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  Cooler today #running from Whitby to Robin Hood’s Bay and back on the Cinder Trail. On Tuesday I went back along the coast via Cleveland Way but it was not as good for running, so today was out and back. Cinder Trail is a former railway line. Over 200m elevation gain over this route. Beautiful views.

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  Wellcome Trust move to “always open” grant schemes as a form of demand management. Is it known whether removing deadlines *decreases* applications? The article says they don’t know that it will (but it will at lest ease time pressures) but this seems like something economists/psychologists/experts might have studied?? https://wellcome.org/insights/articles/rethinking-future-research-funding Edit: NSF ran a trial which suggests that eliminating deadlines reduces application number https://ww...

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  Time for a #running update. The goal is to improve my 5K time (PB 19:01). I ran the Love Rugby 5k today. Chip time of 20:07 and came 3rd in my category. Some way to go for my goal but I enjoyed it a lot. #runnersofmastodon

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  RE: https://biologists.social/@steveroyle/116691430669622746 Just a reminder of my COI as a the Director of The Company of Biologists. I always post in a personal capacity and my opinions are not representative of any organisation I am associated with.

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  Volunteered at Parkrun today which happened to be the 250th at Warwick Racecourse. Only my 2nd time marshalling. I love the happy vibes at Parkrun and seeing people achieving something amazing. I'm #running Leamington Half Marathon tomorrow so didn't want to run parkrun today (because I always send it) so volunteering is a good option. I reckon more folk like me could step up. Finally #parkrun is a wonderful thing. Sharron Davies + the transphobes can get lost. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 https://www....

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  Interesting piece about how writing fiction can enhance communicating your scientist. An interview with Frances Brodsky - cell biologist, clathrin aficionado and crime author https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01392-0

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  I was totally out-nerded yesterday by a colleague who has the same #Garmin watch as me and had coded up his own watch face. It showed a rolling weather report from OpenWeather API which was nice but the pièce de résistance was the data from his wife's car (mileage, fuel consumption) displayed at the bottom. Ultimate nerd points of being cool but useless.

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  Paying peer reviewers works! The @Co_Biologists journal Biology Open scaled up their "Fast and Fair" trial where they paid peer reviewers £220 per on-time quality review. One year on and time to first decision is now 5.5 working days (down from 37.7 days). This preprint reports their findings. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.02.729548v1

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  The Beatles - The Beatles, a.k.a. The White Album. Always thought it was Helvetica on the sleeve. I stand corrected. https://fontsinuse.com/uses/77714/the-beatles-the-beatles-album-art

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  This long read about the state of UK Higher Education is well worth your time. Caution: it’s depressing and only worth reading if you’re in a good state of mind. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n10/stefan-collini/squadrons-of-pigs

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  Exam invigilation is so boring... but at least today it was spiced up by an incorrect question! Occasionally a student will claim a question doesn't make sense, but it's rare that there is actually a problem with an exam question because they're checked many times. The exams are computer-based these days and I guess the offending question couldn’t be corrected live, so someone had to bring in a paper version of the corrected question. #AcademicChatter

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  This google scholar page is literally unbelievable. 5.4 M citations, H-index of 1867. Looks to be entirely/mostly driven by self-citation to machine generated content. Impressive hack! https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=fm3iBmgAAAAJ #Metrics #AcademicChatter

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  Just helped someone in my lab with a coding problem. Ended up writing the commands out by hand on a piece of paper. I feel like some kind of yesteryear LLM. #LifeOfPI

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  For any #DataViz people into #Procycling (Posted by ‪ammattipyöräily on bsky) #Giro

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  Is your paper undergoing a peer review punishment beating? Here's some cold comfort: it might end up being more highly cited. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01615-4

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  A Super Furry #FridayMusicQuiz! 1. What was SFA's Welsh Football Anthem called? 2. Name the SFA offshoot band that released The Golden Mile album in 2007 3. What does “Ymaelodi â'r Ymylon” mean in English? 4. What's the name of the French teenager abducted by aliens in Hometown Unicorn? 5. Who is the odd one out? Siân Lloyd, Howard Marks, George Foreman, Ernesto Guevara. SFA OK!

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  After enjoying 4K77 a while back, I tried to watch 4K80 this Star Wars day. Sadly the copy I had didn’t play properly so I had to watch the Special Edition version… again.

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  RE: https://biologists.social/@steveroyle/116517148959293343 UPDATE: I now have a playable version of 4K80 (and 4K83).

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  Fun idea from the Motors and Filaments meeting. Chat to attendees and figure out who you can write in each box.

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  Sumos live at JDI Coventry tonight. New release Luck is just out. https://sumos.bandcamp.com/album/luck #music #gig

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  #SilentSunday

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  It’s day one of the J Cell Sci meeting: Imaging Cell Dynamics here in Catalonia. Fantastic location and great organisation as always by @Co_Biologists

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  Oh no! Scientific poster-making, the rite of passage for all researchers - has fallen to AI. https://flowingdata.com/2026/04/21/openai-is-coming-for-your-presentation-poster-with-images-2-0-model/

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  New from UKRI: a change in policy around OA. "Funding will continue to support transitional agreements, but from 2028/29 UKRI funding will focus on fully OA publishing and will no longer be available for hybrid OA. We will also work in partnership to make targeted investments that strengthen Green OA and repository infrastructure.” ... "more details in the coming months” Caution: this is a LinkedIn link. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:74544630051882106...

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  Predatory conference madness in my Junk folder just now. #LifeOfPI

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  RE: https://fosstodon.org/@nrennie/116487156355067076 These tips are great. #1 I needed earlier this week! Ended up hacking a solution. #2 and #3 I wish i'd known last week when faffing around with font sizes.

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  Writing is thinking. But also… Making figures is thinking. At least it helps me to write by clarifying what we're trying to say and then go back to writing. #LifeOfPI

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  Q&A after seminar. Q: *mentions relevant paper* A: thanks! I will check it out. Q: it was published in Nature. A: well, it might still be true. It made me laugh anyway. #LifeOfPI

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  AZ + UK. On/off relationship… it’s complicated. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/29/astrazeneca-makes-surprise-u-turn-with-300m-pharma-investment

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  New Value: increasing cost of UKRI research grants https://quantixed.org/2026/04/22/new-value-increasing-cost-of-ukri-research-grants/ #funding #funding #GtR #research #Rstats #UKRI