What a time to be a scientist. One strolls through the market and has a coffee in the neighborhood and people are discussing how mRNA works, what translation is, how the immune system works...
Sou filho de emigrantes. Portugal é um país de emigrantes. Todos conhecemos e muitos viveram o sofrimento de ser trabalhadores tratados sem respeito. Devíamos tratar os estrangeiros em Portugal como queremos que sejam tratadas as nossas irmãs e irmãos pelo mundo.
Excited to share our latest work - we use pan-neuronal 2 photon imaging to dissect how the
#brain
integrates multiple internal states to guide
#food
#choice
! Fantastic work by
@dahaniel
who took on this challenging project almost solo!
#drosophila
1/21
Breaking News: President Trump will sign an executive order suspending foreign work visas, barring hundreds of thousands of people from coming to work in the U.S. The move includes the H-1B program for high-skilled workers and several other categories.
@scarletjpark
@Microsoft
Easy trick I learned from Michael Dickinson: make a table with two cells. The upper one used for the image and the lower one for the legend. Then set borders to white. ;) Microsoft is better at tables than images!
The fact that the newly minted Nobel prize winners emphasize the importance and value of discovery science is a message that discovery science is under threat. There are no shortcuts. The reason that we don’t solve many human health challenges is because we don’t know why or how.
Grateful and elated by this recognition. It feels special to receive this news while back in Basel. As a kid of immigrants, growing up among hard working foreigners in this great city, I could never have imagined to be welcomed into a group of so many scientists I admire. 1/x
Something just happened in my Lisbon neighborhood. Plenty of clapping and cheers. Normally I would think this is about football. But I think it is about something more important.
First polls suggest that the Swiss have massively rejected the proposal to ban all animal experiments. Great news given that scientists work hard to only perform the strictly necessary and ethically acceptable experiments on animals and that our health depends on these.
When the sky over
#Lisboa
streets turns purple I know that one more year has passed. This has been a challenging year for us all. Even in the context of these crazy last 13 years. But if there is one thing this place has taught me is that there will always be beauty in our lives.
To all colleagues in Portugal who played the FCT lottery and got negative news today: don't forget that with the abysmal success rate the outcome and feedback says very little about you and your project. It mostly reflects the structural deficits of science funding in PT. 1/2
Fascinating how doing science in Portugal keeps being a criticism by reviewers. Because obviously the quality of science depends on the geographic location.
#explicitbias
Based on single-cell RNA sequencing of sponges, seems like nervous systems could have evolved to regulate feeding. Including via rare "neuroid" cells (center of UMAP) that have secretory properties reminiscent of neurons.
I am very honored to have been elected to this office and I am excited to work with such a fantastic team and the whole
@FENSorg
family on behalf of science. This is a recognition of
@RibeiroLab
past and present,
@ChampalimaudF
,
@FensKavliNet
and everybody who has worked with me
Every
@ERC_Research
grant with top scores that did not get funded is a young leader with contributions to the future of European safety & prosperity being trashed. It makes me sad that European states,
@EUCouncil
@EU_Commission
are not brave enough to invest more into the future!
Special day in
#Portugal
today: The Portuguese celebrates living more days under democracy than under dictatorship. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1974! This should be a reminder how fragile and valuable democracy and our freedoms are.
Today is again a humbling day for our profession, how we perform, evaluate, and fund science. It shows how difficult it is to predict the future and what will have an impact. This should be especially a lesson for funders. Squeezing out fresh & different ideas means we all loose.
To all colleagues writing an
@ERC_Research
StG: This is a tough one. Especially in these difficult times and on a relatively short notice. Be proud of what you have achieved, stay strong during these last days, and good luck after the submission!
Finishing the revision of a manuscript where the input of reviewer 1 has been transformative. Amazingly constructive feedback. Now the question is: how do I find out who he/she is so that we can collaborate with them?
The best metaphor for how science works and our contribution is the one of medieval cathedrals. They are the product of centuries of work of highly skilled workers who contributed small bits to a major achievement without a single owner. The owners are the citizens and humanity.
Nothing beats seeing things in print. Thanks
@Dahaniel
for being the heart and mind of this project. Fantastic to have great collaborators in the lab which make my dreams come true. And thanks
@Rory_Beresford
for offering me the adequate drink to the paper.
Why did
@fly_papers
get suspended? Was it amplifying a fly paper which did not fit the Elonesque worldview? Or is it a conspiracy of the C. elegans mafia or the mouse cult? ;)
Let me rewrite this for you
@ERC_Research
- the ERC President
@mleptin
emphasizes what a waste of talent and opportunities it is that so many deserving and outstanding projects and scientists can not get funded due to budget constraints.
#noScienceNoFutureforEurope
ERC President Maria Leptin congratulates all new ERC Consolidator Grant awardees, saying that they represent some of the best of European research.
#ERCCoG
She also has this message 👇
Kids out of school means I am back to commuting by bike. Love starting my morning by biking through Lisbon. And who says that commuting by bike in Lisbon is not possible has never used a bike! But we are far behind in matters of transport and being the city we could be.
