Alex Weber @weberam2@qoto.org

If you use Git to organize your code, you'll be happy to discover the existence of https://ohshitgit.com

It contains easy, well-curated solutions for typical problems when using git: reverting a stupid error, commiting and forgetting something small, did a change in the wrong branch, etc.

Enjoy! :)

"A mental-health crisis is gripping science — toxic research culture is to blame" by Shannon Hall.

"funding should not be entirely based on publications, but rather on a healthy work environment — one that considers the mental health of researchers and the rigour of their work, including ideas that might never land in an academic journal."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01708-4

Beginning to transition from a disease definition and staging system based solely on clinical features to the use of underlying biology and pathology is a major shift for the field of Parkinson's disease research. Learn more about the newly proposed biological definition and staging in my recent interview with Dr. Lana Chahine in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research!

https://www.michaeljfox.org/podcast/episode-9-examining-proposed-biological-definition-neuronal-alpha-synuclein-disease-and

#scicomm #science #podcast #podcasts #research #Parkinsons #parkinsonsdisease #neuroscience #neurology #biology #medicine #sciencecommunication

Excuse me where are the PIs with NIH funding who are speaking up about the shitty postdoc salary? It's quiet.

So apparently the term "patch" in software development comes from punch cards.

"Small corrections to the programmed sequence could be done by patching over portions of the paper tape and re-punching the holes in that section."

https://chsi.harvard.edu/harvard-ibm-mark-1-language

#til #computers #development #language #history

Last year editors at the journal Neuroimage walked out en masse & started something new. This retrospective explains why, and what a positive experience that's been ✊

We all should really stop doing free work for profiteers 🤷‍♂️ #AcademicSky #ScientificPublishing #SciPub

https://www.statnews.com/2024/02/01/scientific-publishing-neuroimage-editorial-board-resignation-imaging-neuroscience-open-access/

We need your feedback on NetPyNE!

NetPyNE is an open-source Python package designed for the development, simulation, & analysis of biological neuronal networks 🧠

Have you used this standard? What do you like? What would you change? Share your thoughts here: https://www.incf.org/commentaries/call-community-review-netpyne

#neuroscience #OpenScience #OpenData #FAIR #NetPyNE

It's not just the brain waves, it is how they travel.

Planar, Spiral, and Concentric Traveling Waves Distinguish Cognitive States in Human Memory
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.26.577456v1
#neuroscience

With the increasing popularity of #preprints comes the growth of preprint review initiatives. In the latest blog from Europe PMC, find out how @sciety and EMBO Early Evidence Base are using the community-endorsed framework DocMaps to help readers navigate the preprint review landscape: https://blog.europepmc.org/2024/01/discovering-reviewed-preprints.html

why* would the us government sell its helium reserves. Thats some shit you literally cant get back because it literally goes into space, and we need it for uh lots of things.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-just-sold-helium-stockpile-s-medical-world-worried-rcna134785

*of course it was some shady backroom deal

Announcing a new preprint (bioRxiv)!

G. W. Diehl, A. D. Redish (2024) Measuring excitation-inhibition
balance through spectral components of local field potentials.
bioRxiv unreviewed preprint.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.24.577086v1

We directly test the relationship between local field potentials and synaptic efficacy in vivo from awake behaving rats.

"The story of the Moderna vaccine isn't one of a company taking huge gambles with shareholder dollars. It's the story of the US government giving billions and billions of dollars to a private firm, which will now *charge* the US government – and the American people – a 4,460% markup on the resulting medicine." https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#herd-immunity #covid

No keyboard is complete without a #DOOM key. #retrocomputing #retrogames #mechanicalkeyboard

Simultaneous, cortex-wide and cellular-resolution neuronal population dynamics reveal an *unbounded* scaling of dimensionality with neuron number
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.15.575721v1

#neuroscience #dimensionality

#Neurodivergent scientists are sharing the highs and lows of navigating academia in a new series of articles for #SparksOfChange ✨

Catch up in the thread with what’s been published so far 👇 🧵 1/n #AcademicChatter
https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/44d04224/being-neurodivergent-in-academia-why-sparks-of-change-is-publishing-stories-from-neurodivergent-researchers?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

How massive were last summer's Canadian wildfires?

So massive that the area of forest destroyed--18.5 million hectares--is triple the previous record.

So massive that the carbon emissions from the destroyed tree bodies dwarfed Canada's annual GHG emissions from all other sources.

In fact, the emissions from Canadian wildfires in 2023 were roughly equivalent to 6% of global emissions for 2021.

In normal conditions, the lost carbon from wildfires is recuperated by forest regrowth within a few years. But with temperatures continuing to increase, there's less time between fires for such regrowth to occur. So, we're balanced on the edge of a major tipping point, where wildfires in Canada, Siberia, and Australia could turn forests from net carbon sinks into net carbon sources.

This article does a pretty good job discussing how scientists are integrating wildfire emissions into global carbon budget thinking, and carbon budgets generally.

#Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #wildfires #CarbonBudget #Forests #Environment #GlobalWarming

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-22/are-megafires-contributing-to-climate-change/103219876

Goodhart's law strikes again!

“Is the article already accepted?” he asked Sarath. “This says 100% acceptance.”

“Means we have network with Journal editors,” Sarath replied. “So we can guarantee Acceptance.”

“Students are really desperate to get research papers in whichever way possible,” Zadey says. “No one really cares about the outcomes,” he adds. “It’s all about outputs.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds