Nostr notes by Albert Cardona

Me: professor at Cambridge university. LinkedIn: "You're ...

2026-10-26T21:24:57Z

Me: professor at Cambridge university.

LinkedIn: "You're a top applicant for Senior Research Associate in Translational Biophysical Chemistry and Imaging (Fixed Term) at University of Cambridge Vet School"

One wonders, did anybody ever get hired via LinkedIn. Or is it all just one giant bullshit job, a place for managers and recruiters to pretend to work?

After all, it's owned by Microsoft.

#LinkedIn #Microsoft

Nothing like humour in these trying times. "AI disclosure. ...

2026-10-22T16:14:30Z

Nothing like humour in these trying times.

"AI disclosure. During the writing of this paper, we had several conversations with Claude, 55, owner of the neighborhood bar in Strasbourg. Unfortunately, none of them was of relevance to the topics of the paper."

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.27918

Happy to upgrade, but unclear which version is safe.

2026-10-21T13:13:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…ufd6
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Happy to upgrade, but unclear which version is safe.

Good lord. #nextcloud runs on PHP. Is there really no mitigation ...

2026-10-21T08:14:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…59jx
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Good lord. #nextcloud runs on PHP. Is there really no mitigation other than taking it down?

Open position: Research engineer in Bioimage Analysis. Institut ...

2026-10-19T08:32:52Z

Open position: Research engineer in Bioimage Analysis. Institut Pasteur, Image Analysis Hub - 2026.

Work with the formidable Jean-Yves Tinevez at Pasteur! What an opportunity.

https://forum.image.sc/t/research-engineer-in-bioimage-analysis-institut-pasteur-image-analysis-hub-2026/122732

#PhDJobs #FediHire #BioimageInformatics

An appealing theory, but mind the comment at the bottom of the ...

2026-10-01T12:23:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…r47l
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An appealing theory, but mind the comment at the bottom of the page that states, quote: «but bronze in fact continued to be used more than iron even in the "Iron Age"».

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this. I can relate so much, but ...

2026-09-24T19:02:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…jnvv
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Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this. I can relate so much, but for another sport.

"Stack Overflow was once the beating, chaotic heart of ...

2026-09-15T08:14:06Z

"Stack Overflow was once the beating, chaotic heart of programmer culture, where strangers helped strangers debug their code at 2am. Its monthly questions have collapsed from 109,152 in November 2022, the month ChatGPT launched, to 1,146 in August 2026."

https://europeancorrespondent.com/en/r/if-youre-reading-this-youre-in-the-minority

#StackOverflow #ChatGPT

And just how many bugs will these 1,000 patches introduce.

2026-09-08T21:07:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…ld4x
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And just how many bugs will these 1,000 patches introduce.

That may be, since, if a human can read it, a camera in front of ...

2026-09-08T09:17:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…y2kl
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That may be, since, if a human can read it, a camera in front of a screen can also read it (and easier methods will work too), but at least we will be left with the web of trust.

If your weebsite doesn't yet have a human.json file, consider ...

2026-09-08T08:16:50Z

If your weebsite doesn't yet have a human.json file, consider adding one. Here is what the browser add-on looks like, to give you an idea of what it does.

Read about it: https://codeberg.org/robida/human.json

I'm curating a collection of #neuroscientists active in ...

2026-09-07T08:25:57Z

I'm curating a collection of #neuroscientists active in Mastodon, which is currently very incomplete:

https://mathstodon.xyz/collections/117228695339021192

Please could you suggest yourself or point to the many that I have missed. Thank you.

#neuroscience

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@libreoffice/117172222073531706 A ...

2026-08-28T09:15:50Z

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@libreoffice/117172222073531706

A must-read for anyone who uses LibreOffice and cares about the possibility of continuing to use it. Note:

“Advertising-supported software is funded by attention; subscription-based software is funded by the ability to revoke access; and data-driven software is funded by surveillance. TDF has ruled out all three of these options, leaving only the possibility of donations.”

And if you use LibreOffice at work, get your company to buy it. It’s the right thing to do, in the best interest of the company.

quoting
note19s6…38fg

How LibreOffice is funded

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/08/28/how-libreoffice-is-funded/

#Foundation #LibreOffice

Not too far, a massive robber fly, Machimus rusticus. About 4 ...

2026-08-25T20:43:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…0kt9
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Not too far, a massive robber fly, Machimus rusticus. About 4 centimeters long. Not all flies are fruit flies … nowhere near, some, like this one, are effective predators.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/394459828

#iNaturalist #entomology #Diptera #Asilinae #flies

Superb Dalmatian wall lizard, Podarcis melisellensis. Its tail is ...

2026-08-25T20:38:53Z

Superb Dalmatian wall lizard, Podarcis melisellensis. Its tail is about twice as long as its snout-to-vent length!

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/394458272

#iNaturalist #herpetology #lizards

Before the FDA, milk in the US contained all sorts of stuff, some ...

2026-08-23T19:42:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…lz5n
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Before the FDA, milk in the US contained all sorts of stuff, some of it rather repulsive.

Debora Blum's book "The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" goes quite in depth about those times.

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@albertcardona/116971544742491792 We ...

2026-08-05T11:17:47Z

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@albertcardona/116971544742491792

We are recruiting, please share widely.

Even though the job description says "machine learning engineer" there's going to be plenty of good old software engineering and also computer science research of the machine vision kind, and if you are up to it, also development with python/django/javascript/postgresql.

Deadline extended: apply before 08/24/2026

quoting
note174c…g2ha

We are hiring:

Machine Learning Engineer at the #MRCLMB in Cambridge, UK. On site only.

