Director of Language & Genetics at Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen. Tracing the complex connections between genes, brains, speech & language. Website: https://www.mpi.nl/people/fisher-simon-e ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3132-1996
Science reporters seem to love chasing stuff like this right now. For what it's worth, the self-declared biohacker has not cloned himself. See also the proliferation of credulous pieces on de-extinction gurus & designer baby grifters. Creates confusion & hot takes in lieu of informed conversation. 🧪
Science reporters seem to love chasing stuff like this right now. For what it's worth, the self-declared biohacker has not cloned himself. See also the proliferation of credulous pieces on de-extinction gurus & designer baby grifters. Creates confusion & hot takes in lieu of informed conversation. 🧪
Public communication of science would be more effective without billionaire tech bros & their ilk flooding the zone. There are crucial complex discussions to be had about both the promise & dangers of new genomic tools & tissue culture models. Instead we waste time debunking sensationalist nonsense.
Birdsongs give insight into evolution of vocal behaviour; global diversity may be key to develop unifying theories. @quentinbacquele.bsky.social & co studied song architecture in >3000 species, finding spatially varying equilibrium between environmental constraint & drive for complex communication.🧪
The global biogeography of passerine songsAlthough bird songs are classic models for understanding the evolution of vocal communication, their global diversity has long made the development of a unifying framework challenging. By analyzing th...www.science.org“We uncovered a linguistic ‘golden age’ 3000 to 1000 years ago. Great loss of linguistic diversity did not begin with recent colonial expansion but as multinational empires first spread along with their languages, pathogens, & cultures.“ @damianblasi.bsky.social et al's new paper in @science.org. 👇🧪
The rise and fall of language diversity through the HoloceneCharacterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...www.science.orgNature interviewed five artists from a variety of backgrounds about how to create engaging images that accurately convey scientific/medical concepts, & how they see the future, in light of AI developments. Insightful nuanced piece, with beautiful visuals from talented real-life human illustrators. 🧪
‘Good design takes mastery’: scientific illustrators sketch out AI’s futureNature talks to five artists about their approaches to communicating science visually.www.nature.comI know many of us are wary of venturing out to the cinema after traumatic experiences like the one below.
Simon FisherProject Hail Mary is a beautiful brilliant film. But molecular biologists be warned there's a deeply disturbing scene midway through when Ryan Gosling's scientist places two eppendorfs directly next to each other in an otherwise empty unbalanced microcentrifuge & sets it spinning with wild abandon.
Our ability to speak involves remarkable feats of motor sequencing that most of us take completely for granted. The new issue of @science.org has a fascinating essay by Sergey Stavisky, covering his team's use of brain-computer interfaces to restore speech for people with neurological injuries. 🧠🗣️🧪👇
Regaining your voiceAI speech neuroprostheses can restore day-to-day communication after neurological injurywww.science.org“The robot performed agile maneuvers through complex indoor obstacles & outdoor wild environments, including dynamic drop-down maneuvers reaching instantaneous peak speeds of 6 meters per second, with robust traversal of diverse obstacles: stairs, hurdles, stepping stones, gaps & fallen branches.”😲🧪
Agile perceptive multiskill locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wildA quadruped robot autonomously selects diverse motor skills for perceptive high-speed locomotion on unstructured wild terrains.www.science.org“Somewhere along the way, we've forgotten the computer is just a metaphor for the brain. A powerful metaphor but still a metaphor. We always get into trouble when we confuse a metaphor with the thing itself – the map with the territory.” Lucid piece by @anilseth.bsky.social on LLMs & consciousness.🧪
Once again we are told AI may be conscious – I study consciousness, and I have my doubts | Anil SethDespite Anthropic’s claims, Claude is no more likely to achieve sentience than a simulation of a weather system is likely to generate a real hurricane, says Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and compu...www.theguardian.comHere's a nice perspective summing up the fascinating Andean leaf-eared mouse evolution paper from this week's edition of @science.org, also including a beautiful photo of one of the study participants. 🧬🐭🧪👇
To eat or to breathe?In highland mice, the responses to low oxygen and toxins compete for a shared molecular regulatorwww.science.orgThink I'll keep doing science together with real people for the time being, if that's okay with you @nature.com.
Which ‘AI scientist’ suits your lab? A guide for the perplexedGeneral purpose AI tools for science, such as Claude Science, promise to accelerate research. But which is right for you?www.nature.comAmazing illustration of evolution in action. Andean leaf-eared mice occupy highest elevations of any known mammal but also live at sea level. Mice in harsh environment of high elevations have enhanced thermogenic capacity in hypoxia, increased mitochondrial capacity & ability to eat toxic plants!🐭🧪
Adaptation across an extreme elevational gradient in Andean leaf-eared mice, the world’s highest-dwelling mammalAndean leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum) live at the highest elevations of any mammal, and they also have the broadest elevational range, from sea level to mountain summits of >6700 meters. Highlan...www.science.org