@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

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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steveroyle, to random
@steveroyle@biologists.social avatar

It seems I have found a new way to procrastinate on a grant application. Using to make my Gantt chart!

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@steveroyle

I recently got reviews back for a grant application where all my figures were left out by accident. The reviews were very good, and none mentioned the lack of figures or Gantt chart.

As a reviewer myself, I have never paid any attention whatsoever to the Gantt chart when one was included, as I consider it at best wishful thinking. Seems that many others are of the same mind. Just saying :)

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@steveroyle

Nope. To be fair I was referring to them in the text as the preliminary data – there was just one figure –, not with numbers or panel lettering.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@steveroyle

I am so over checkbox ticking exercises. I'd rather support a scientist writing an honest grant than one trying to dazzle me with what ultimately amounts to busywork.

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

"A petavoxel fragment of human cerebral cortex reconstructed at nanoscale resolution" by Shapson-Coe et al. 2024 (Lichtman lab).

The reconstruction at its current state is already useful and very interesting. Here is to hoping the authors will put in more time and resources to further polish it.

Paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4858

Preprint (2021): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.29.446289.abstract

Browsable data: https://h01-release.storage.googleapis.com/landing.html

Viren Jain's (Google) press release: https://research.google/blog/ten-years-of-neuroscience-at-google-yields-maps-of-human-brain/

#neuroscience #connectomics

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

A remarkable finding from Shapson-Coe et al. 2024 paper on human brain : the presence of canalized connections in the human brain cortex. Canalized in the Kauffman boolean networks sense [1], which here means: among the many synaptic inputs that any one neuron integrates, some are far stronger (by number of synapses) than the rest.

This is a pattern that we described in the larval nervous system (Ohyama et al. 2015 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14297 ) and that has been reported as well for the mouse hippocampus (Bartol et al. 2015 https://elifesciences.org/articles/10778 ) and cerebellum (Nguyen et al. 2023 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05471-w ).

[1] Canalisation as a term was introduced by Waddington in 1942 in the context of genetics to mean "some phenotypic traits are very robust to small perturbations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canalisation_(genetics)

kittylyst, to random
@kittylyst@mastodon.social avatar

As you might know, I have no academic training in computing of any kind. My training was in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

It is, therefore, often a surprise when I encounter a CS paper (often a vintage one) and realize just how beautifully it is written and what it expresses.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@kittylyst

Second that. Happened more times than I can recall. Wagner and Fischer’s edit distance paper stands up there in the pantheon of clearly and eloquently written papers:

“The string-to-string correction problem”, 1974 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/321796.321811

cnrs, to random French
@cnrs@social.numerique.gouv.fr avatar

🇪🇺 À l'occasion de la (9 mai), découvrez une sélection d’articles et de vidéos de sur la construction européenne et le rôle majeur de la recherche scientifique.
https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/dossiers/la-longue-construction-de-leurope

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@cnrs

Ce serait merveilleux si la coopérait avec d'autres compagnies ferroviaires européennes et coordonnait ses horaires de train. Les scientifiques pourraient alors se rencontrer et collaborer beaucoup plus facilement dans toute l’Europe.

albertcardona, to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Bikeshedding, iNaturalist-style:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/research-grade-observations-from-the-international-space-station/51066/8

albertcardona, to Trains
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

In Europe, flying is cheaper than taking the train.

It's an embarrassment, and a major problem: we have to stop flying for silly short distances. Realise that the overheads of flying (reaching the airport, awaiting 2 hours, the flight, the unloading, reaching the destination) largely cancel out any time gains of flying. And the carbon costs are utterly untenable. Not to speak of the modern, dire conditions of the whole flying "experience".

Another embarrassment is that train connections can't be guaranteed when across countries or companies. They aren't even coordinated. As if those who commission and set the schedules didn't travel by train themselves, at least not internationally. In considering how tiny most European countries are, it's frankly bizarre.

There are so many destinations one could travel by train to, yet in practice, it's not sensible. A disgrace.

The upside is that it can be fixed.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@villavelius

I hear you – same here. One wonders, how much of the price difference are fuel and airport subsidies to airline companies. If that much tax-payer money has to go to flying to make it affordable, I'd rather it was allocated to the railway. Far more humane, less noisy, less hassle, far lower carbon footprint, far more pleasant.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@kofanchen

If it involves one big leg only like the Eurostar or a single German ICE train or French Grande Lignes, then yes, travelling by train is smooth. Issue is when one has to make connections across countries and railway companies.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@paulthenerd

My rule of thumb would be, if there's a train route that can make the journey in less than 8 hours, there's no reason to fly at all. Flying will take about as much time when including the overheads, and most hours will be wasted rather than comfortably sitting on a train.