«To lead the deployment, scaling and maintenance of machine learning systems for petabyte-scale connectomics data within the group of Dr. Albert Cardona at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. The role will focus on turning machine learning models for volume electron microscopy into robust, reproducible and observable production pipelines, supporting automated segmentation, synapse detection, proofreading and large-scale image analysis.»

Apply before 10th of August, 2026.

https://fa-evzn-saasfaukgovprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/UKRI-Careers/job/2611

See also:
* https://mohinta2892.github.io/catena-docs.github.io/getting-started/
* https://mrclmb.ac.uk/research-leaders/albert-cardona/

#connectomics #Fedihire #PhDJobs #MachineLearning #BioimageInformatics

A student was telling me, they haven’t read some papers I asked ...

2026-07-25T16:51:18Z

A student was telling me, they haven’t read some papers I asked them to read because it takes them a very long time.

Well, let me tell you: it took me 20 days (with 2-4 hours per day) to read a single large paper in my field, to understand the multiple years of work that went into it with its many implications for my own research and for the broader field. 20 days. And it was worth it.

There are no shortcuts.

#academia

We are hiring: Machine Learning Engineer at the #MRCLMB in ...

2026-07-23T22:02:07Z

We are hiring:

Machine Learning Engineer at the #MRCLMB in Cambridge, UK. On site only.

«To lead the deployment, scaling and maintenance of machine learning systems for petabyte-scale connectomics data within the group of Dr. Albert Cardona at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. The role will focus on turning machine learning models for volume electron microscopy into robust, reproducible and observable production pipelines, supporting automated segmentation, synapse detection, proofreading and large-scale image analysis.»

Apply before 10th of August, 2026.

https://fa-evzn-saasfaukgovprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/UKRI-Careers/job/2611

See also:
* https://mohinta2892.github.io/catena-docs.github.io/getting-started/
* https://mrclmb.ac.uk/research-leaders/albert-cardona/

#connectomics #Fedihire #PhDJobs #MachineLearning #BioimageInformatics

Using ChatGPT for references is among the worst possible uses of ...

2026-07-18T09:35:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…u26j
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Using ChatGPT for references is among the worst possible uses of ChatGPT; the are plenty of examples of when that went wrong. To on top of it need a copy editor to check whether the references are legit is really something ... first, the editor in chief of Science claims not to know before writing the piece whether the few references cited in the piece exist, as in, he looked for references to back up what he was writing rather than knowing of those references and use them to inform his statements, plus, once queried, didn't know whether they are real or not. Second, everybody who cares uses Google Scholar, OpenAlex, ORCID, and others, specifically built for this purpose, not a random sentence generation machine.

«For a student who used AI to write a paper Now I let it fall ...

2026-07-16T20:39:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…ussv
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«For a student who used AI to write a paper

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this Earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? the miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.»

Joseph Fasano

Precisely because multiple-choice tests their knowledge rather ...

2026-07-07T11:27:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…kj69
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Precisely because multiple-choice tests their knowledge rather than give them latitude to fill in pages with words.

I find multiple-choice too easy, because one the true answers is included. A list of statements that needs to be labelled as True/False is a proper test.

Oral exams are a good idea, but hard to implement: needs lots of ...

2026-07-07T09:51:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…fnwk
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Oral exams are a good idea, but hard to implement: needs lots of time and consistency in the evaluation.

Pen and paper scale better, and, applied as exams consisting of 100 true/false statements with 1 point for a correct answer, -1 for a wrong one and 0 for not answering, the only effort is to compose the list; a machine will score the exams.

As a student, these exams are hard but one fees they truly test what one knows.

As faculty, it's not that hard to find 100 statements that don't overlap with those of previous years.

#academia #exams

Bees are wasps that forgot how to eat meat [1]; ants are wasps ...

2026-07-05T22:37:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…dfgd
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Bees are wasps that forgot how to eat meat [1]; ants are wasps that forgot to fly; sawflies don't know that they are wasps. It's wasps all the way down ...

[1] Except for vulture bees, also known as carrion bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture_bee

Same, and these are so hard to filter out as spam. They look ...

2026-07-05T15:46:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…2nar
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Same, and these are so hard to filter out as spam. They look human.

Dear internet hive mind, a question on email archaeology: my ...

2026-06-24T22:13:18Z

Dear internet hive mind, a question on email archaeology: my significant other has a Microsoft Entourage directory with 3.3 GB worth of old email in a single file called "Database", under its "Main Identity" folder, from ca. 2009. The file seems binary. Any hints as to how to decode this file? We likely know the email password if needed.

#MicrosoftEntourage #Microsoft #email #OldEmail

“In 2020, a major study from Brown University analysed millions ...

2026-06-09T08:07:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…vht8
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“In 2020, a major study from Brown University analysed millions of tweets. They found that bots were responsible for roughly 25 per cent of all tweets about climate change. On days with big climate announcements, bot activity surged even higher, promoting denialist talking points and generating the illusion of a massive, angry public consensus against climate action.”

The study: Marlow et al. 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2020.1870098

Article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #disinformation #TwitterBots

Cambridge, UK, awash in ant queens since yesterday afternoon. ...

2026-05-22T14:31:23Z

Cambridge, UK, awash in ant queens since yesterday afternoon. Outstanding weather, sunny, no clouds, high temperatures above 23C. It’s flight day for Lassius alates.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/363969789

#iNaturalist #Hymenoptera #ants #entomology

Call me naive but what prevents anyone from pulling the plug? As ...

2026-05-21T11:07:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…qqvd
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Call me naive but what prevents anyone from pulling the plug? As in, as you mentioned earlier, resources are a constraint that biological systems must always consider and LLMs so far don't. Perhaps it's a failure of my imagination, but I can't quite see where the alarming part is. A physical substrate and an energy source are always required; that's how geopolitics work too, controlling vast human populations.

