Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@social.cleverlibre.org
Senior lecturer at ZJE and Edinburgh university.
I teach #imageanalysis & #dataanalysis with #RStats & #python. I study #heterogeneity in #pituitary (and other) cells.
Joined Oct 2022
Nicola Romanò
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Well worth reading this:
Don't get mad, get equal: putting an end to misogyny in science.
Nicola Romanò
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@pre perhaps we will return to a pre Facebook internet experience. Perhaps this will backfire and we will have less monoliths and more distributed niche forums. Does every interest need the same platform to build a community?
Nicola Romanò
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Today
* Reddit ends free API access.
* Twitter turns off anonymous reading.
* Youtube is talking about banning ad-blocking users.
The tech industry was living on cheep money and low interest rates, and now they're all afraid to let their precious content get used for AI training.
The walls are going up, the lawful corporate web is collapsing in on itself.
@simplemycelium @actuallyautistic
An academic perspective here
A few years ago I took a post-grad course in education and I perfectly understand what you're saying. Coming from a scientific background, I had to start reading academic literature about teaching and learning, which is full of buzzwords with little practical meaning. I was looking for practical solutions on how to teach and I was getting none of that.
Or so I thought at the time...
After a while I did realize that
a) Those words made sense (mostly) once I their meaning was explained to me. There is no shame in saying "I'm not familiar with this concept, could you please explain it in a simpler/more practical way?". That's also a quick test to see if the person you're speaking to actually means something or if they're making it up
b) if you read a scientific paper and you're not a scientist you'll also find plenty of buzzwords that make little sense, and I was probably guilty of that myself! So, I took this as an exercise to try and avoid buzzwords for the sake of using a buzzword, and to try to explain concepts more clearly.
c) some people like to overcomplicate things to show they're smart. I'm happy to let them do that, if that makes them happy. I'm not going to recommend their work to anyone. :)
@gmusser I would try to quantify that though. I don't know your work, but from your bio I gather you're well known in the field. Is this actively hurting your career or is it just FOMO (I'm just being a bit provocative for the sake of it here)?
Are you receiving fewer papers to review? Fewer invitations to speak? Grants rejected because you're not on Twitter? How is it hurting you?
Since I deleted my Twitter account I didn't see any effect, and I've been getting a cleaner feed here on Mastodon. It could simply be a matter of field, but I had some pretty interesting conversations here as well. Also, no character limits !
Nicola Romanò
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After a day of running into multiple accessibility barriers while attempting to do multiple online things, I just needed to come here to say thank you to everyone on Mastodon who participates in creating a small corner where I don't feel like an afterthought. I appreciate the dedication to alt text and video descriptions so, so much, and I know many people have already said it, but I don't think it can ever be overstated.
Very interesting piece by Vassilis Galanos on the use of #ai in higher #education #teaching
I recently heard Vassilis talking about this, and it gave me a lot to think about!
🤖 🤖 🤖 🤖 🤖
Nicola Romanò
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Nicola Romanò
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New posting! This one is about the number of unpaid hours in #academia, an insight that's come from the realisation of how much time I'm still committing despite now (currently) being unemployed. To what extent is academic research sustained by the massive expenditure of unpaid labour? How much unpaid overtime do you think you're clocking? Let's lift the lid...
https://totalinternalreflectionblog.com/2023/06/29/pro-bono-a-riff-on-unpaid-labour-in-academia/
@steveroyle @TIR_scienceblog But, that is a problem academics have put on themselves.
I am very privileged because I work in an extremely supportive department (can't say the same for the larger structure of the uni, but I really can't complain about the local environment).
In the past few years I learnt to be very strict and to say no more often. I don't work weekends and I track how much time I spend on different activities during the day, so I have an exact account of how much time I spend doing what. This is very useful to motivate saying no to certain things (I've already spent x% of my time doing xyz, so that's it for this month).
I'm happy with what I do, my career hasn't suffered because of it and I am more efficient at what I do, because I am not overworked.
I do perfectly understand, however, that not everyone is in the position of doing this. We need to change the current academic culture if we want change. This starts from teaching our students about good life/work balance; exposing and discouraging toxic behaviours in the workplace; voice concerns when something is happening. These will likely go unheard, but the more people do it the more changes are likely to happen.
Nicola Romanò
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In a new video @geerlingguy spots the #enshittification of #RedHat #Linux quoting @pluralistic thanks to the new Redhat source code paywall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF5pyVUQBH8
Nicola Romanò
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Turnitin acknowledged that its AI detector sucks
https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/teaching-center-doesn-t?fbclid=IwAR1Lp40fzkpNbWFPt1J-CeUBzbk8ENplO0Z2jgff1_AumOiZSe80R79vOE4
Nicola Romanò
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The Company of Biologists is excited to announce the launch of its new mastodon instance @biologists.social, on which you can now find all our journals and community sites. We look forward to sharing more news about this new community in the coming days.
@PhilippBayer ahahah ok, that makes sense.I was envisioning grand plans of crawling the literature for most used primer sequences! Imagine the nightmare of seeing 'Other users of this gene have also used this primer'
@PhilippBayer Interesting idea. How would you define 'common', though?
Nicola Romanò
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While big tech tries to force employees back to the office, smaller tech companies are using remote work as a competitive advantage to hire and retain talent. 81% of firms <5,000 employees allow remote work or have a remote work options.
""If you require someone to move to a certain location, you are inherently limiting the talent pool that you’re going to be working with." @zuhayeer
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/20/23762655/tech-perk-remote-work-freedom-airbnb-yelp
Nicola Romanò
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You are doing #Bioinformatics? Would you say data analysis requires interactive work, e.g. using jupyter, rstudio, etc.? Or would you prefer using a workflow system, e.g. #snakemake, #nextflow, #galaxy, etc.?
I am not talking about visualization, though. Visualization is important and can be achieved regardless of the approach.
Please boost. Thank you.
Nicola Romanò
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Great job for someone who wants to bring down Elsevier
"Do you believe we can break out of the culture of publish-or-perish, and find new and fair ways to evaluate the contributions researchers make to society?
We are seeking a motivated, proactive and organised individual to develop and deliver a research outputs analytics service across the university."
Full time, permanent
£41-50k
Imperial College London Library
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/description/ACA00173/research-outputs-analyst
Nicola Romanò
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@WhyNotZoidberg @GalmeshRosewood If you’ve held a “Save” icon in your hands, that makes you ancient now.
Nicola Romanò
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Senior lecturer at ZJE and Edinburgh university.
I teach #imageanalysis & #dataanalysis with #RStats & #python. I study #heterogeneity in #pituitary (and other) cells.
Joined Oct 2022
