iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

How wrong we were calling the non-coding part of our genome "junk DNA"! A stark reminder that science's best friend is humility, not pride. That said, can't help myself from feeling proud 🤭 to have been allowed to contribute a little to this interdisciplinary study. www.sickkids.ca/en/news/arch...

sickkids.ca

Non-coding gene linked to core social and behavioural traits in Autism, major SickKids-led study finds

Nature study implicates PTCHD1-AS in Autism’s core features, opening a new window into its biological roots.

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American Psychiatric Association @apapsychiatric.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

An emergency department presentation for self-harm in childhood or adolescence may be associated with risk of subsequently experiencing sexual violence. @SickKidsNews ow.ly/P3JT50YhOJp

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American Psychiatric Association @apapsychiatric.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

“Pervasive disparities in diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes are driven in part by the systematic exclusion of people with IDDs from clinical and health services research.” ow.ly/COC350Yks8F

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Brain @brain1878.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

The January 2026 issue of Brain is now online! academic.oup.com/brain/issue/...

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Aaron Besterman @abesterman.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Excited for our new study to come out that suggest that clinical genetic testing should perhaps be considered as part of the standard diagnostic evaluation for schizophrenia.

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

The Genetics & Genome Biology program at @sickkidsto.bsky.social Research Institute had the brilliant idea of making Pokémon cards with the PI's. Flattering and funny. Needless to say my Hit Points need some work.

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Ellen Hoffman @ehoffmanlab.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

It was great to present at the "Clinical and Scientific Value of Genetics in Child Psychiatry" symposium at #AACAP25 today! Thank you to @jacobvorstman.bsky.social for organizing a wonderful symposium with great talks by @abesterman.bsky.social and Discussant Louise Gallagher! @aacap.bsky.social

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Super stoked to share our paper just out in Brain @brain1878.bsky.social LoF variants in DENND2B give rise to an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental condition characterized by developmental delay, intellectual disability, and episodes of psychosis and/or catatonia. tinyurl.com/4k8hr3bj

tinyurl.com

Variants in DENND2B are associated with vulnerability for neurodevelopmental impairment, psychosis and catatonia

Murthy et al. report that monoallelic loss of function variants in the DENND2B gene give rise to an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder characte

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Clear and to the point. @ahalladay.bsky.social only needs a mere 5 minutes to address some of the main points of RFKs April 16th conference on #Autism. Worth the listen and please share. www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/a...

medpagetoday.com

Autism Science Leader Reacts to RFK Jr.'s Misinformation

'Autism is being oversimplified right now,' says Alycia Halladay

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Ricardo J. Salvador @cadwego.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

What scientists do. ‘Dr. Le Pichon initially defended the notions of a static Earth, but he came to realize that they were incorrect. He returned from the laboratory one day and told his wife, “The conclusions of my thesis are false.”’

nytimes.com

Xavier Le Pichon, Who Modeled Movement of Earth’s Crust, Dies at 87

With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is “an extraordinary living being” that is “continuously changing.”

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Eos @eos.org · 11/04/2025

Xavier Le Pichon, a pioneer in early plate tectonics research died on 22 March. Pichon developed the first global reconstruction of Earth's tectonic plates. eos.org/articles/pod...

eos.org

Podcast: Plate Tectonics, the Theory That Changed Earth Science - Eos

Third Pod from the Sun talks with pioneering geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon about what it was like to be a young scientist challenging deeply held theories.

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Not only an iconic scientist, but also an impressively humane person. This interview reveals some of his thinking about what it is to be human: onbeing.org/programs/xav...

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Farrukh @implausibleblog.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Dr Peter Marks, "Vaccines have been studied very extensively for being potentially associated with autism" "That theory has been debunked" "One study in Denmark, over 600,000 children. It shows that if anything, children had a lower rate of autism than unvaccinated children"

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

@nytimes.com published a moving obituary of my father in law, who passed away recently. I am forever grateful for his lasting positive impact on my life, and proud of his impressive scientific legacy to the world. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/s...

nytimes.com

Xavier Le Pichon, Who Modeled Movement of Earth’s Crust, Dies at 87

With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is “an extraordinary living being” that is “continuously changing.”

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

My dearest father-in-law and precious bon-pappa to our children. He taught me how to be a rigorous scientist to examine life, without reducing life to that what we can examine with science.