"Intermediate levels of scientific knowledge are associated ...

2026-05-21T10:39:58Z

"Intermediate levels of scientific knowledge are associated with overconfidence and negative attitudes towards science", Lackner et al. 2023 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01677-8

The Institute for Replication (#I4R) is collaborating with the publisher (Nature Human Behaviour) and has now produced a report on the above paper (https://osf.io/mg95t/files/mjs86 ) which is largely positive:

"LFMMG (2023) presents a computationally reproducible and largely robust finding. We re-implemented the full analytical pipeline and conducted thirty-one robustness checks with those results summarized in Table 8. There is much kudos to be given to the original authours* for making the process of replicating their work clear and worthwhile."

* typo in the original text of the report.

#ScientificPublishing #PRC #PublishReviewCurate

You may not agree with this paper, but you should read it: ...

2026-05-14T20:20:23Z

You may not agree with this paper, but you should read it:

"Aging and the narrowing of scientific innovation", Cui et al. 2026 (James Evans lab)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady8732

"Analyzing more than 12.5 million scientists who published between 1960 and 2020, we find that novelty—the linking of previously unconnected ideas—increases with academic age, whereas disruption—the replacement of established ideas with new ones—declines."

#ScientificPublishing #science #bibliometrics

Thank you for this, clarifying for us foreigners on UK soil. The ...

2026-05-12T12:08:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…u2z6
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Thank you for this, clarifying for us foreigners on UK soil.

The paper cited is quite something, analysing 32 million tweets from politicians in 26 countries. Quote:

"we find that radical-right populism is the strongest determinant for the propensity to spread misinformation. Populism, left-wing populism, and right-wing politics are not linked to the spread of misinformation."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19401612241311886

#UKpol #UK

"The hard truth about how hard it is to publish in ...

2026-05-08T22:10:20Z

"The hard truth about how hard it is to publish in Development", Briscoe et al. 2026
https://journals.biologists.com/dev/article/153/1/dev205432/370214/The-hard-truth-about-how-hard-it-is-to-publish-in

"for the past 10 years, 35-45% of papers submitted to Development ultimately get published."

#Development #ScientificPublishing

So much talk about data, but no funder wants to support ...

2026-05-05T21:04:15Z

So much talk about data, but no funder wants to support databases.

FlyBase is in trouble, yet a key reference in biology research.

Raising funds to support curating connectome datasets, including their large, nanometer-resolution volumes, is hard. Yet then evaluators point out that we aren't doing enough to make it easy to access – yet with what funds?

And likewise for every scientific dataset ... either there is an internally funded institute behind it (and even then) or it is hell.

Everyone wants new data, but nobody seems to pay attention to the need for old data to support the generation and interpretation of new data!

#academia

There is this passage in "Dune" where the protagonist ...

2026-05-04T10:43:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…pqmj
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There is this passage in "Dune" where the protagonist hears the planet ecologist describe the spice cycle and how controlling a quantitatively small fraction of the total water could tilt the whole planet one way or another.

(Less dessert might not have been as tragic as less desert, for the Fremen.)

Amused that the #scifi novel "Dune" (1965, by Frank ...

2026-05-04T08:42:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…ac5g
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Amused that the #scifi novel "Dune" (1965, by Frank Herbert) touches on leverage points, as a way to control the ecology of the desert planet, Arrakis, tilting it towards a more habitable place with less dessert and more surface water.

The 1960's must have been awash with these concepts (feedback looks, leverage points, planet-wise measurements and interventions) among intellectuals. The Gaia theory was also developed in the late 1960s (published by Lovelock and Margulis in 1974).

I'd add: "we identify three fundamental capability gaps ...

2026-04-29T22:02:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…wpvj
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I'd add:

"we identify three fundamental capability gaps in current AI—the inability to interact with the physical world, inadequate learning that produces brittle systems, and unsustainable energy and data inefficiency—and describe the neuroscience principles that address each: co-design of body and controller, prediction through interaction, multi-scale learning with neuromodulatory control, hierarchical distributed architectures, and sparse event-driven computation."

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.18637

Besides this unfortunate bug, does KDE Connect handle email well, ...

2026-04-29T16:51:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…el09
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Besides this unfortunate bug, does KDE Connect handle email well, and reliably? From Microsoft and from other sources? Would like to find a replacement for my current client (Thunderbird).

I do not recognise what a transformer does as anywhere near what ...

2026-04-29T10:48:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…f5u6
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I do not recognise what a transformer does as anywhere near what even a small organism with a tiny brain does. The approach to responding to inputs is not the same, and the units of operation are also dramatically different (a neuron vs a node in an ANN).

A longer answer: "A critique of pure learning and what ...

2026-04-29T08:03:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…tqwh
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A longer answer:

"A critique of pure learning and what artificial neural networks can learn from animal brains", Zador 2019
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11786-6

#neuroscience #AI

Tongue-in-cheek: mostly very biased swift heuristics. We do have ...

2026-04-29T08:01:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…l3d5
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Tongue-in-cheek: mostly very biased swift heuristics. We do have slow and fast thinking modes, as opposed to LLMs which don't.

Refreshingly clear step-by-step explanation of what an LLM, or ...

2026-04-29T07:51:00Z

Refreshingly clear step-by-step explanation of what an LLM, or what many call "AI", is and isn't, and how it is trained and refined:
https://ynarwal.github.io/how-llms-work/

"The model doesn't "think" about what to say. It computes a probability distribution over all possible next tokens and samples from it. Every word is a coin flip — just a very informed one."

#ChatGPT #LLMs #AI

2+2 years position for a software engineer / data scientist with ...

