@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz
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albertcardona

@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz

How does the brain work? Someday, we'll figure it out.
Group Leader, MRC LMB, and Professor, University of Cambridge, UK.
#neuroscience #Drosophila #TrakEM2 #FijiSc #CATMAID #connectomics #connectome #vEM #iNaturalist #entomology
Born at 335 ppm.
Brains, signal processing, software and entomology: there will be bugs.

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albertcardona, to random Catalan
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Callistege sp. for the record.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/221688555

davidho, to random
@davidho@mastodon.world avatar

Yesterday would have been the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, but oceanographers and our ability to make predictions called for a one-day delay. This ensured that the landings were a success. #WorldWarTwo

https://nautil.us/the-man-who-delayed-d-day-237811/

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@davidho

"You learn a lot from failure, but I’ve been unable to persuade our graduate students and our faculty. Our faculty should be willing to give the Ph.D. for an experiment that failed, provided it’s been done responsibly." – Walter Munk

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Welcome to today's thread - South East Europe Day 05 03 Jun 2024 - Vilnius - Warszawa, onto night train

Crossing these borders:
Road border 🇱🇹 🇵🇱
Zebrzydowice 🇵🇱 - Bohumín 🇨🇿

These borders on the borders map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#10/54.2528/23.3199

Today's routes on the routes map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#10/54.2528/23.3199

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@jon

How is passport control not happening at every single country of the Schengen area? Happened to me between France and Spain, between France and Switzerland, between Switzerland and Germany, between Germany and Holland; all by train. Granted, the police guards looked the part and only checked a few "random" people (their words). Me on an ironed shirt, shaved, and working on a laptop often spared me from being checked; but when dressed more casually I got checked every time. Young man with Mediterranean looks is one of the profiles of "bad guy" for border police across the whole of Europe. And it has been for at least the last 20 years.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@jon

Border guards, harassing European Union citizens and foreigners alike, are among the worst welcome anyone can get.

The amount of "random checks" I've gotten over the years is bewildering. Yet entering any EU country is trivially easy: just don't do it through any major road or railway. I have no idea what the purpose is, of these controls, other than instilling a sense of fear of the guards on EU citizens.

And thank you for submitting complaints. We ought to make this trivially easy, and get whole train cars to do it, at once, to make enough noise. I suspect none of these complaints go anywhere ever; at least, there hasn't been any visible change in decades.

albertcardona, to random Catalan
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Today in unusual flies, found foraging on daisies:

Eliozeta sp.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220045407

Nemotelus sp.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220036475

#iNaturalist #Diptera #flies #entomology #insects

An entirely black small fly but for its contrasting white abdomen with a horizontal black line towards the posterior end. Foraging on a daisy.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

And four unusual I had not yet ever seen:

Monosapyga clavicornis
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220045526

Black orangeband sawfly, Macrophya annulata
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220028471

A sawfly of the Cephinae family
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220028679

Unknown species of the Symphyta suborder
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220047535

image/png
image/png
image/png

albertcardona, to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Presumably ovipositing, otherwise I don't understand the curious dance this colourful fly was doing. Quite the display given its wing and body colours and patterns.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/221686117

albertcardona, (edited ) to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Ichneumonid wasp ovipositing inside an aphid.

Low-light conditions, a bit blurred. Was fascinating to see, as it iterated over multiple target apids and stabbed them all. Aphids didn't even attempt to run. Interestingly, only chose small aphids, even a very small one (seen in this photo at the lower left, near the posterior tip of the wing of the wasp).

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/221688390

albertcardona, to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

"impending loss of global linguistic diversity"

"We are approaching a cultural catastrophe of unknown dimensions ... the loss of between 50% and 90% of the languages ​​spoken by humanity."

https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/perdua-diversitat-linguistica-mundial-opinio-glidi/

albertcardona, to random Catalan
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

So yellow: male bumblebee, Bombus pratorum.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/220950565

albertcardona, to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

In what calculator does

0.004 * 25 = 0.096

???

Clearly a calculator to be retired from the market.

Why a student would need a calculator for that, and not realise the inaccuracy of the outcome, is quite another matter.

steveroyle, to random
@steveroyle@biologists.social avatar

The Lysosomes and Endocytosis GRC looks great this year. Sadly I'm not going 🙁

https://www.grc.org/lysosomes-and-endocytosis-conference/2024/

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@steveroyle @kofanchen

If the UK higher Ed institutions supported train travel: carbon footprint is much lower, time isn't wasted around hallways and staircases and entirely unnecessary queues. If only. But they don't because direct costs to them are higher than flying.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Welcome to today's thread - South East Europe Day 06 04 Jun 2024 - Arrival of night train, Budapest - Pécs - Beli Manastir - Osijek - Zagreb

Crossing these borders:
Lanžhot 🇨🇿 - Brodské 🇸🇰
Štúrovo 🇸🇰 - Szob 🇭🇺
Beli Manastir 🇭🇷 - Magyarbóly 🇭🇺

These borders on the borders map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#8/48.971/18.358

Today's routes on the routes map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#8/48.971/18.358

Finally South East Europe! 🎉

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@jon “orah” means walnut. I wonder what the forests look like around here.

mamund, to LLMs
@mamund@mastodon.social avatar

Evaluating Large Language Models Using “Counterfactual Tasks”

https://aiguide.substack.com/p/evaluating-large-language-models?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1273940&post_id=144603950&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4pxfn&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

"In [the counterfactual task] paradigm, models are evaluated on pairs of tasks that require the same types of abstraction and reasoning, but for each pair, the content of the first task is likely to be similar to training data, whereas the content of the second task (a “counterfactual task”) is designed to be unlikely to be similar to training data." --

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@mamund

"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"

To expect a priori from an LLM more than an answer equivalent to an interpolated data point as obtained from Monte Carlo data augmentation seems unwarranted.

