Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@qoto.org
Senior lecturer at the Zhejiang-Edinburgh Joint Institute (ZJE) and Edinburgh University.
Undergraduate Programme Coordinator, Biomedical Informatics at ZJE.
I teach #imageanalysis & #dataanalysis with #RStats & #python. I study #heterogeneity in #pituitary (and other) cells.
I'm also very interested in #reproducibility and #openscience.
Joined Oct 2022
Nicola Romanò
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Been playing around with github copilot workspace and it's quite thought provoking. Basically, file an issue, and it opens a PR for you. Not sure I'd trust it for much more than code brush-ups and minor refactors, but it's been very good so far.
We've gone from
- remembering code / reading the manual
- being good at googling
- using AI / copilots / prompting
- ? discussing code changes
Interesting to see where it goes. I'm not sure where we'll end up.
@Markcarter I'm always a bit skeptical when reading news like this. What exactly will this "AI" do? How will it work in practice? There's a lot of stuff that is sold as "AI" just because it makes some often limited use of a LLM... But in the end turns out to be a glorified chatbot that gives little advantage to whatever the previous system was.
@drmambobob Agree, although I find that too often people don't tell students why they're teaching A and not B. I find that when students are made aware of the rationale for the what's in a course, and of its large idea, then they do understand those choices. Having clear and meaningful learning outcomes for each course and each teaching session is also very helpful. Also, you can teach students how those fundamental concepts form the basis of whatever fancy technology is trending at the moment.
Nicola Romanò
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Our latest: Deep dynamical modelling of developmental trajectories with temporal transcriptomics
- Optimised metabolic labelling for time resolved scRNAseq
- Deep learning (VAE) for RNA velocity
- Predicting expression dynamics with a neural SDE system
Nicola Romanò
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204 Mastodon posts with the #PositConf2024 hashtag so far in my app! Search through them all here, on a Web page that includes NONE of today's advice on how to make Quarto docs or apps look nice 😅
https://apps.machlis.com/shiny/positconf/
@alastairmrushworth I'm surprised violin plots and swarm plots didn't make it in there. But as long as it's not barplots with error bars I'm happy 😀
@markjamesadams oh right, I did not realise that, I guess that makes slightly more sense although it still seems like a terrible move...
@markjamesadams I might be extremely naive but... what's the real selling point for Anaconda compared to other free and lighter alternatives like venv?
Nicola Romanò
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Someone is vastly underestimating academics’ appetency to not pay for things.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/anaconda_puts_the_squeeze_on/
Nicola Romanò
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Announcing Zotero 7, the biggest update in Zotero’s 18-year history
Nicola Romanò
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Drawing: Possible causes of your problems. I've been appalled at the scenes we've witnessed over the last few days. It's utterly unacceptable that people should have to live in fear because of the colour of their skin.
[Polite comments only, please.]
Nicola Romanò
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I wrote a thing about switching from Windows to Linux for music production. Not a step-by-step guide, but a bunch of (hopefully) helpful info and links for those who might be considering the switch. Will probably also be useful for those new to the whole computer music thing who are interested in Linux as a starting point.
Nicola Romanò
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As a Blind person i never thought i would be on social media savoring photos. But the communal Mastodon alt text game is so strong that sweet, poetic or silly descriptions abound on my timeline. Thanks to legions of people who take time to write a meaningful description of the ephemera they post, i learn so much about insects, plants, buildings, memes — all dispatches from a dimension of the world that i otherwise wouldn't experience. If you're wondering whether anybody reads these things: YES.
@cybercow Hype and marketing, coupled with a general misunderstanding of how ML and AI work.
"Powered by AI" sells products faster, whether it's true or not that AI has something to do with the product, and whether it actually improved it in any way
"Arbaugh initially faced issues after his surgery when the tiny wires of his implant retracted, resulting in a sharp reduction in the electrodes that could measure brain signals. Reuters has reported *Neuralink was aware of this issue from its animal trials*. [...] Musk also said he has spoken with Donald Trump, who he has endorsed in the US presidential race, about forming a commission aimed at improving “government efficiency” through *reduced business regulation*, and would be willing to participate. Musk said that in his view US regulations hamper innovation."
Of course, ethical and safety considerations as usual are not in Elon Musk's book; nor is openness.
Brain computer interfaces are the last area where you want reduced regulation...
Nicola Romanò
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Did you forget to write some slides? do you want something quick and easy? try using my new quarto revealjs plugin: loud
All text on slides are automatically centered and zoomed in to fill the screen
Nicola Romanò
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"Our framework suggests that after accounting for heterogeneity, the probability that the tested hypothesis is true for the average population, design, and analysis path can be much lower than implied by nominal error rates of statistically significant individual studies."
#MetaSci #Methodology 🧪
Heterogeneity in effect size e...
@elduvelle well, it's unknown to me, as it's a small journal focussing on something I generally don't look at. However looking at the website it seems legit.
I've had emails in the past from really random, probably predatory journals asking for review, though (say an engineering journal asking for a review given my expertise in building cars or something :/ )
How do you folks deal with random invitations to #review for #journals you never heard of?
I usually just delete the email and not engage as usually these are random topics I have zero expertise in... today, however, I received a paper about something (kind of) related to some work I've done in the past. Reading the abstract I can already see very major issues with it so... should I put time and effort to prevent obviously bad work to be published? Or is this a battle not worth fighting?
Senior lecturer at the Zhejiang-Edinburgh Joint Institute (ZJE) and Edinburgh University.
Undergraduate Programme Coordinator, Biomedical Informatics at ZJE.
I teach #imageanalysis & #dataanalysis with #RStats & #python. I study #heterogeneity in #pituitary (and other) cells.
I'm also very interested in #reproducibility and #openscience.
Joined Oct 2022
