iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Is a lifelong Creighton fan who is a professor at Iowa allowed to cheer for Nebraska without losing everyone’s respect? Asking for a friend who is caught up with #Nebrasketball 🏀

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Specific Heat. c = q/m(delta T). Today, it will be 66°F in Iowa City. Midwesterners, do you have your own examples of the high specific heat of water?

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

We went traditional for night 2. And then burritos today 🌯. There were fried mushrooms in those.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Salmon croquettes for Hanukkah! 🕎

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Happy end-of-Thanksgiving weekend to everyone, except whoever vandalized nearly all the road signs in Eastern Iowa (I-80 W) with black spray paint. I made it home fine, but I bet those Yoo-hoos laughed all the way from Bettendorf to West Branch 🌽

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Two Graeme Davis UCSF alums publishing in @plosbiology.org in consecutive weeks. Congratulations on this fantastic work, Kira!! 🎉

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Which it is all true! BUT...I think as these AI tools improve they might be able to compare and contrast different studies and offer workable suggestions for improvement or advancement of the work. Still, I am totally blown away by what it can do right now.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

It misses what you might get out of journal club where a group of people studies a paper first and then convenes to discuss it. This AI-derived "discussion" gets the facts right (with a few mispronunciations). But it is also credulous. Everything we wrote in the paper is taken as perfect and true.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I am not sure it is available as a tool for scientists or science journalists yet. But whatever advanced AI tools they are using for their algorithm do an excellent job. This is years of work distilled to an understandable 11-minute package. And the product focuses on the core results.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

This is wild – an AI-generated, podcast-style bit about our recent @plosbiology.org paper produced by The Sanz Science Experience. I listened. The clip was conversational, down-to-earth, and accurate. It was easy for me to understand, but the paper is from my lab. www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--T...

youtube.com

Mitochondrial Complex I, ROS and Homeostasis at the Synapse

YouTube video by The Sanz Science Experience

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Overall, I was very pleased with the peer review and academic editing. Very good experience @plosbiology.org and obviously, we are thrilled with the result.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

😆 It was, but I think most of it was unintentional. I did end up submitting corrected proofs with 700+ edits — mostly re-italicizing genotypes that had become unitalicized in the copyediting. We should schedule a chat so I can share thoughts on the copyediting process. Friendly chat, I promise.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I gave them 700+ edits back in the proofs. Mostly redoing italicized words that they had unitalicized (presumably accidentally).

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

We have proofs! And you know what that means. Assertive editing. A copy editor has flagged my name on an author line and wants me to spell out Carl Andrew Frank as my name instead of C. Andrew Frank. I am irrationally irritated by this 😆

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

🥺 Maybe I am just optimistic and naive.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

I think that societal advancement requires nonviolence.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

One thing I learned (from a job rejection email I got in 2009) is that “Thank you for your email” or “Thank you for your message” can be a good way to start. Friendly, low pressure, content free. And now that we have established that I am friendly, here’s the business part.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Done! But the "the" typo in my post will just have to persist. It goes with the territory.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

New email signature. I dropped the Associate. Now maybe I can drop the some of the pounds I gained as an Associate Professor😆

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Today I learned that you should not wash chicken.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Geriatric Millennials! Now I feel really old.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

I agree. But don’t feel too sorry for those parents. They will learn something new!

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

I don’t know — children who are different can open up new vistas. All three of my kids have some qualities in common but they are all different in great and unexpected ways. What I have come to appreciate is that the best you can do as a parent is to help your child discover who they are.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Drosophila neuroscience friends! Please help us to identify deserving Ph.D. students or recent Ph.D. graduates for the Elkins Memorial Lecture competition (CSHL, October 2025). Details below – send nominations by email to Troy Littleton (troy@mit.edu).

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

One of a kind: poodle, pug, beagle mix. We will miss him.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Please accept my condolences, Bryan. I am so sorry.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Fenton 2011-2025 Frank family member 2015-2025 Who rescued whom? 💕 🐾

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

I think it will be hard to know before it all plays out in court. Trump’s administration is losing a lot of court cases, so there is hope that this 15% indirect costs rate does not come to fruition.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Iowa Citian here. We have an unusual and nice town. There is a small population paired with a huge biomedical research enterprise. A similar place that fits this description is Rochester, MN. The proposed 15% F&A rate would be brutal there too (county population, 121,000).

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

No, grant writing. Four figures is not as much of an issue as 20.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

🤣 I needed a distraction. A simpler time.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

I didn’t know that some folks disliked hyphenated words at the end of lines!

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

The auto-hyphenation essentially eliminates the uneven readability problem of full justification. And you gain a few lines of space!

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Arial 11. Full justify with auto-hyphenation. Figure legends: Arial 9. And brief because nobody wants to read them. White space, yes. Walls of text, no. Four figures because you ran out of time? No. 20 figures because you want to impress with a mountain of data? Also, no.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I wanted to share good news (which in normal times would be neutral). One of my lab's NIH grants was renewed for year 2 (March 1). That means that funding is not completely frozen. And it means there are people in Bethesda who believe in the mission of the NIH and research. And I thank them.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

If they cancel study section, can I get another dog? 🐕

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Hey Elon fans — your hero and his CEO are now trivializing the Holocaust with puns. Some were curious or unsure about “the context” of his salute. Well…amidst all that talk he is adding his own context.

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C. Andrew Frank @candrewfrank.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Don’t dress like a doofus, friends! 🥶

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