2026-04-24T15:04:47Z

2+2 years position for a software engineer / data scientist with serious programming chops in my lab at the #MRCLMB to develop tech for #connectomics and #neuroscience :

https://fa-evzn-saasfaukgovprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/UKRI-Careers/job/2250

Please do share with suitable candidates, and feel free to reach out via email to discuss details.

Deadline for application: May 10th.

Starting date: any within 2026.

Requires Masters plus industry experience, or a PhD in a suitable field – and demonstrable experience in software engineering.

Please help disseminate – either here or by copy-pasting onto emails or messages. Thank you!

#PhDJobs #neuroscience #SoftwareEngineering #jobs #ScienceJobs

1. Invent an illness; 2. Put up a couple of preprints about it; ...

2026-04-22T21:26:02Z

1. Invent an illness;
2. Put up a couple of preprints about it;
3. See AI companies' web crawlers swallow it hook, line, and sinker whole;
4. LLMs start telling users that the condition is real. WTF.
5. See published papers cite them, likely from authors using LLMs to write them. WTAF.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01100-y

#LLMFail #LLMs #chatbots #Bixonimania

The lab of Anne Carpenter is moving to Purdue and hiring ...

2026-04-17T16:54:23Z

The lab of Anne Carpenter is moving to Purdue and hiring postdocs:

Postdoctoral position: machine learning for drug discovery
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R5kSSUX4A3x0CZYsTUdUtxPJYHRwZ04SIl5G06_MrlQ/preview?tab=t.0

#PhDJobs #MachineLearning #DrugDiscovery

I have a jacket made for a friend of my dad, that then was given ...

2026-04-07T11:30:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…gj6r
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I have a jacket made for a friend of my dad, that then was given to him when he was 15 ... that was over 60 years ago. Looks like new. The only unfortunate bit is that my shoulders are a bit wider than my dad's and I can't wear it well. But my teenager son can.

The fashion industry is among the worst offenders. People in the Western world should know about what happens to clothes they reject. The Atacama desert [1] in Bolivia and Chile, and in Nigeria [2]. The Textile Mountain film does a good job at stating the dire consequences clearly: https://www.textilemountainfilm.com

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chile-fashion-pollution
[2] https://climateaction.africa/fas-the-challenges-of-textile-waste-in-africa/

#FastFashionTrash #NoPlanetB #EcosystemCollapse

Now imagine a company that said, «yes, after 5 years of ...

2026-04-07T10:51:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…4h7g
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Now imagine a company that said, «yes, after 5 years of intensive in-house use, we can assert with confidence that this is a good laptop. We are now pushing it out into production, is available for purchase.»

Now imagine that was mandated by law as part of both repairability and durability requirements, sending "planned obsolescence" into oblivion.

Frankly, that's how it should be. For clothes, washing machines, cars, anything that is manufactured and has a limited lifetime, yet shouldn't, or, its lifetime should be counted in decades, even in generations. Consumer society is only consuming ourselves and the planet we so dearly depend on.

Would the cost raise? On paper, no: would only be pushed some years into the future. In practice, the lack of a short-term incentive would prevent any laptop from being manufactured at all, so the cost might as well be infinite.

One wonders what can be done that is practical and implementable now to tame the madness and bring into the cost all the externalities – the latter should be the only source of additional costs, and would be minimized the longer the lifetime of a product is.

#ConsumerSociety #PlannedObsolescence #ConsumerMarket #externalities

A lot is said about the repairability of a laptop, but few ...

2026-04-06T22:36:47Z

A lot is said about the repairability of a laptop, but few consider its durability too.

I have a Thinkpad X1 yoga first generation from 2016 that continues to run like the first day. Fan doesn't make any noise, doesn't get hot, hard drive (an NVMe) works the same. The battery keeps less charge, but not that little either. Computing-wise, I only feel it's old when opening Blender; can't do live textured rendering. With a touch screen and an outstandingly good keyboard, it's a pleasure to take notes in, to write.

I also have an Apple macbook M1, first generation, from 2020, which continues to work very well. Recently got upgraded to latest OS version (26), in addition also runs Asahi Linux. No issues at all with anything, not even the battery. Only the hard drive feels small, but that's not much of an issue.

In my office there are a number of old macbooks, from 2012 and 2015. They all boot, into Ubuntu, which is what they always have run from day 1. Work well as far as I can tell; one feels their age in that their compute capacity seems comparatively small. Good keyboards, in working order despite having been used intensely for about 3 years each.

Then I have my current laptop: a Framework 11 1st gen from late 2021. I only configured it in mid 2022; was too busy to switch laptops. Screen hinges are floppy, they've been since day one but now more notably so. Various keys peeled off. More serious, it has blacked out twice, possibly because of overheating; the fan does go very noisy at times. It's bendy, not stiff. Feels powerful still, but goodness, the laptop as a whole gives the impression of senescence. Incomparable to the sturdy feel of the Thinkpad or the ethereal, eternal feel of the macbooks.

In the UK alone, every person, adult or child, subsidizes car ...

2026-04-05T20:02:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…rs04
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In the UK alone, every person, adult or child, subsidizes car drivers to the tune of £800/year, whether they themselves drive or not. That's the current cost of infrastructure and public services used by cars and their drivers.

Reads cheap until one thinks, suppose that was allocated to cycling infrastructure and public transport instead ...

I'm in. Is there an implementable plan in offer by any ...

2026-04-04T14:42:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…nh6m
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I'm in. Is there an implementable plan in offer by any political party? The UK Green Party seems to be making noises in this direction but I haven't found anything concrete yet.

"We demonstrate that multilayer ANNs comprised of separate ...

