of the body is surprisingly stable — even after a limb is lost

Study challenges the textbook idea that the brain region that processes body sensations reorganizes itself after limb amputation.

go.nature.com

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