Philipp Schlegel @uni_matrix@qoto.org

Every time I fill in a reimbursement form for what amounts to pennies, articulate a justification or a dispensation for a purchase, write half a dozen emails for something that costs £70 (not counting the time of those involved), or write a "PDR" for a lab member who is leaving in a couple months, or do another compulsory training course on a topic I could have written a scholarly paper about it myself, I think of #MaxPerutz's statement above.

The academic scientific enterprise could be organised so much more effectively. Start by evaluating scientists by what they have done, not what they will do; the rest unfolds from that and leads to enormous savings in time (for scientists) and money (far less admin costs).

Government, funding bodies, are you listening? Are you ready to let go, and evaluate scientists on past work, and save hundreds of millions in the process? Or better yet, reallocate them to science itself for an even bigger impact?

#academia

Today's #neuroscience news includes the release of the first fully-reconstructed #connectome for the ventral nerve cord (VNC) of the adult #drosophila. This data set, known as the "MANC", is the result of collaboration between the FlyEM team at #HHMIJanelia and teams from the University of #Cambridge and #Google Research. (1/5)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sKpSVZacyA

This is amazing.. 👌

🎥 IG: davidmbird

Universities are richer than ever but staff spending has hit a record low.

The surplus universities made last year is enough to raise pay by more than 10%.

But the employers' body UCEA refuses to negotiate. At our upcoming annual Congress we'll table plans to win this dispute.

Full story: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/12941/New-analysis-reveals-record-university-income-as-employers-refuse-to-negotiate?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=Social&campaign=ucuRISING

#ucuRISING #UCU #HigherEducation #HigherEd

Exciting news! ✨🐣

We just released a new AI-based quick segment feature in WEBKNOSSOS! The new feature is powered by MetaAI's Segment Anything Model. Simply draw a bounding box to automatically segment complex objects. 🚀

Try it now on webknossos.org for free!

The enforcement of copyright law is really simple.

If you were a kid who used Napster in the early 2000s to download the latest album by The Offspring or Destiny's Child, because you couldn't afford the CD, then you need to go to court! And potentially face criminal sanctions or punitive damages to the RIAA for each song you download, because you're an evil pirate! You wouldn't steal a car! Creators must be paid!

If you created educational videos on YouTube in the 2010s, and feature a video or audio clip, then even if it's fair use, and even if it's used to make a legitimate point, you're getting demonetised,. That's assuming your videos don't disappear or get shadow banned or your account isn't shut entirely. Oh, and good luck finding your way through YouTube's convoluted DMCA process! All creators are equal in deserving pay, but some are more equal than others!

And if you're a corporation with a market capitalisation of US$1.50 trillion (Google/Alphabet) or US#2.3 billion (Microsoft), then you can freely use everyone's intellectual property to train your generative AI bots. Suddenly creators don't deserve to be paid a cent.

Apparently, an individual downloading a single file is like stealing a car. But a trillion-dollar corporation stealing every car is just good business.

@technology #technology #tech #economics #copyright #ArtificialIntelligence #capitalism #IntellectualProperty @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml #law #legal #economics

Our editorial walkout at NeuroImage immortalised by @dglaucomflecken is the absolute icing on the cake 🤌😙

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUGiS1LeKU

Faculty position open at the #MRCLMB in Cambridge, UK:

Group Leader at the Neurobiology division: come join us!

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CZP497/research-group-leader-neurobiology-lmb-2136

I'm looking for an RA to come and work with me in beautiful Scotland! Great cognitive neuroscience community here. 3-year post, rodent electrophys and imaging, with behaviour - details on jefferylab.com/ra-advert Closes May 25 - please could people boost 👍

The Guardian covers the story of the mass resignation of "Neuroimage" (published by Elsevier) editorial board.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-mass-walkout-at-global-science-journal-over-unethical-fees

#elsevier #OpenAccess #Neuroscience #ScienceMastodon

The Scientific Computing group at #HHMIJanelia seeks a software engineer, to work on large-scale electron #microscopy reconstruction and analysis. Come work at the forefront of #imaging and #OpenScience with applications in #Neuroscience and #CellBiology. Janelia welcomes and values diversity, and encourages applications from people of all backgrounds, including people of color and members of groups traditionally underrepresented in science. (#FediHire, #FediHired)

https://hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External/job/Scientific-Computing-Software-Engineer_R-1972

From my most fabulous group. Not sure who has migrated over here yet.
They fleas dae braw things wi thir wee heids.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06013-8#peer-review

Kill it with fire.

QT 0xgaut: AI is now indistinguishable from reality.

It's hard to believe, but this ad was AI generated. It's not real.

The future is here.

We have a new preprint! Together with John Pool and colleagues, we have looked at genomes from 200+ year old flies. Many pages, also a lot of tables. Raw reads are on Genbank!
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.24.538033v1

“Generative network modeling reveals quantitative definitions of bilateral symmetry exhibited by a whole insect brain connectome”, Pedigo et al. 2023 https://elifesciences.org/articles/83739

“This important work demonstrates a significant asymmetry between the connectivity statistics of the left and right hemispheres of the Drosophila larva brain. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling and represents a first step toward the development of statistical tests for comparing pairs of connectomes more generally.”

#connectomics #Drosophila #DrosophilaLarva #brain #neuroscience #eLife

P
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/p-3
#smbc #hivweorks #comics

Stephen Hawking on the NHS https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/04/19/stephen-hawking-on-the-nhs/

Andreas Schoofs and Mike Pankratz wrote a fantastic Dispatch that embeds our recent paper on insulin production in the wieder literature. Check it out here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gua9_LsQSPrmY

Cajal connectomics training course, "Connectomics from micro- to meso- and macro-scales":
https://cajal-training.org/on-site/connectomics/

Extended deadline: April 17

When: 18 September - 6 October 2023

Where: Bordeaux School of Neuroscience

Taught by Greg Jefferis, Jinny Kim, Nicolas Renier, Casey Schneider-Mizell @csdashm plus outstanding instructors (Philipp Schlegel @uni_matrix , Kathi Eichler, Forrest Collman and many more) and speakers (Genoud, Helmstaedter, Pacureanu, Ueda, Wyart, ...).

#neuroscience #Drosophila #connectomics