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Collège de France @college-de-france.fr · 24/03/2025

🟣 L’Administrateur, l’Assemblée des professeurs et toute la communauté du Collège de France apprennent avec une profonde tristesse le décès de Xavier Le Pichon, professeur émérite du Collège de France, titulaire de la chaire de #Géodynamique (1986-2008).

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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Half of business owners on this Toronto street estimated that more than 25% of their customers arrived by car. In fact, it was 4%. And the % of customers who who walked or cycled? 72%. Retailers routinely overestimate the # of “car customers.” Via @carltonreid.com www.forbes.com/sites/carlto...

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The Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders @jnd-springernature.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Begum-Ali et al. show that in #neurofibromatosis, changes in visual attention can already be measured during infancy; reporting slower development of endogenous visual foraging and in exogenously-driven saccadic reaction times. Check it out: jneurodevdisorders.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Connecting the Toronto-Quebec City corridor with high speed rail could shave 39 million tonnes of carbon pollution in the coming decades, the equivalent of taking nine million gas powered cars off the road for a year, according to project documents. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/02/20/n...

nationalobserver.com

Trudeau pitches high-speed rail, putting surprising new decarbonization options on the table

High-speed rail alternatives for travel could open up a suite of decarbonizing options not currently on the table. But politics remains a major obstacle to seeing it built.

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Reading a classic, I came across this description of our online experience in 2025, which struck me as pretty accurate... (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953) What's lost in the process? Time-wasting thought

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Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" bbc.com/news/article...

bbc.com

China's psychiatric treatment for ‘trouble-makers’

Student among dozens who challenged China’s authorities to have been sent to psychiatric units, BBC finds.

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Paul Frankland @franklandlab.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Applications until Feb 15th

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Marcelo Bonini, Ph.D. @mbonini.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

In 1922, a group of scientists went to the Toronto General Hospital where diabetic children were kept in wards. Most of them were dying from diabetic ketoacidosis. The scientists went from bed to bed and injected the children with a new purified extract: it was called insulin.

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Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

This is an important shift - the long awaited new Ensembl web site is ready for beta testing - is smooth, scrollable genome loveliness +clean views of the complex information - but @ensembl.bsky.social needs your help to get all the use cases out. Come to the webinar, and check out beta.ensembl.org

beta.ensembl.org

Ensembl

The new website of the Ensembl project

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 13/01/2025

The world has passed “peak child”

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Very thoughtful commentary! The idea of polygenic genome editing of human embryos reveals the vast distance between apparently rational and actually unwise.

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Paul Frankland @franklandlab.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Just bumping this up for those who may have missed earlier announcements-- we have a new PI position in the Neuroscience & Mental Health program here at SickKids. Neural and glial mechanisms in cognition.

can-acn.org

Scientist/Senior Scientist – Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto – Canadian Association for Neuroscience

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

My new year's resolution for 2025 is to persevere with my humble contribution to the daily #Toronto downtown gridlock in hopes that this will be the year that our local policy makers will have their eureka moment; bikelanes don't block traffic, they improve it. @bike.community

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

I suggest we encourage the anti-vaxx crowd at this point

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A Jaded View @lindaleecf.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

I like this…..

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Nick Brown @steamtraen.eu · 13/12/2024

Yup

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David Baranger @davidbaranger.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Bookmark for all future grants: Use of Promotional Language in Grant Applications and Grant Success: "the percentage of promotional words was positively associated with the probability of receiving funding (NIH grants: odds ratio, 1.51 [95% CI, 1.10-2.11])." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Manuscript submission systems are getting out of control

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Armin Raznahan @bogglerapture.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Studying sex differences in the human brain is challenging, but important. Many thanks to @emilysingerneuro.bsky.social & the fab folks @thetransmitter.bsky.social for inviting me to contribute to the evolving conversation on this timely topic ⬇️ 1/n

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

@abesterman.bsky.social, @shafalijeste.bsky.social et al. describe the Research in Neurogenetics (CARING) Clinic Paper in GiM (tinyurl.com/5byecm8e) & coverage in Neurology Today (tinyurl.com/ycyw7m87) Another step towards precision health care for children with genetic vulnerability for NDDs

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

note to self: checking the weather forecast may occasionally have its use

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Jacob Vorstman @jacobvorstman.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I could not find a "schizophrenia research starter pack" so I made one from the researchers in this area I could find. No need pointing out that it's only a small and incomplete selection, just reach out if you want to be added. 🦋 #schizophrenia #psychosis go.bsky.app/T4ZYSD

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