Brutal.

This week, we're hosting an international workshop focusing on decoding animal movement. We're happy to welcome 40 participants from all continents! #EUFLYNET @biologists.bsky.social

We have a preprint about modelling three-dimensional movement tracks, led by @njklappstein.bsky.social. The model takes the form of a step selection function and, just like in 2D, it can include directional persistence, attraction to targets, and habitat selection. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

“Fighting for the right to a public university”, written about the Dal Faculty strike, also applies to @cupe3912.bsky.social's strike mandate, which can “be seen as strong resistance to right-wing neoliberal tendencies that strangle universities”. www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc... #Nspoli

Fighting for the right to a public university - CCPA

The Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) was locked out by the university three weeks ago (August 20th). The DFA’s calls for fair wages and supportive measures for newer and precariously employed facul...

policyalternatives.ca

In Canada, proposed cuts of 15% across the federal government would have a dramatic effect on already globally decimated research & science. Join Canada's research & science community and tell PM Mark Carney to preserve the funding promised in 2024. Send a letter: win.newmode.net/canadianasso...

The hmmTMB paper is finally out in the Journal of Statistical Software! An R package for hidden Markov models with random effects, flexible spline-based covariate effects, and fast inference using TMB or Stan. Check out the GIthub repository for more examples. doi.org/10.18637/jss...

hmmTMB: Hidden Markov Models with Flexible Covariate Effects in R by Théo Michelot

<p>Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are widely applied in studies where a discrete-valued process of interest is observed indirectly. They have for example been used to model behavior from human and animal...

doi.org

Yes! Very happy to see the DSU finally taking a public stand!

Jason Haslam@jasonhaslam.ca · 11mo ago

Our students understand what's at stake! Why don't our administration or our Board? Students and Faculty united can turn this tide! Now is the time to redouble our efforts to #KeepDalStrong! www.dsu.ca/dfa-labour-n...

Uniforum (Nous Group) has been at Dal since 2022 and they've likely been advising senior administration on creating the crisis narrative since then. Read these articles: circles.eduvation.ca/posts/inviti... and nationalpost.com/feature/how-...

The @dalhousieu.bsky.social Board of Governors' "offer" for interest arbitration won't resolve this. It's just creating further delays. Bargaining on the issues important to our members is required. Stop with the stunts, let's get back to the table and talk. It's the only way to #KeepDalStrong

Perhaps you have seen the newest presser by @dalhousie.bsky.social (www.dal.ca/dept/hr/labo...) about interest arbitration. Note: THEY CONVINIENTLY LEFT OUT THAT THE @dalfaculty.bsky.social WOULD HAVE TO DROP ALL UNRESOLVED ITEMS They have had since May to bargain and have not. #KeepDalStrong

Message to faculty and staff, August 27, 2025

dal.ca

How does locking out faculty achieve this objective? Uncompetitive offer followed by lockout disproportionately affects junior faculty (poor retention) and makes Dal less attractive to future hires (poor recruitment). #Solidarity #KeepDalStrong @dalfaculty.bsky.social

Strategic plan

Dalhousie's Strategic Plan (2021-2026): Third Century Promise, signals our long-term ambition and provides a clear, actionable strategy to guide us.

dal.ca

This is just it. Strikes & lockouts are the big tools unions & employers use, often to bring the other back to the table. Dal’s prez locked us out—while voting on her “offer”!—after her team walked away. I guess just to show she could? That’s not leadership; it’s childish bullying. #KeepDalStrong

Craig McCormick@craigmccormick.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Yes! I'm no expert, but I think a lockout is supposed to be something that an employer does to put pressure on employee groups to come back to the bargaining table. Except, in this case, the employer walked away from bargaining prematurely after a tepid effort. Weak sauce. #KeepDalStrong

Students have set up an open letter, which students can sign, in support of @dalfaculty.bsky.social! THANK YOU! forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/respon...

As if a terrible offer wasn't bad enough, @dalhousieu.bsky.social walked away from the table, AGAIN! Won't even talk about our members' priorities. The disrespect is baffling. DFA wants to bargain, and we need the other side to engage and help us #KeepDalStrong. @ansut.bsky.social @caut.bsky.social

@supportourscience.bsky.social's letter of concern covered in @science.org's News today #cdnpoli #cdnsci

Brian Owens@scibri.com · 12mo ago

Carney is planing 15% budget cuts across most of government. @supportourscience.bsky.social and @u15ca.bsky.social worry what that would do to a research system that is already lagging behind other countries. My story for @science.org 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

Concerned about the yellow bars here though. Over a third of researchers are open to using AI to compose a draft. Plus more for editing… so basically using AI for the entire writing process?

Richard Van Noorden@richvn.bsky.social · last yr.

A minority of researchers - under 30% - have used AI to edit or write their papers, according to a Nature survey published today. Those that have used AI, more often than not didn't disclose it. www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com

Sheer insanity. Can you imagine this in any other industry? Not only giving content away for free, but paying billions for the privilege of doing so, and then paying yet more billions in order to access the content we paid to give away. Make it make sense. 📚

Eric Schares@eschares.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 years. A. $8.349 billion ($8.968 B in 2023 USD) $2.5B in 2023 alone. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #metasci

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world. 
I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

Well over 600 signatories now. Please keep the momentum going. Sign and share to show how much the wider scientific community is concerned by the Royal Society's silence over Musk's FRS. Members of the UK and international scientific community are all welcome to sign.

Stephen Curry@scurry.bsky.social · last yr.

Now almost 450 signatories to my open letter calling on the @royalsociety.org to stand up for its values & deal with the widespread concerns raised by Elon Musk's Fellowship. Please consider signing & sharing: forms.gle/miDciq35oxyw... List of signatories here: occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2025/...

With help from @marcofesta.bsky.social the Canadian Ecologists Starter Pack is now over 50. Please reply to this with brief information if you'd like to be added. bsky.app/starter-pack...

The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on? direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... A 🧵 1/n #AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub

Recently discovered a fun webpage called Probability Playground where you can interactively explore probability distributions. It’s helpful especially for distributions with parameters that are not immediately intuitive. Very cool! www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~adamcunn/pr...