iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Josh de Leeuw @joshdeleeuw.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I've been working on improving webcam eye tracking for 3+ years and it's nearly ready to go. After a lot of ups and downs I'm in the excited phase again after the latest validation study!

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

moin syed @syeducation.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Gave a talk in my dept. on the OSF transition. I wrote up a rough script of the session, which could be of interest to others. I synthesize existing resources and provide my own perspectives. Comments and corrections welcome! zenodo.org/records/2306...

the header for a paper describing "Life after OSF" #metascience

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Armed with that knowledge, see if you can crack this week's new MATLAB quiz - a question of Randomness: uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentra... I got it wrong... 🎲 #MATLAB #MATLABAmbassador #Randomness #Statistics #DataScience

uk.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Howerver, that is still not random! If you want true randomness, services such as RANDOM.ORG derive entropy from atmospheric noise rather than generating numbers algorithmically.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Of course, you can start on a different page by choosing a different seed, or even use a different "book" altogether via a different random number generator such as the default, which is Mersenne Twister, Philox and oooh a new one "xoshiro" since R2026b released this week!

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

– and each time MATLAB opens it’s at at the first page, so it always starts singing the same tune.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

TL;DR The answer is that deterministic computers can't naturally produce randomness. Instead, they rely on pseudo-random number generators. Think of it as a fixed hymn book full of numbers with the all the apparent qualities of randomness

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Open MATLAB, randperm, close MATLAB, reopen it, and randperm again. Why do you get exactly the same "random" permutation? This answer became the basis of an interesting MATLAB blog post on randomness (blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2022/...)

blogs.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

🎲 A tweet from one of my colleagues at the Centre for Human Brain Health @thechbh.bsky.social, way back in 2022 was puzzled by behaviour in MATLAB randperm(10) always gave the ‘random’ permutation of the numbers 1-10

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Famously from Anatol Rapoport. ehudlamm.com/lifehacks.pdf

ehudlamm.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Worth a look, especially for for PIs working in AI-enabled engineering, digital twins, autonomous systems, energy, communications, and related fields. Applications close 2 November 2026. 🔗 uk.mathworks.com/academia/res... #MATLAB #MATLABAmbassador #academicsky

uk.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It’s a very simple application process…. you just need to outline: ✅ how MATLAB and/or Simulink will be used in the research ✅ clear milestones and deliverables ✅ an ongoing collaboration with a commercial partner

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

🚀 Have a MATLAB powered research idea with potential industry impact? MathWorks is offering up to $20k USD (funds can be disbursed world-wide)… through their latest bi-annual Call for Research Proposals.

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Dariia Mykhailyshyna @dariia.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

❗️Our next workshop will be on October 1st, 10 am CET on Visualising High-dimensional Data with R by @visnut.bsky.social Register or sponsor a student by donating to support Ukraine! Details: bit.ly/3wBeY4S Please share! #AcademicSky #EconSky #RStats

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

New preprint! 🎉 I analysed 1660 papers from 4 psychology journals and found materials sharing went from 9% of papers in 2015 to 82% in 2025, and these materials *do* get downloaded — a median of 135 times each. BUT shared code is often hard to run. doi.org/10.31234/osf... Let's walk through it 🧵

Two-panel figure. Panel a is a flow diagram tracking 1,611 empirical psychology articles from publication year (545 in 2015, 552 in 2020, 514 in 2025) to repository-link type: 785 link an OSF project, 85 link another platform, and 741 link no repository. Of those with an OSF link, download counts were retrieved for 670 and not retrieved for 115. Panel b is a line chart of the share of empirical papers linking OSF across 2015, 2020 and 2025. The overall rate, shown as a dashed black line, rises from 9% to 57% to 82%. All four journals rise steeply and end close together: Psychological Science 92%, JESP 89%, JML 83%, Cognition 76%, with Psychological Science highest throughout.

