Andrew Kennard @askennard@qoto.org

What guarantees do we have that the new @biorxivpreprint AI-generated summaries are never misrepresenting the contents of the paper?

Why not at least offer authors the possibility to write their own summaries / edit those produced by the algorithm?

(In other words, thanks, I hate it, and I'm not looking forward to "new applications of these tools in the coming months".)

https://connect.biorxiv.org/news/2023/11/08/summaries

My colleagues recently published a paper on #apoptosis in the #drosophila dorsal #epidermis. They have shown that two factors can predict #cell #extrusion and apoptosis. Cell size sensed by #hippo and relative cell size (compared to neighbors) sensed by #notch

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01298-8

Profoundly relieved to see this one finally out there! I'll do an explainer thread soon, but just happy to be (hopefully) almost done with it now...

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.03.565466v1

Hey, it's my tooterversary!

Thanks to all the great people I've met in the last year! I've loved learning about your hobbies, and foibles, and hearing some perspectives that make this less of an echo chamber.

I support my instance to keep this community going and I encourage you to do so too.

My conversation with Zeb Miletsky about his book Before Busing about the Black freedom struggle in Boston:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2220518/13500324-the-black-freedom-struggle-in-boston

We have a new paper out!

We looked at vesicle transport in cells. The textbooks say it's all motor-driven, but this idea is based on how large organelles are transported. Instead we find small vesicles move mainly by diffusion! We came up with a way to restrict the diffusion of one vesicle type (we made them furry!) & that reduces cargo delivery.

Congrats to my co-author Méghane Sittewelle who did all the imaging magic!

https://doi.org/10.26508/lsa.202302406

#CellBiology #MembraneTrafficking #Microscopy

Crosstown Traffic: new paper on vesicle transport

https://quantixed.org/2023/10/25/crosstown-traffic-new-paper-on-vesicle-transport/

#publishing #science #microscopy #outreach #papers #TrackMateR

Alright, so, I am finally here and totally late to the party but I'm here!

18/ #31nightsofhalloween #MicrosCreepy
Here's an amoeba imaged by scanning electron microscreepy!

In the endless discussion of #Mastodon over #Bluesky (which, btw, really, we all should move on if not away from it and it would be about time), I am amazed bout the quantity of people posting (on Mastodon) that scholars post more on Bluesky than here, bc (insert whatever feature of Twitter).
Maybe it's bc I'm tired and sleepy today, but considering the endless stream of complaining here, wouldn't it be better for the #AcademicFedi to stop comparing and start posting about their work?

Very cool preprint from the Fritz-Laylin lab - "Genetic transformation of the frog-killing chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.17.561934v1

17/ #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy
Here's a closer look at the cell division fail from yesterday. The contractile vacuole network gets distributed through the cell during division- here you can see tubules converting to bladders that pump unusually synchronously

16/ #31nightsofhalloween #MicrosCreepy
These are the cells that created yesterday's maximum intensity projection! Featuring one failed cell division, and one successful cell division. Lots of contractile vacuole activity.

15/ #31NightsOfHalloween #MicrosCreepy
A max intensity projection of crawling and dividing cells

“Graduate student mentorship as a target for diversifying biology.”

Girish Kale and Reinier Prosee cover a recent preprint from researchers #UCBerkeley. Particularly excited to note the positive impact of informal mentorship & being part of interdisciplinary groups that the students report as part of this study. #preLightsPeerSupport

#preLight 👉 https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/mentoring-practices-predictive-of-doctoral-student-outcomes-in-a-biological-sciences-cohort-v2/

#challenges #diversity #mentoring #practices #STEM

12/ #31nightsofhalloween #microscreepy
I got to play with a very cool microscope today!
purple: actin
orange: mitotic spindle

New blog post just dropped!

"Assembly theory is cool... but doesn't quite do what its inventors say it does."

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-theory-is-cool

reviewing this recent Nature paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9

news & views here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03061-y

#evolution #complexityscience #innovation #possibilityspace

8/#31NightsOfHalloween #MicrosCreepy
A twirling flagellate

I wanted to consolidate a few thoughts on google, misinformation, large language models, enshittification, and the fate of the web as we know it.

It started when Carl Zimmer shared this remarkable example of Google being fooled by machine-generated bullshit online.