Or likewise, to expect from a Random Forest classifier to correctly classify an input whose parameter values falls outside the learned parameter ranges.

As expected, this study shows that LLMs fail at "counterfactual" tasks – at providing answers to questions outside the training set.

albertcardona, (edited )
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@mamund

"Embers of autoregression" indeed: the average person dramatically underestimates the amount of knowledge others have, collectively, and hence expresses surprise at the "right" answers an LLM spits out – failing to comprehend the sheer size of the data sets that went into training the LLM in the first place. But query outside that corpus of knowledge, even query about that corpus but in an unexpected way, and the LLM unwittingly responds with nonsense.

albertcardona, to Neuroscience
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

"Theoretical principles explain the structure of the insect head direction circuit" by Pau Vilimelis Aceituno et al. 2024 from
https://elifesciences.org/articles/91533

Loved the ending of the discussion, on why the head-direction circuit is organised in 8 columns:

"not all numbers of neurons enable a working circuit. The circuits for N=2 and N=4 are degenerate – either producing a single dimensional encoding, or two disconnected circuits that do not enforce the required circular topology. N=8 is the smallest power of two that could result in a non-degenerate circuit. This hints at the possibility that the eight-column architecture is not a chance evolutionary artefact, but rather that it is the genetically simplest circuit capable of performing heading integration."

Requirements for a heading integration circuit. 1. Circular topology: The activity should have the same topology as the variable it is encoding to prevent discontinuities. To encode heading, the activity should have the topology of a 1D circle. 2. Rotational symmetry: The heading integration circuit should work similarly, irrespective of the direction in which the insect travels. There should not be a bias for any direction. 3. Noise minimisation: The circuit should minimise the noise of the neural representation so the insect can navigate as precisely as possible.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

They have a handy map of where I’m going tomorrow 🙂

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@Pepijn @jon

Back in the early 2000s, the bus network in Los Angeles was a disaster: always late, often by 30 min or an hour. The bus drivers did what they could, considering traffic. The bus line inspectors were traveling by car and berating the drivers for being late ... the futility and absurdity of the line inspectors's actions was not lost on the passengers. No dog fooding, bad service.

Let's see when the EU mandates by law that all its representatives must travel by train. Only then will the situation change.

katvogt, to random
@katvogt@drosophila.social avatar

We wrote a "little" review about odor coding across phyla, now out in @nature review neuroscience
Enjoy reading here: https://rdcu.be/dJgF7
With Kara Fulton, David Zimmerman, Aravi Samuel and @Datta_Lab

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@katvogt @nature @Datta_Lab

Beautifully illustrated comparison between the mouse and fly olfactory circuits!

albertcardona, to Cambridge Catalan
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Cygnets herded by mama and papa swan. It’s that time of the year.

#Cambridge #UK

albertcardona, to android
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Turns out all the "unremovable" Samsung apps from the android Galaxy A14 can be uninstalled after all. It's convoluted, but worth it: far snappier – far more responsive, less memory usage.

  1. Enable developer options.
  2. Under developer options, enable USB debugging.
  3. connect to a laptop via USB.
  4. Install "adb" (Android Debug Bridge) in the laptop, a command like tool. In Ubuntu 22.04, do "sudo apt install adb". There are packages online for other operating systems.
  5. Discover which apps to remove. Not trivial, but there are various lists of Samsung "bloatware" online.
  6. Then, use adb to discover which packages to remove. For example:

$ adb shell pm list packages | grep facebook

.. and then remove them:

$ adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.facebook.services
$ adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.facebook.system
$ adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.facebook.appmanager

Likewise for Microsoft cruft.

  1. If no apps match the search, then use the "App List" (installable via F-Droid store) to list all user apps or system apps (from a toggle on the top-right menu), which lists all apps by name and with the package name under it.

An app that I removed that indeed drops some possibly valuable services but which greatly improve UI responsiveness:

$ adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.sec.android.daemonapp

The above removes the built-in weather app and various widgets. But suddenly the phone doesn't stall randomly and the UI is snappier than ever.

  1. If you regret uninstalling a package, it can be reinstalled with adb.

BTW don't forget to re-enable using only 1 background thread every time the OneUI is updated. Samsung overwrites that setting.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@dn_mason @LineageOS

Neither LineageOS not /e/OS list the Samsung Galaxy A14 as supported.

albertcardona, to Neuroscience Catalan
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

“A Connectome of the Male Drosophila Ventral Nerve Cord”, by Takemura et al. 2024

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/97769

lana, to random
@lana@mstdn.science avatar

Overleaf, primarily used to write scientific papers, encouraging its users to use AI text. What could go wrong! I am even less open to reviewing papers now. Waiting for Evilsevier to release its "AI for peer reviewers" tool so that we can live in the most boring world ever for a few years. Just until the next generation, with better BS detectors than us, start doing real science again

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@mathieugenois @lana

I choose not to write any bullshit, and I encourage you to depart from, and avoid like the plague, any institution that requires you to write bullshit.

alexwild, to random
@alexwild@mastodon.online avatar

Funny thing about being an insect photographer is that OneDrive will be like "Lets look at your memories from a year ago!" and shows me photos of ants eating a dead toad or something.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@petnoodle @alexwild

... and insists on calling insect photos "flowers", stressing the background as if the foreground was noise.

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