Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@social.cleverlibre.org

3,013 neurons, half a million synapses: the complete #connectome of the whole #Drosophila larval brain!

Winding, Pedigo et al. 2022. "The connectome of an insect brain" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.516756v1

We’ve mapped and analysed its circuit architecture, from sensory neurons to brain output neurons, as reconstructed from volume electron microscopy, and here is what we found. 1/

#neuroscience #connectomics #vEM #volumeEM

"Why don't we share data and code?" Nice and concise infographic about perceived barriers and benefits. Full article: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1113

So, the European Union has set up its own Mastodon instance, EU Voice, as an official channel/platform for all its many institutions - what a great initiative https://social.network.europa.eu/about
#TwitterMigration #europe #Diplomacy #Transparency

Growth.

I have been using Git a long, long time. I have worked on Git clients and libraries. At some places I've worked, I am the person folks go to when they need Git help.

And yet, only today I learned you can pass -m to commit twice (or more) and it will do the right thing of making each successive message a new paragraph (which is useful for the convention of a short summary as a single first line and following paragraphs as a more detailed message).

Has anyone ever investigated whether people (researchers or lay people) are more convinced from pregistered / many labs / many analyst projects compared to "normal" projects?

BREAKING: Democrat and indigenous Alaskan Mary Peltola officially wins race for Alaska’s only House seat, defeating Pro-Trump Republican Sarah Palin.

2/ Let's just forget for a second that #predictive #crime is just quackery anyway, extremely stupid mistakes are being made. For example, if your name is in the police systems because of something somebody else did, that was considered an indicator by the #algorithm (called #ProKid). Amateur hour.

@polka @PracheeAC

On the photocopier and peer review claim: yes, nice story, but...

Typewriters+carbon paper (or indeed, just 'typewriters + copy typist) could make multiple copies of papers way before photocopiers became common. But the journals I've looked at weren't asking for multiple copies (though they were requesting typescript rather than handwritten).
I suspect the rise in use of peer review in the third quarter of 20thC coincides with photocopiers but wasn't caused by them.

Dear students:

If you’re considering emailing a former professor just to check in and say hi, but are hesitant because you have nothing substantive to say, consider this an invitation to go ahead and send that email. It really means a lot.

Just a reminder to all of those who are new around here and getting used to the mechanics of mastodon timelines.

( I didn't make this)

@scullingmonkey
Many of the Cell press journals are on #mastodon too!
@CellReports
@CellMetabolism
@cellcellpress
@cellpress
@TrendsCellBio
@CellGenomics
@CellStemCell
@cellhostmicrobe
#science #CellPress #cellbiology #metabolism #stemcells

Time for an #introduction

I'm a computational (bio)physicisct and have mostly worked with MD simulations of lipid membranes and membrane proteins but also some experience in machine learning and free energy calculations.

Currently I work as a senior scientist at Schrödinger in New York City, after doing a postdoc at Stanford University and a PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics.

Besides work, I'm an avid amateur photographer and I like reading about science, history, and languages.

Should grants use a lottery approach? 🎟️

"Research shows that, barring a minority of outstanding projects, grant winners and losers are not decided by a precise and objective identification of worthy and unworthy projects. Instead, the luck of the draw — who reviews what proposal and the opinions they hold — generally determines these outcomes."

"It is excessively wasteful in terms of researchers’ time."

https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/21/research-funding-broken-lottery-approach-could-fix-it/

#sciencereform #macademia #metascience @academicchatter

Interesting webinar by Gabriella Rustici & Guillaume Desachy where they will share their experience about the @rstats journey AstraZeneca is currently on.

R at AstraZeneca: ​​upskilling our workforce through education, experience, and exposure

https://www.addevent.com/event/Kq14516694

Following up from the newly implemented #ungrading pedagogy (see https://lgatto.github.io/ungrading/), I have gathered an initial student feedback during this term's year committee, where student delegates and teaching staff meet to discuss how things have been so far.

Here's what concerns my 3rd bachelor course:

(1/3)

I love all of you and I want nothing but the best for each of you, particularly those on infosec.exchange. I understand that Mastodon isn't Twitter, that DMs are end-to-end encrypted, that we are spread across different instances and it can be hard to find your friends, and that an instance can go away at any time, and that translating posts doesn't work correctly, and there is no native giphy support, and that some instances are overwhelmed and super slow, and that you don't think the federated model can scale to a billion users, or that it doesn't support full text search of every post and account, or that we can't comply with the GDPR, or that we don't support quote tweet style functionality, or that we shouldn't collect IP addresses, and many other things.

The fediverse is a work in progress. I've been here for going on 6 years. In that time, it's come a long, long way. That said, Mastodon is not going to appeal to everyone. The decisions I make are not going to appeal to everyone. No one is forcing you to be here. No one is forcing you to disclose your personal secrets into a network of federated servers running by volunteers and hobbyists. NB: this is not Twitter. It has some similar functionality, but it is not Twitter. Parts of it are better, IMO, and parts are not. The security community is generally among the most skilled and competent IT people the world has to offer. Mastodon is open source. Do you see where I'm going?

I set this instance up a long time ago for reasons I don't even remember. I have poured my soul into this thing because I believe in the importance of this community. I have effectively peaked in my career as a CISO and I and my family live well. I am not running this instance for fame, money, a better job, or anything other than wanting to foster a community of people that can learn from each other and make the world a better place. That's it.

As I've said in several recent interviews, I felt particularly obligated to ensure the security community had a good handing spot in the fediverse as everyone was running for the doors in Twitter. We've grown from 180 active users to about 30000 in the span of 3 weeks. I do not expect everyone to stay. Some will set up their own instances. Some will move to one of the other excellent security focused instances. Some will give up and move to on to some other social media. And that is OK. While I am super excited to see the buzz here, I don't have subscriber targets, engagement targets, retention targets, or anything else. The only metric I hold myself to is whether I think this is serving a useful purpose to the community.

I appreciate all of you, regardless of where you land. Infosec.exchange has been here for a long time and will continue to be here for you.

Just migrated to mastodon from Twitter and looking for researchers to follow here to get started. I found some nice lists separated by field but haven't found any for natural language processing. Does anyone know of one?