2026-04-02T08:34:09Z

"We demonstrate that multilayer ANNs comprised of separate excitatory and inhibitory cell types, and neuronal units with separate dendrite compartments, can be trained to accurately classify images using a fully biology-compatible deep learning algorithm called dendritic target propagation."

"Cellular and subcellular specialization enables biology-constrained deep learning", Galloni et al. 2026 (Aaron Milstein's lab).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124726002378

#neuroscience #BioinspiredComputing #ANNs

The government is the representative of a sovereign state. ...

2026-03-29T09:39:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…cn7f
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The government is the representative of a sovereign state. Doesn't need to justify severing ties with a company, much less one known for its exploitative practices. If anything, the government ought to emit a public apology for having contracted out work to Palantir in the first place.

While surely the war is stressing the supply chain, the UK by ...

2026-03-28T08:42:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…jr3p
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While surely the war is stressing the supply chain, the UK by design is always weeks away from shortages of one kind or another. The UK's is not a self-sufficient society in any shape or form. Likewise for most if not all Western countries.

The shock to me was when the UK voted for Brexit when 50% of its food – I mean, its FOOD – came from the EU. How far can manipulation go to make people not know where and how their food comes from, and to then vote against their very own interests.

There are good reasons why, e.g., France heavily subsidises its farmers.

#UK

But back to humans ... "Women used to dominate the beer ...

2026-03-26T23:08:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…xxn3
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But back to humans ...

"Women used to dominate the beer industry – until the witch accusations started pouring in" (2021)
https://theconversation.com/women-used-to-dominate-the-beer-industry-until-the-witch-accusations-started-pouring-in-155940

«Humans have been drinking beer for almost 7,000 years, and the original brewers [1] were women. From the Vikings to the Egyptians, women brewed beer both for religious ceremonies and to make a practical, calorie-rich beverage for the home.»

«From the Stone Age to the 1700s, ale – and, later, beer – was a household staple for most families in England and other parts of Europe. The drink was an inexpensive way to consume and preserve grains. For the working class, beer provided an important source of nutrients, full of carbohydrates and proteins. Because the beverage was such a common part of the average person’s diet, fermenting was, for many women, one of their normal household tasks. [2]»

[1] https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/women-and-beer-forgotten-pairing#:%7E:text=Women's%20involvement%20in%20brewing%20beer,in%20Mesopotamia%2C%20and%20possible%20earlier.&text=Historically%20women%20were%20involved%20in,also%20brewed%20their%20own%20beer.
[2] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/women-making-beer

#beer #fermentation

Not only human's: «Yes, there are very real dangers to ...

2026-03-26T23:04:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…fz7q
_________________________

Not only human's:

«Yes, there are very real dangers to drunkenness among animals, yet there seems to be no shame attached to it. Except perhaps for honeybees. They are nature's hardest drinkers capable of knocking back 100% proof, or as one researcher remarked: "I know of no other organism that drinks pure ethanol, not even a college student."»

«In Australia, the summer heat ferments nectar and, according to the entomologist Errol Hassan, bees all too easily slip into alcoholism. "The bees can't find their way back to the hive, bang into trees or simply fall to the ground," he says. A drunken bee often faces disgrace back at the hive, ostracised by its teetotal fellows. "They are not allowed in by the guard bees at the entrance to the hive," Hassan says. "They are pushed away from the landing platform or attacked." And with good reason. If their fermented nectar was turned into alcoholic honey, it could end up paralysing the entire colony.»

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/dec/13/research.highereducation1

#honeybees #alcoholism #alcohol

Biological Laboratory – a Lego set proposal, created by one of ...

2026-03-26T14:40:36Z

Biological Laboratory – a Lego set proposal, created by one of our lab members, Chu-Cheng.
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/ab52d2c2-0688-48e7-a7d1-77ae54a6aa4b

In his words: "The playability, esthetics of this design, together with the most important, educational value, make it a perfect set for Lego ideas product."

Still some days to support it, needs to gather a lot more support beyond the present 2,100 to reach manufacturing. How many scientists are there in Mastodon?

#Lego #science #laboratory

Except, US citizens can and do travel through Europe with ...

2026-03-25T08:35:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…fgt8
_________________________

Except, US citizens can and do travel through Europe with Meta's glasses on ...

Postdoc position: Career Returner Fellowship "The LMB is ...

2026-03-24T11:54:57Z

Postdoc position: Career Returner Fellowship

"The LMB is proud to launch a three-year fully funded fellowship for scientists who have had a career break of 12 months or more."

"At the LMB, we understand that stepping away from research – even briefly – can affect career progression. That is why we have created a dedicated postdoctoral fellowship to support researchers who have taken a career break of 12 months or more, for any reason, for example parental leave, health reasons, caregiving, a career change or other personal circumstances."

https://mrclmb.ac.uk/careers-and-people/postdocs/career-returner-fellowship/

Happy to discuss applications to our lab in #Drosophila #connectomics, #ElectronMicroscopy or #ComputerVision applied to #BioimageInformatics.

#MRCLMB #PhDJobs #neuroscience

Reflecting on eLife's new publication model, 3 years in: ...

2026-03-19T22:41:52Z

Reflecting on eLife's new publication model, 3 years in: "the most important thing we have learnt is that our new approach to publishing works. Authors, reviewers and editors routinely tell us that they have had a more constructive experience with the new approach."

https://elifesciences.org/articles/110392?_hsmi=98220609

Proud to be an eLife editor. eLife's publication model gets the best from everyone:
* from authors, who remain in control and can reply to reviewers without fear and without being overly apologetic or sycophantic;
* from reviewers, who engage constructively in a semi-anonymous way (they aren't anonymous neither to each other nor to the editors, all practicing scientists in their field), knowing that their comments are suggestions, not mandates for authors;
* and from editors, who don't have to deal with any nastiness from any party, everybody being far more relaxed that I've seen in any other journal, concentrating their efforts in the scientific content.

