iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Nick Stroustrup @nstroustrup.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Did you know that the cells of old animals contain much less mRNA than the cells of young ones? Let me share with you some results from an ongoing project in the lab, where we are finding that a progressive depletion of total mRNA abundance is a crucial part of aging 1/22

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shri @shrikhalpada.dev · 01/08/2026

the next "how the heck" piece is live! it's all about image files and the tricks they use to save space, from information theory to how our eyes work :)

perthirtysix.com

How The Heck Does JPEG Work? (An Interactive Exploration)

An interactive exploration of how JPEG works: from the Discrete Cosine Transform to quantization and Huffman coding.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

"We show that this [small slice of SW Amazonia] alone contains as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia. We also propose that the total human population of the area in 100–300 AD was 1.25–3 million people. If similar results are found elsewhere in Amazonia..."

nature.com

Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia - Nature

Using canopy-penetrating LiDAR data, the northern part of southwestern Amazonia appears to contain as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia.

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Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

moultano.wordpress.com

Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You

An atlas of the vibrance of the real world

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Okay, there's a really cool reason for these groupings, based on evolution. First, the "oh hi doggies" are almost invariably fruit or nectar eaters, relying on eyesight & smell to locate non-moving food. No sonar. To the insect-eaters: there are two ways to emit 'sonar' pulses: nose or mouth.

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Matthew Taliaferro @jmtali.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

New paper! How do RNAs "know" where to go inside a cell? We dug into the sequence elements that route RNAs to the right place. It turns out that, in mammals, they're surprisingly massive (>200 nt), multipartite, and wonderfully complicated. 🧵

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Barbara Hemforth @bhemforth.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Envie d'aider la recherche? Nous cherchons des participants pour une expérience sur la compréhension des phrases dans des conditions de vision réduite. Conditions: Etre locutrice ou locuteur natif du français, avoir plus de 18 ans. Cliquez sur le lien... ibex.llf-paris.fr/ibexexps/Jia...

ibex.llf-paris.fr

Experiment

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Young Embryologist Network @yen-network.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

The YEN Image Competition is accepting entries until the 10 June! Please share with your fellow imaging and science art enthusiasts! 🔬🖌️ Submit your entry via form or email (check poster for details).

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Peter Dalgaard @pdalgd.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

I actually forget how environments factor in but in the S origins (w/o lexical scope), functions were isomorphic to lists. The first n-1 elements was a named list corresponding to argument names and defaults, and the last element was the body expression. So ls[2] would be like function(pos=-1) NULL.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

2 reactions to this headline: A. That's an adorable spider. 😃🕷️ B. How can you know if spiders recognize each other? Let's talk about studying jumping spider's 'individual recognition' ability. It starts with meeting the neighbors: Two spiders are placed in a chamber separated by a clear barrier.

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Nicolas Robine 🇪🇺🇫🇷🇺🇸 @nicorobine.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Single Cell Genomics Day: A (Virtual) Practical Workshop. June 12, 2026, organized by @nygenome.org's Rahul Satija Free, livestreamed, no registration.

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Paul Harrison @paulfharrison.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I've recently been exploring an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck SDE model of scRNA-Seq and Perturb-Seq. It's a simplistic model, but is enough to encounter many concrete problems that come up in stochastic models, such as parameter identifiability. Some rough slides here. logarithmic.net/2026/sde/sde...

logarithmic.net

A Simple SDE Model from Yeast Perturb-Seq

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Lays Farra @laysfarra.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Elle circule à nouveau mais j'ai jamais posté ici mon analyse scientifique des bouquins universitaires clivants suivant leur langue

Français
Titre : Le Bidule du Truc : Ambivalences et contradictions dans la nuance de la subtilité (1634-1892)
But : Détruire une discipline qui n’a pas besoin d’être détruite
Sources : Maladie de l’érudition : veut faire un portrait exhaustif du sujet et montrer qu’il a bien révisé. Pour ça cambriole de biens meilleurs livres sur le sujet en les citant le moins possible.
Méthode : Être très sarcastique
Structure : Il y a environ 180 chapitres, la table des matières prend 10% du livre
Persuasion : Crie victoire tous les trois paragraphes en espérant vous rallier à force

Anglais
Titre : [Jeu de mots sur une citation de Shakespeare]
But : Recréer une discipline qui n’a pas besoin d’être recréée
Sources : Une soupe incohérente des 20 derniers livres qui traînent sur la table de chevet de l’auteur
Méthode : Espérer que l’idée centrale est suffisamment séduisante pour pas avoir besoin de trop la défendre
Structure : Structure parfaitement adaptée à l’argument -- mais on voit encore plus à quel point le livre est vide. Aurait plutôt dû être abrégé en un article (mais personne l’aurait publié).
Persuasion : Est incapable de critiquer une théorie sans proposer une théorie encore plus stupide

Allemand
Titre : Grundrissen der Grundrissen der Wissenschaftsstiftung
But : Peu importe le sujet, tente de conclure simultanément 4 grands débats théoriques qui durent depuis 1850
Sources : Cite littéralement toutes les références sur le sujet mais d’une manière oblique qui demande à déjà les connaître pour pouvoir comprendre quoi que ce soit
Méthode : Vaincre le lecteur par KO
Structure : Très dense. L’auteur a malheureusement réalisé qu’il n’y avait pas de limite légale à la taille d’un chapitre ou d’un paragraphe.
Persuasion : La thèse centrale est très convaincante si on la rate pas à la page 837.

