Pedro @PedroMiguel@qoto.org

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a thousand times: Encouraging kids to be who they are is suicide prevention.

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

mastodon would do so much better if they'd just call instances "neighborhoods" and said that you should pick your neighborhood based on your interests, so that if you look out your window you'll see your neighbors doing things you find interesting. and that it's okay if you find out you don't like your neighborhood, because you can just move to another one! and all your followers will move with you

and then, yanno, make it easier to search for people you wanna follow cause that shit just sucks

A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/

No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.

Except research shows the anode isn't degrading, which suggests ...

... the *algae* is producing the electrons.

Some thoughts on this in my blog post here, item 6: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lavaforming-ai-writes-heavy-metal-and-drones-that-deliver-hamburger-helper-59b9bcfda9a8

I bet you’ve heard of Galileo & Hubble, but what about Henrietta Swan Leavitt?

Leavitt changed astronomy. She figured out new ways to measure a star’s distance from Earth & her work helped determine the universe is expanding.

Her boss, Edward Pickering, published her findings UNDER HIS NAME. Later, Shapley used her findings to determine distances around the Milky Way w/o credit.

Leavitt’s work is still used today. So next time you hear about famous men in #science share her remarkable story.

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: https://weird-old-book-finder.glitch.me

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: https://debugger.medium.com/a-search-engine-that-finds-you-weird-old-books-3a74fbb5f3d4

This was a search for "mastodon"

We used to use sweepers and scopes to tune NMR probes. Now I like this Siglent spectrum analyzer with tracking generator. It has a nice big screen and it’s portable enough to put it where I need it. The reflection bridge was $10 on EBay. #NMR #NMRchat #chemistry #electronics

Simulate and Fit your NMR spectra in Python

Check out the latest mrsimulator, v0.70, at

http://mrsimulator.readthedocs.io

#nmrchat #ssnmr

view the Python notebook that generated the plot below at

https://mrsimulator.readthedocs.io/en/stable/fitting/1D_fitting/plot_3_Na2SiO3.html#sphx-glr-fitting-1d-fitting-plot-3-na2sio3-py

”The disproportionate scientific productivity of elite researchers can be largely explained by their substantial labor advantage rather than inherent differences in talent.” http://scim.ag/AV

It’s REALLY important that #Vancouver’s Downtown Business Association (#DVBIA), who were originally AGAINST downtown bike-lanes, later became one of their most vigourous supporters, because of EVIDENCE that bike-lanes are BETTER for downtown business than any street parking they replace. #cities #downtown #cityplanning #urbanplanning #mainstreets #bikes #bikelanes #parking

@aspuru +1 One way I have survived in academia is a policy of "no meeting Wednesdays". Time to focus on reading, writing, or learning something new... we at least deserve that!

Did you know? When Bill Clinton banned assault weapons in 1994, mass shootings dropped by 43%. After George W. Bush and the GOP let the assault weapons ban expire in 2004, mass shootings increased by 245%. — These numbers tell a story.

Never thought Elon Musk would do so much for the adoption of a decentralised infrastructure…

Please Elon, can you buy Elsevier ?

Buying a blue tick on twitter is like having a personalised number plate - it says a lot about you but none of it is complimentary

Did you know that if you capitalize each word in a multi-word hashtag, #ScreenReaders can read them as words, but if you leave them lowercase, they can't? Well, now you know! So, for #accessibility, please capitalize words when there's more than one in a hashtag.

Hey science journalists, we've got two 12-month (parental cover) reporter positions open with Nature in London - more info & application at https://careers.springernature.com/job/London-Reporter-or-Senior-Reporter,-Nature/866455301/