Andrew Kennard @askennard@qoto.org

I guess we do #introduction posts over here? I work on the #neuroscience (am I doing those hashtags right!?) of learning and memory, specifically how we learn while we navigate space and context. To do this, I take in vivo recordings (currently calcium imaging but ephys has my heart) of freely moving rats! After that, I use computational and mathematical approaches to analyze their neural activity! I am currently a BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 postdoc at Northwestern working with John Disterhoft and Sara Solla. I was trained at MIT with Matt Wilson, where I got my PhD in biology, and my BS is from Carnegie Mellon. Welcome!

Early-bird deadline is Friday 19 January for Journal of Cell Science 2024 Journal Meeting 'Diversity and Evolution in Cell Biology' organised by Gautam Dey, Lillian Fritz-Laylin, Snezhka Oliferenko, Meg Titus & Michael Way. Apply to attend at https://www.biologists.com/meetings/jcsevocellbio24/
#cellbiology #evolutionarybiology #comparativebiology #Phylogenetics #imaging #microscopy #geneticengineering
@gautamdey @WallaceUCSF
@mcsymbiont @DudinLab @thattai @BungoAkiyoshi

Born in 1919, Isabella Aiona Abbott became the first native Hawaiian woman to earn a PhD in #science.

A marine botanist, Abbott became the 1st woman & person of color to become a full professor in Stanford’s Biology dept.

She wrote 8 books, >150 articles & was awarded the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal by the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2005, Abbott was named a “Living Treasure of Hawaii” by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii. https://woc.aises.org/content/isabella-aiona-abbott-becoming-“first-lady-limu” #history

So.

None of you thought it *might* be important to tell me that ferns have sperm that swim??? I just had to find all this out on my own?

And, (apparently, & no one thought to bring this up either🙄) fern plants are only one form... they have this 'other form' (tiny, ephemeral, difficult to find in the wild) alternates generations-- Fern spores don't grow into ferns! (WHAT) they grow into 'gemetophytes' (WHAT) THEN you get a fern.

Feel like I've uncovered a massive scandal.

Recently submitted a research grant. The online system didn't let me upload a document, asking instead to type it in (right; copy-paste!) instead. So adding figures required inserting them one by one at the right places using a rich-text widget nobody asked for.

One week before the deadline, I was ready, but upon performing the last update of the text I forgot to re-insert the figures – because of course "select all" and "paste" over removed the figures. Our research office then submitted the grant ... and now it can't be updated any further, despite the deadline still being in the future.

Would like to think it's a natural experiment in not adding bullshit graphics like a Gantt chart, but the preliminary data is missing too. Given the abysmal funding ratios, it's unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on the default answer: reject.

Grant writing is fun. It's clear chances of funding are miserable. To me, the value is elsewhere: on clarifying my own mind on what's worth doing, spell it out in detail, and then find ways to see the project through despite the lack of funding – chances are much higher if one doesn't care where the work gets done and who gets the credit. After all, what matters is adding more paragraphs to the proverbial book of knowledge.

#academia

No, I cannot rank this student among their class (I have not taught classes at this institution!) & I cannot compare them as "2nd in 10"or similar among the master students I supervised: I supervised folks at three different institutions & systems in two different countries plus every one has their strength and weaknesses, there is no order from best to worst.

My reference letter will tell you nothing and you are wasting everyone's time because of your stupid form 😬

#AcademicChatter #Academia

All engineering is reverse engineering if you document things poorly enough.

Really useful comprehensive post on clustering methods in #RStats

https://petolau.github.io/Overview-clustering-methods-in-R/

Addgene is stopping all activity on Twitter/X

https://blog.addgene.org/addgene-is-stopping-use-of-x

In December I asked for suggestions of papers for a course I teach. Thank you to those who responded.

Here is the full list for anyone interested. It's a selection of twenty or so cool papers in biology from last year. I'll find out this afternoon which one(s) the students have picked for their coursework!

https://quantixed.org/2024/01/08/papers-for-md9a8-2024-edition/

The right is using asymmetrical shame warfare against the left. Trump has taught Republicans to never be ashamed of anything they’ve done, no matter how heinous or indefensible their actions. Democrats, OTOH, still have consciences. So Republicans can hound somebody like Claudine Gay out of her job, knowing that the same attack will not work against their own. They will repeat this playbook as long as it keeps working.

Preprint claxon! Very happy to present a story in a very cool population of neurons that #zebrafish have in the spinal cord: the Rohon-Beard neurons (TLDR: They don’t die!) #DevBio #PhDChat #PostdocLife #Neuroscience https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.19.572352v1

Game-changing idea: #Target/ #Walmart/ #Amazon should adjust their wedding/baby registries to be able to load 3rd-party registry lists.

Example: Newlyweds moving in together? You probably will do a bad job building your own registry, and so start with one you find on a blog/etc. This way you'll be sure to register for things like furniture sliders that you probably wouldn't think of ahead of time.

how to make supported lipid bilayers to study acto-myosin dynamics...now in motion pictures 😀
https://www.jove.com/v/63968

FYI

My first first-author preprint is out on the BioArchive! It's about my development work for cryo electron tomography in napari, my plugin `blik` and the surrounding libraries: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.05.570263v1

If you want to know how the #COP28 UN Climate Change Conference is going, this post says it all...

In 2022 and 2023 we published articles highlighting different opinions on the collection of whole animal specimens for #museums: https://plos.io/3jV8I1Z and https://plos.io/3NSTx9x

Now, the debate continues... https://plos.io/3uqI3m5 and https://plos.io/47wYlJ2