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Galileo Galilei was born 15 February 1568, it's more than 15 years since my infamous deflation of his bloated reputation #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/e...

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Gaia Jane @gaiajane.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Word of the Day goes to ancient Sumeria

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Javier Apfeld @javierapfeld.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

We set out to identify which neurons are required for chemotactic avoidance of hydrogen peroxide. Our first surprise was that cilium structure mutants (with strong defects in chemosensation) reduced but did not abolish H2O2 avoidance. How did the worms retain some of the avoidance behavior? 3/

H2O2 avoidance is not abolished by cilium structure mutants

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Javier Apfeld @javierapfeld.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Friends! I am so happy to share our new preprint! Hydrogen peroxide has been the most common reactive chemical threat to life forms since the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago. How do animals like C. elegans sense it fast and escape? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread 1/

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Jack Iwashyna @iwashyna.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I often get texts like this -- harkening back to the old days of #ScrawledGrantAdvice on twitter via IHPI So reposting here a text version, including my gradual evolution, so maybe I can find it next time and don't have to re-type it

Text stream:

Them:
If I recall at some point you posted or re-posted a good back of the envelope outline of an aims page
But now I can’t find it
Can you share if it’s easy to share? No worries if not

Me:
It’s on my bulletin board at work, and I don’t seem to have a copy. Here’s what I remember:
Paragraph 1: there is a big probem
Paragraph 2: This innovative insight / tool / recombination / opportunity gives us new traction on this big problem, including these specific gaps.
Paragraph 3: therefore our overarching goal is…
Specific Aim N (where n=1…3): active verb
Paragraph Final: This will advance science IN ONE SENTENCE. This will impact health IN ONE SENTENCE. And it is feasible in our hands because ONE SENTENCE
Paragraph 2 is sometimes 2 paragraphs where it makes it clear why solving those gaps would be particularly pivotal and is newly tractable.
That help?

This is also what I teach peer reviewers their basic take home out of an Aims page should be. So your job as an author is to give the reviewers what they need

Slide saying:

How to review an Aims page in 3 minutes
• Having read this, in my own words, I think this proposal is to address
the problem of ____________________. They will do this by
____________ 2-3 sentences about aims/methods. ___________.
• The author argues it is significant to this funder because of
_____________.
• The author suggests it is feasible because of _____________.
• The 2 most compelling things about it are, to my mind, ____________
and ___________.
• Coming out of the Specific Aims page, I have the following 1-3 major
concerns: _____________, ____________ and ___________.

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Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró) @biotay.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Cow Tools! We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years. We breed them and exploit them It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS Here I describe our study (paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social with @auersperga.bsky.social

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Civixplorer @civixplorer.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

☠️ The world's most dangerous animals by annual deaths.

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HELL Kennedy @helenkennedy.com · 18/01/2026

This is such a cool illustration of how the Mercator map distorts the size of Greenland, which looks as big as the whole continent of Africa on that map but is actually the size of Mexico.

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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

A List of Predictions Made in 1926 About 2026 🧵

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Latina Vetus @latinavetus.eurosky.social · 02/01/2026

Après Saute-canton, un nouveau jeu geographique addictif ! 🥁 Fausse Commune 🎺 faussecommune.fr

faussecommune.fr

Fausse Commune

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historiogirl.bsky.social @historiogirl.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Demande d'aide aux anglicistes, dans un texte de 1623, j'ai cette abréviation p'telie dans la phrase : Honnarable Companie have with greate charges endeavoured to procure, & p'telie uppon those hopes have contynewed... Quelqu'un a une idée de la signification de ce mot? Rt appréciés.

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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

The 2025 Headline of the Year Nominees 🧵

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Dmitri Petrov @petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

All right it’s time for the annual “please tell us about one (or a few if you are ambitious) paper from 2025 that really impressed you and why we should all read it“! Go! If you tell us how it changed your view of the world and what makes it so powerful and consequential It would be excellent.

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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

THREAD. My parents' cat Bridget vanished. As the weeks dragged on they became ever more worried, so to distract himself my dad began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up at some of art & music's most important moments. I've collected his work here...

Bridget the cat infiltrates the 'Abbey Road' cover shoot and becomes THE definitive fifth Beatle.