1/3

#eLife #ScientificPublishing

For fruit fly and vision enthusiasts and specialists: ...

2026-03-19T21:06:37Z

For fruit fly and vision enthusiasts and specialists:

"Electrical synapses mediate visual approach behavior", Frighetto et al. 2025 (from Mark A. Frye and Larry Zipursky's labs)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.14.682373v1

"Our findings reveal mechanisms underlying visual approach, and highlight the interplay between electrical and chemical neurotransmission for rapid object detection and action selection."

#neuroscience #Drosophila #vision #GapJunctions

Indeed, a focus on growth is the definition of cancer.

2026-03-16T21:45:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…luht
_________________________

Indeed, a focus on growth is the definition of cancer.

There hasn't been a left wing party in power in England for ...

2026-03-07T18:19:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…5gg5
_________________________

There hasn't been a left wing party in power in England for decades (since before Tony Blair, who certainly wasn't a lefty). Corbyn tried but failed. The Green Party is the breath of fresh air with the best chance to clear away the stuffy malaise that pushed all other parties into the one-upping downward spiral of right-wing extremist policies that delivered the present predicament.

What a prospect: most of the western world doesn't mind their ...

2026-03-05T07:45:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…kskp
_________________________

What a prospect: most of the western world doesn't mind their thoughts anchored and nudged by an automated statistical language generator providd by companies that are currently losing billions and soon will want to recover revenue and profit ... what could possibly go wrong.

"AI assistants are now embedded in our daily lives" – ...

2026-03-05T07:01:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…3z2f
_________________________

"AI assistants are now embedded in our daily lives" – really? That's quite the opening premise. I must be a dinosaur.

Zebra jumping spider, Salticus scenicus, predating upon a fly. ...

2026-03-03T22:31:29Z

Zebra jumping spider, Salticus scenicus, predating upon a fly.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/341067635

#iNaturalist #Aranea #spiders #entomology

I keep hearing about the "slopocalipse" coming to ...

2026-03-03T15:38:38Z

I keep hearing about the "slopocalipse" coming to scientific publishing, and I can't but think: it was already happening before LLMs became "good enough" at writing academic prose. What hasn't been addressed is the root cause: the incentives. The publish-or-perish approach to science evaluation, for grants and positions.

Want a solution? Limit publications to one per author per year. You can publish more when in collaboration, i.e., make it fractional. The end goal: make people think what brick they want to supply to the edifice of science. As a bonus, *reward* scientists when they publish *less than* one paper per year.

And the business models based on journal APCs can all die a sudden death now.

#ScientificPublishing #academia #slopocalipse

2 PhD student positions available in Koen Vervaeke's lab in ...

2026-02-23T21:14:45Z

2 PhD student positions available in Koen Vervaeke's lab in Oslo:

1️⃣ Systems Neuroscience: Investigate hippocampal spatial memory & addiction mechanisms. (Tools: In vivo 2P imaging, ephys, optogenetics).

2️⃣ Neuro/Cancer Biology: The GLIOFORCE project. A unique collaboration with the Campsteijn Lab to track Glioblastoma invasion in vivo using mesoscope 2P imaging.

https://vervaeke-lab.org/Hiring

#neuroscience #PhDPositions #SystemsNeuroscience #glioblastoma

"What thoughts do these men have about women if this is the ...

2026-02-17T14:43:47Z

"What thoughts do these men have about women if this is the stuff they are saying out loud?"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/17/men-push-abuse-women-street-stranger

After the Brexit vote there were reportings of increased racist and hate crimes. What's going on in the US and what spills beyond its borders is now on the streets.

There's always a small group who doesn't. As always, the ...

2026-02-10T21:29:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…sv56
_________________________

There's always a small group who doesn't. As always, the novella "Profession" by Asimov comes to mind ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)

Some of us still understand the machine, still read the code of ...

2026-02-10T20:09:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…e97r
_________________________

Some of us still understand the machine, still read the code of the dependencies, still know how to fix it all when it breaks, and can write code to save the day – in my everyday, to handle hundreds of terabytes of data with enough efficiency to derive sensible results with an average annual compute budget smaller than the purchase price of a single H200 GPU.

I understand the sentiment, but, there was always such noise. Frameworks du jour, abstractions upon abstractions. Some of us still learned to write low-level code and to care about the inner workings and difference between registers, CPU caches, round-trips to RAM, and disk caches. The analogy of the food in the fork, in front of you in a bowl, in a box in the fridge, in the market, and sowing the seeds for harvesting 6 months later still rings true and makes sense, to many of us.

What has perhaps happened is that those who never cared much now can code, or rather, are vibe coding, which are entirely different things but lets them get stuff done. Good for them, if only it wasn't boiling the oceans over for mundane stuff like writing a school essay or crafting an email reply.

The photo-Keynesian is also ... rather physics flavoured! Proto?

2026-02-04T21:40:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…mhye
_________________________

The photo-Keynesian is also ... rather physics flavoured! Proto?

Thanks, indeed, a nice summary of key takeaways from Anil ...

2026-02-03T11:41:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…6tz0
_________________________

Thanks, indeed, a nice summary of key takeaways from Anil Seth's essay https://www.noemamag.com/the-mythology-of-conscious-ai/ There's a lot to agree with there, including all the assumptions and bad metaphors that those who equate brains with computers repeatedly fall into.