Distance is not a factor; time is. E.g., London-Bergen, in Norway, would be quite difficult to replace by train or boat. Whereas London-Barcelona, which is about the same distance, is easy: there already is a route with Eurostar + TGV via Paris.

London-Bergen: 1044 km https://www.distance.to/London/Bergen

London-Barcelona: 1138 km https://www.distance.to/London/Barcelona

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@brembs

Sorry to hear. Back in the late 2000s I travelled quite a bit across Germany by train and the experience was always delightful.

What you describe is too close to the current state of British railway, which is so unreliable that, well, one can't rely on it for anything time-sensitive. It is only infrastructure if the system operates so smoothly one grows to rely on it completely. The UK's railway is more akin to a fair joyride: something one goes into for the thrill of it, knowingly.

albertcardona, to Neuroscience
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

eLife neuroscience is 🔥: papers from Claudia Clopath’s lab, Andrew Hires’s lab, and Richard Hahnloser’s. Yowza!

https://elifesciences.org/articles/88053

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/96931

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/90445

albertcardona, to Neuroscience
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Simple, simulated “animals” (agents) exhibit cooperative hunting:

“Collaborative hunting in artificial agents with deep reinforcement learning” by Tsutsui et al. 2024.

“using computational multi-agent simulations based on deep reinforcement learning, we demonstrate that decisions underlying collaborative hunts do not necessarily rely on sophisticated cognitive processes.”

“This has implications for a reassessment, and perhaps a widening, of what groups of animals are believed to manifest cooperative hunting.”

https://elifesciences.org/articles/85694

#neuroscience #behaviour

albertcardona, to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Ceutorhynchus sp. weevil.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213954264

albertcardona, to random
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

What’s up, doc?

Ichneumonoidea wasp.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213968073

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

This feels like the first ad that is a tone deaf miss from Apple. An ad showing beautiful tools of human creativity being crushed to be replaced by the newest and thinnest gadget feels antithetical to Apple.

I’d expect this from an AI company not Apple.
https://youtu.be/ntjkwIXWtrc?si=VGoNknBw7VNkvuwO

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@carnage4life

In tune with those who think "we've had enough of experts".

albertcardona, to Neuroscience
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

"Lu.i -- A low-cost electronic neuron for education and outreach" by Stradmann et al. 2024 https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16664

adredish, to random
@adredish@neuromatch.social avatar

@brembs @knutson_brain
@neuralreckoning

A question that came up in a recent (in-person) discussion: Has anyone compared the reproducibility or the validity of bioRxiv preprints with published journal articles? Are preprints less reliable than peer reviewed journal articles? It would seem we have enough examples now to check this.

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@adredish @brembs @knutson_brain @neuralreckoning

To add that preprints can have more references than the journal versions, due to space constraints for the latter, and likewise more text, less tight.

leibnizopenscience, to random German
@leibnizopenscience@mastodon.social avatar

Researchers want a ‘nutrition label’ for academic-paper facts https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01135-z

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@egonw @leibnizopenscience

Instead, let’s follow the model, with an assessment paragraph that uses a controlled vocabulary and is attached to every manuscript.

Thomas, to random
@Thomas@laserdisc.party avatar

God fucking DAMMIT. Every day with this shit!

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@Thomas

"How smart was T. rex? Testing claims of exceptional cognition in dinosaurs and the application of neuron count estimates in palaeontological research", Caspar et al. 2024 https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.25459

A critique of Herculano-Houzel's 2023 paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cne.25453 were she estimated the number of neurons from dinosaur cranial endocasts and found them comparable to that of macaques.

alex, to random EN
@alex@social.alexschroeder.ch avatar

Ohhh, this is so good. And a nice ending, too!
"You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you saw in the window. When you download a second app the prices are different again. You ring the restaurant directly and it says the number is no longer in service…"
https://www.takahe.org.nz/heat-death-of-the-internet/

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@alex

I'd have titled it: "The Return of the Local Library"

Konenpanien, to macrophotography
@Konenpanien@pixelfed.social avatar

Spring energy
#macrophotography #polydrususformosus #beetle #naturephotography

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@Konenpanien

Podagrica sp. – mating pair.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213960343

#iNaturalist #Coleoptera #beetles #entomology #insects

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

Oh YEAH. On top of the baby goats, the stupid committees, the student talk judging, the teaching, and the conference wrangling I'm supposed to do today, the switchover of my university email to microsoft has left me emailless. I made a first attempt to get it to work with Thunderbird (and failed), but managed to get in to the web version so I'll see if there's anything really urgent. But maybe it's a good thing I don't even have time to worry about email today...

albertcardona,
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@sundogplanets

These settings for a new SMTP server for Thunderbird to use a Microsoft email server work for me:

Server Name: smtp.office365.com
Port: 587
User Name: <youremail>
Authentication method: OAuth2
Connection Security: STARTTLS

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