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My Password is Louvre @bmceuen.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

The rapid increase in battery storage that made solar so much more feasible should really be the technological revolution everyone talks about rather than the fucking plagiarism probability machines

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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

They were circulated that way at the time, as a 3-paper bound reprint. They also have a collective title (frequently mistaken - including on the Nature website - as the title of the W&C paper): Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids.

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

I am seeing a lot of posts about Rosalind Franklin that themselves ignore her publication record on DNA! In fact Franklin and Gosling's paper, including the famous Photograph #51, was published, along with Wilkins's paper, back-to-back with the Watson and Crick paper in Nature in 1953.

Screenshot of page 1 of Franklin and Gosling

Screenshot of page 2 of Franklin and Gosling

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Catherine Brissette @brissettelab.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

“Overly honest methods”

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IMP @impvienna.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

🌍Open call: Junior Group Leader positions! Join a world-class biomedical research institute at the heart of the Vienna BioCenter, where curiosity drives discovery. Lead your own lab, pursue bold ideas, and shape the future of science at the IMP: www.imp.ac.at/career/open-...

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Leo Schärfen @leoschaerfen.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Check out our work on RNA structure in introns! Testing >100k base pairing patterns, we found that RNA structure can predictably tune gene expression. Just by changing intron sequence, we see a dynamic range of regulation comparable to messing e.g. with promoters. @karlaneugebauer.bsky.social

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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

If you believe either that Franklin discovered the double helix, and / or Watson and Crick stole her data, ask yourself how you know this. Then take a read of this article.

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Max Heiman @heiman.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

How many (active) C. elegans labs are there?

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Anne Scheel @annemscheel.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

There still seems to be a lot of confusion about significance testing in psych. No, p-values *don’t* become useless at large N. This flawed point also used to be framed as "too much power". But power isn't the problem – it's 1) unbalanced error rates and 2) the (lack of a) SESOI. 1/ >

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Cells & Development @cellsdev.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

From the lab of Maxwell Heiman discussing the interesting topic of apical ECM and the function of sensing organs and how these ECM proteins can both mechanically and biochemically modulate the organ's functions. doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

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Cells & Development @cellsdev.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

The ECM is no longer in the back seat when it comes to development. Check out our special issue "Dynamics of the extracellular matrix in development, cell physiology and disease" with 8 selected articles to learn more: A 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

sciencedirect.com

Cells & Development | Dynamics of the extracellular matrix in development, cell physiology and disease. | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier

Extracellular matrices (ECMs) are everywhere in our body– from the sheet-like basement membranes that line epithelia and other tissues - to the loose stromal arrays of mesenchyme - to the rigid struct...

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Oct 20, 1719 Gottfried Achenwall born in Elbing, Germany 🇩🇪 1749: First use of the term "statistik", meaning numbers of the state, and implying collection of data by government entities. Sometimes called the Father of #Statistics.

Title page of Achenwall's Staatsverfassung der Europäischen Reiche und Völker, in which he formalized the study of what he called "Statistik"

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Institut Curie @institutcurie.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Registration is open for the next Genome Dynamics course at @institutcurie.bsky.social! This course will explore the full spectrum of genome biology bringing together international experts to share the latest experimental and computational advances ▶️ training.institut-curie.org/courses/Geno...

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Jorin @jorin.me · 08/10/2025

With @taleshape.bsky.social chart annotations are just another SQL query: You can load calendar events or goal lines from any data source and display them in your charts. And not only chart annotations - any text, label or dropdown in Shaper can be generated dynamically.

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i'm just SPOOKY bix @bix783.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

I did one of these over the weekend and it was really good fun and also did not take very long. One of the kids asked me if mummies can come back to life. 10/10 experience for any archaeologist I think.

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MwahahahahahadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Some day, I am going to win the Ig Nobel just to see what they come up with (apparently this is a thing they do, and it slaps)

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Mattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 02/10/2025

2. Map of <some far away country/city> generated with the same prompt. Try and discuss how accurate it is - this is hard because we're unfamiliar with the (literal) territory. 😶‍🌫️ 3. "When you hand in work done with an LLM, imagine when *I* (expert) are that *you* (novice) don't." 🤨

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Mattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 02/10/2025

Added 3 slides to my "dear students, don't use LLMs" slidedeck. Here's how it works: 1. Generated map of <our country/city> from prompt "Generate an image: a schematic map of the <X> with major roads, cities, and landmarks." Discuss how obviously wrong it is. Very fun, many lolz, silly LLM. 🤣

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Molly Schumer @mollyschumer.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

What are people using for calling m6A from pacbio revio data? This is for analysis of fiberseq library. Any suggestions appreciated, we are newbies with m6A analysis!

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Paul Medvedev @pashadag.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

If you're wondering why we're hosting the pre-print via dropbox, its because arXiv (and bioRxiv) did not accept it (because it is a review). Its a bit disconcerting, because a review is precisely the type of paper that would benefit a lot from pre-publication dissemination and feedback.

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