#lisboa
The world and especially business, finance, and politics are finding out what it means to do science. You can not take shortcuts, you need to use evidence, and you need to face the reality. And it is slooooowwww.
I love our latest work: cells in the fly female germline require dietary
#sugar
because they undergo metabolic reprogramming - turn on the PPPathway to make eggs - which sends signal to makes animal eat more sugar -
#Drosophila
#metabolism
#appetite
Imaginem se a injecção era para universidades, ciência, educação… seria um investimento no futuro. Isto é um investimento no passado. RIP better future
The new issue is out! Just in time for
#WorldAlzheimersMonth
, Cell features four articles that together demonstrate the genomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic dysregulations underpinning Alzheimer's disease at single-cell resolution across cell types.
To read more click
Good luck to all colleagues who submitted an
@ERC_Research
#ERCStG
!!! Congratulations for this gigantic achievement! If you can't celebrate exuberantly with your colleagues, friends, and family due to lock-downs: Get some sleep. ;) And to everybody writing
#ERCCoG
: Stay strong!
Conclusion from reading recent C. elegans papers - worms remember things for a VERY long time. Like over multiple generations long! So don’t piss them off!
I am proud to be part of the large science community. 2020 showed what SCIENTISTS can do. The world is learning the difficulty and rewards of doing
#science
. No shortcuts, accept the data, ignore at your peril. I hope politicians and business people learn the lesson
#2020heroes
I miss hosting visitors in the lab or just showing people around who happen to visit Lisbon. So many nice chats in the past. Looking forward to this nightmare being over.
So if I get it right the strategy in Portugal is to send the disadvantaged Lisbon suburbs into lockdown while accepting British tourists without COVID tests and quarantine? Money wins?
We are all looking forward to a fantastic
@FENSorg
#FENS2022
forum in
#Paris
. It is difficult to imagine now that these halls will be alive with intense
#neuroscience
discussions this summer. But all is set for an inspiring science event!
Finally found time for a run in this crazy weeks. And now I check this place and I find this wave of support and excitement for our work. Grateful to be part of this community and to get support to contribute. Amazing adventure with incredible
@RibeiroLab
members.
This was one of those rare weeks were one as a scientist gets multiple great news. What does one do? Eat an ice cream and go back to writing grants. What else? Have a fantastic weekend!
I wish all a happy holiday season. I hope you will spend it with your loved ones. May it be healthy and regenerating. If you are far from your family, remember the sun always rises after dark periods! See you!
My biggest pleasure about this grant is that it was awarded to an amazing postdoctoral colleague whose innovative research generated the basis for a lot of exicing future work. Seeing her recognized is the biggest reward.
#proudPI
When will Europe get science funding right? You want to get discoveries and science done? Then fund it bottom up (scientists and their ideas) and have it organized and run by scientists! That is the secret of
@ERC_Research
! Everything else is just illusions and wasted money.
Wow. Big catch
@AllenInstitute
- A true visionary leader and great human being. If
@ruimcosta
keeps on moving west we will eventually have him back! ;)
Attention small
#science
#funding
rant coming: Something I find especially frustrating as a mentor is the short duration of funding for
#postdocs
. How are they going to fund longer, ambitious, transformative projects with 2 years of funding? 1/n
To the ones who managed to secure funding: CONGRATULATIONS! That is a major achievement given the current funding climate. To the ones who did not get funded I hope that it will not endanger your continuation in science. 2/2
Notice of award! Really excited to publicly announce that I will be starting a new phase in my professional career! With
@christlet
we will expand our work into humans. We will post pictures of food
@Twitter
and test food preferences with AI prediction of internal state.
Virtual postdoc interview visits by Zoom are extremely unsatisfying. So much brainstorming and getting to know people happens during social time and dinners. Just having a chat after the talk and turning off Zoom and going on with other work feels so wrong.
Nothing says more about current perceptions of the importance of journals in scientific culture than
@SciReports
being more and more often referred to in CVs, grant applications etc. as “Nature Scientific Reports”.
The efforts and cost required for a lab member to get a visa to visit collaborators in the UK has been crazy. And it is also supremely humiliating for the applicant. Good luck with remaining competitive with such conditions.
Scientific courage is one of the most important gifts our trainees bring to our labs. The courage to go into the unknown and make discoveries is something precious and fragile. Mentors need to encourage and protect that mindset. One of our most important tasks!
#Igotyourback
Since living in Portugal I am always touched by the unanimous excitement and importance given to the celebration of the 25th of April. In these difficult times it reminds us of what is possible if we act together as a society. And that our liberty needs constant vigilance.
A maioria das imagens do 25 de Abril e dos tempos que se seguiram estão a preto e branco, moldando a forma como olhamos para a Revolução e comos imaginamos os seus intervenientes.
Aqui estão algumas imagens a cores da Revolução. 25 de Abril sempre. Fascismo nunca mais! (1/25)