A few points that come to mind:

* The software/hardware separation isn't as clean in computers either, from the CPU microcode to the OS that it runs. In humans, I don't have an analogy for microcode, but languages change the way we perceive the world, and those of us who speak multiple languages do feel sometimes that we express a different character when speaking in a different language.

* On time, computers operating under real-time constraints are a lot closer to what brains do. The optimal outcome is not the best possible one or a designated one, but rather, that which can do the job in the time and resources allotted.

* Operating systems, and broadly most software, operates on an event dispatch loop, whereby the system awaits an event and then reacts, followed by a restart of the loop body. Having the loop not stop is a key characteristic of our cerebral cortices, where most inputs to any one neuron arrive from other cortical neurons, with as little as about 6% of inputs to some select neurons (in layer 4) arriving from external sensory stimuli via the thalamus (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cne.22133 ) . A recurrent neural network is not that different, conceptually, bridging the huge distance of self-driven input seeking.

* Biological systems are entropically favored https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08374

* The latest technology is never a good metaphor for the brain, as Matthew Cobb's book details over and over: https://profilebooks.com/work/the-idea-of-the-brain/

#neuroscience

If that's the desirable action, what will create the ...

2026-02-01T10:08:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…2uge
_________________________

If that's the desirable action, what will create the conditions for it? Because anyone in power will only move if they see it as a win for themselves.

So how do we create the necessary circumstances of available ...

2026-02-01T10:02:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…7e04
_________________________

So how do we create the necessary circumstances of available information and public opinion to shift government policy towards reinstating professional schools? How can that be made acceptable and desirable to those in charge of now called universities that used to be polytechniques? And to the government to supply the funding?

And more than that, a change in perceptions. For when I ask ...

2026-02-01T09:52:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…s89a
_________________________

And more than that, a change in perceptions. For when I ask undergraduates here at Cambridge University why are they here, to learn or to get a credential, almost all say the latter. None of them should be here, they should be in a professional school where the credentials will match the jobs they seek.

What's more, without the earlier UK policies that enabled ...

2026-02-01T09:46:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…f7la
_________________________

What's more, without the earlier UK policies that enabled anyone from a EU country to immigrate to the UK regardless of Schengen status the UK's trades like plumbers, electricians, and much more would be in tatters. Now that innane politics have closed that avenue, there's a time bomb awaiting.

Indeed, the comparison in professionalism and abilities of the ...

2026-02-01T09:41:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…spqz
_________________________

Indeed, the comparison in professionalism and abilities of the workforce between the UK and countries that have kept their work schools vs universities separate is stark.

Postdoc position open in my lab (UK) to study a disease model in ...

2026-01-30T16:04:42Z

Postdoc position open in my lab (UK) to study a disease model in #Drosophila with comparative connectomics:
https://mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/appcentre-int/brand-3/spa-1/candidate/so/pm/1/pl/3/opp/2765-Postdoctoral-Scientist-Neurobiology-Dr-Albert-Cardona-LMB-2765/en-GB

My lab:
* our page: https://syn.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/
* institutional page: https://mrclmb.ac.uk/research-leaders/albert-cardona/

#neuroscience #PhDJobs #Parkinson

Laughed out loud at the bottom text box …

2026-01-29T16:54:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…z5yt
_________________________

Laughed out loud at the bottom text box …

"Should professors be forced to retire?" ...

2026-01-29T08:42:55Z

"Should professors be forced to retire?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00055-4

The data points to retirement age limits not resulting in new faculty positions at the same rate as faculty posts become available. A pungent point, since retirement age limits were justified on this basis. Further, non-academic posts (i.e., administrative and support posts) are increasing at universities. Plus:

“In many disciplines, your abilities don’t fall off a cliff at the age of 69”, says Oliver Linton.

That is true, but: our abilities often fall off a cliff *far before* that. Sometimes, even decades before that. In particular, our ability to perform research work with our own hands, and to pivot into new research lines, or entirely different fields when the present one is exhausted.

While retirement per se doesn't matter, what matters is the capability of the system to engage in new research approaches, and to explore so far unexamined questions or newly opened fields of research.

How to square the circle? Grant emeritus status to any academic who wants it, at any age. Salary stops being the university's problem; laboratory space frees up for others; and if any grant body wants to provide support funds to the emeritus, by all means; or if the research is engaging enough that other faculty members want to support it in collaboration, absolutely. The relief in voting power while retaining talent, experience, a no-fucks given attitude to questions in seminars, and often the willingness to lecture, at essentially no cost, is a no-brainer.

#academia

I wonder what came out of the DARPA "Fundamental Laws in ...

2025-12-27T16:01:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…xfva
_________________________

I wonder what came out of the DARPA "Fundamental Laws in Biology" program with which Jack Morava was involved:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070714091107/http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/math/funmath/fundamental/index.htm

Last light. Cambridge, December 24th, 2025. #sunset ...

2025-12-25T22:06:17Z

Last light. Cambridge, December 24th, 2025.
#sunset #WinterSolstice

Hi cyclists of Mastodon. I am looking for a laptop/messenger bag, ...

2025-12-22T11:06:17Z

Hi cyclists of Mastodon. I am looking for a laptop/messenger bag, with these characteristics:

1. Small, thin and 100% waterproof.
2. Shockproof: strongly padded for protection.
3. On one side, with clips to attach to a pannier rack.
4. On the other side, with two straps like a backpack.
5. One long across-the-chest strap like a handbag.

Does anything like this exist? Thank you!

#cyclists #MessengerBag #cycling

"In Germany, 90% of people living in large cities have access ...

2025-12-05T08:56:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…jeu7
_________________________

"In Germany, 90% of people living in large cities have access to a tramway or underground train system. In France, it’s 80%. In the UK, the figure is less than 20%, a similar level to the US."

Considering how small the UK is, it's beyond embarrassing. There's no excuse whatsoever other than incompetence or worse, wilful ignorance or even a deliberate policy.

#UK #PublicTransport

Can't agree more. Scientific publications are the means for ...

2025-11-27T15:51:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…3fat
_________________________

Can't agree more. Scientific publications are the means for scientists to talk to each other in a formalised way, and not at all as a way to accrue points towards career advancement or funding. Let's retake that original purpose from the choking grasp of the bean counters.

The paper: "The inevitability and superfluousness of cell ...

2025-11-27T15:43:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…tmqd
_________________________

The paper:

"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition", Luo et al. 2025
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/99047v2

Quite the poster child for why at eLife (npub1ru6…9el5) we support publishing papers that we consider important and yet nonetheless label as incomplete: the questions are worth asking, the discussion has to happen, the suggested experiments need to be voiced out and aired, to prompt someone to take them on to the lab.

#ScientificPublishing

The surprising bit is that the (lack of) health of the general ...

2025-11-15T14:43:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…ld9n
_________________________

The surprising bit is that the (lack of) health of the general population isn't counted as part of the cost or return. The returns of the NHS are not in the daily business but in supporting a healthy population to live fulfilling lives.

It's like measuring the return from public transport on the amounts collected from bus or train tickets. That's not it either. Enabling economic activity and removing expenses across the board elsewhere are the point.

"Epstein-Barr virus reprograms autoreactive B cells as ...

2025-11-12T22:28:40Z

"Epstein-Barr virus reprograms autoreactive B cells as antigen-presenting cells in systemic lupus erythematosus", Younis et al. 2025
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.ady0210

With this and the prior discovery of the relationship between EBV and multiple sclerosis, and with various cancers, we are late already at developing an effective vaccine against EBV.

#EBV #EpsteinBarrVirus #lupus

Possibly. I haven't found specific ROI for scientific ...

2025-11-12T09:18:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…rq5z
_________________________

Possibly. I haven't found specific ROI for scientific research in the UK, unlike for e.g., the genome project for which there are very specific figures.

"It pays off to pay artists" "An Irish pilot scheme ...

2025-11-12T08:31:48Z

"It pays off to pay artists"

"An Irish pilot scheme offering workers in the creative industries a basic income found that for every euro invested, €1.39 made it back into the economy."

And everyone's lives got better for it. Let's keep it up!

https://europeancorrespondent.com/en/r/it-pays-off-to-pay-artists

#ShareGoodNewsToo

"High concentrations of DDT found across vast swath of ...

2025-11-09T22:55:37Z

"High concentrations of DDT found across vast swath of California seafloor" (2018)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/24/california-pacific-ocean-ddt-high-concentration

WTF.

#DDT #California

"Blow fly larvae socially integrate termite nests through ...

2025-11-05T10:47:29Z

"Blow fly larvae socially integrate termite nests through morphological and chemical mimicry", by Schär et al. 2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.007

#biomimicry #entomology #Diptera

It's a kind initiative, yet misses the underlying dynamic: ...

2025-10-29T09:57:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…t3cl
_________________________

It's a kind initiative, yet misses the underlying dynamic: beyond climate change exacerbating the magnitude of seasonal downpours, the underlying proximate cause is that a lot of housing and roads were built on flood plains.

A major culprit is, then, the corrupt government that emitted housing construction permits for these areas, that have been known to be flood plains for times immemorial and were officially designated as so in modern times.

While immediate relief is appreciated, what is needed is a longer term plan to (1) prosecute the corrupt politicians; (2) prosecute the construction companies that knowingly built on flood plains; and (3) fully fund the relocation of those who live in the impacted buildings.

#València #29O #DANA29O #PaísValencià

I think that @npub1s5c…8mlm meant OnlyOffice instead.

2025-10-27T12:23:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…8wct
_________________________

I think that El Duvelle (npub1s5c…8mlm) meant OnlyOffice instead.

Our lab member Chu-Chen Lin has designed a beautiful LEGO ...

2025-10-24T15:56:20Z

Our lab member Chu-Chen Lin has designed a beautiful LEGO Education set to showcase a Biological Laboratory.

If you'd like to see this LEGO set become something you can gift to middle school students, please sign – needs to reach 10,000 signatures:
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/ab52d2c2-0688-48e7-a7d1-77ae54a6aa4b

It's amazing. Lots of thoughtful details on actual scientific experiments in biology.

Via Miranda Robbins' post in a corporate network.

Please help boost for reach.

#LEGO #LEGOEducationSet #biology #science

Tenure-track assistant professor position in neuroscience at ...

2025-10-24T15:45:58Z

Tenure-track assistant professor position in neuroscience at Brandeis University:
https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30961

For further info, email Prof. Gina Turrigiano.

#PhDJobs #academia #neuroscience

Let’s hope that famous IBM slide makes the rounds a few million ...

2025-10-14T19:35:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…x0x4
_________________________

Let’s hope that famous IBM slide makes the rounds a few million times.
#IBMslide

Interested in running a bakery in a small village in Catalonia? ...

2025-10-05T10:40:13Z

Interested in running a bakery in a small village in Catalonia? Then owner has to step down for health reasons.

https://mastodon.social/@repoblem/115320211488672172

The sky and the Earth, two eyelids closing, the dwindling light ...

2025-10-04T20:08:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…0xj4
_________________________

The sky and the Earth, two eyelids closing, the dwindling light now a mere slit of fiery colours. Nightfall.

#nightfall #UK #sunset #StormAmy

... and the clouds parade, shadows against the still bright blue ...

2025-10-04T20:04:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…4edt
_________________________

... and the clouds parade, shadows against the still bright blue sky.