Three-panel figure. Panel a: ridgeline plot of downloads per file by material type on a log scale, with the percentage never downloaded labelled for each — archive 16% of 545 files, documents 20% of 2,970, code 12% of 3,471, other 17% of 1,646, data 21% of 10,051, media 35% of 2,120, images 35% of 4,102. Most files cluster between 1 and 10 downloads, with long right tails past 100. Panel b: ridgeline plot of downloads per paper by journal, log scale, with dashed median lines; Psychological Science is highest, then JESP, JML and Cognition. Panel c: stacked bars showing, for documents, data and code separately, the share of papers by download band (0, 1–10, 11–100, more than 100) in 2015, 2020 and 2025. The share exceeding 100 downloads falls sharply over time in all three types, from roughly two-thirds in 2015 to a quarter or less in 2025, as the 1–10 band grows.

Four-panel figure. Panel a: statistical languages detected among 333 papers with retrievable code — R 88%, SPSS 12%, Stata 4%, SAS 1%. Panel b: code red flags among those 333 papers — 34% hard-code an absolute path, 40% reference a missing file — above documentation among 672 OSF-linked papers — 21% have a README, 30% are documented by README, description or wiki. Panel c: among 562 Elsevier papers with no repository link, 44% (245) host at least one journal supplementary file but only 14% (77) host data, code or an archive. Panel d: composition of those 448 hosted files — documents 52%, data 21%, media 9%, other 7%, archive 6%, code 3%, images 1%. The code panels are green, the journal-supplement panels blue.

Coefficient plot (download predictors)

Dot-and-whisker plot of three standardised predictors of OSF download volume, each with a 95% confidence interval. Repository size (number of files) has the largest effect at about 0.76, citations about 0.38, and altmetric attention about 0.12. All three intervals sit entirely above zero, so each predicts more downloads, with repository size roughly twice the effect of citations and six times that of attention. X-axis: standardised effect, −0.2 to 1.0.

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A decade ago, a “weird” kitten was found on a road near a Bolivian forest. Too small to be a housecat, he had a scrunched-up face, short round ears, long whiskers, & a coat of leopard-like spots. DNA analysis now reveals him as the very first of a newly discovered species & I think I'm in love. 😻🧬🧪👇

nationalgeographic.com

Meet the First New Cat Species Discovered in 100 Years

A small, spotted tiger cat from Bolivia may just be the beginning of a wave of new small cat species.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Attending the main conference is £55/person. Our local bits are FREE. If you want to join for any part of it fill in this Cutting Gardens - Birmingham - Expression of interest: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/RkggX3TrEb

forms.cloud.microsoft

Microsoft Forms

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The conference runs Monday 21st through Friday 25th September, and the local programme elements (tutorials, talks, and a poster lunch) are free to attend MathWorks are backing the Wednesday MATLAB tutorial sessions with snacks and merch😸

forms.cloud.microsoft

Microsoft Forms

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Not local to Birmingham? Cutting Gardens runs "gardens" in cities worldwide, from Barcelona to Montevideo, so it's well worth checking if there's one near you too: cuttingeeg.org/cuttinggarde...

cuttingeeg.org

Gardens | CuttingGardens2026

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

2026 Cutting Gardens Conference, a cutting edge M/EEG methods conference ... but you don't need to fly anywhere! cuttingeeg.org/cuttinggarde...

cuttingeeg.org

Birmingham | CuttingGardens2026

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Go fill in the survey, tell them what's actually causing you pain - forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/respon... #MATLAB #MATLABambassador #academicsky #PsychSciSky

forms.cloud.microsoft

Microsoft Forms

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Of course native .mat v7.3 files are just HDF5 files in a trenchcoat so you are all already using HDF5 😸 scipy.io.loadmat refuses to open them and tells you to go find an HDF5 reader. Leading to a slew of Python packages (mat73, hdf5storage) reverse engineering MathWorks' own metadata conventions…

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The survey also asks about reading data spread across several files… as that's precisely the problem Zarr and chunked HDF5/NetCDF exist to solve. If you're stitching together per-trial or per-session files by hand, that's the struggle Mathworks want to hear about 🙀

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

MATLAB's HDF5 interfaces are cloud enabled (S3 etc), but the netCDF interfaces aren't, even though netCDF4 is HDF5 underneath, and net is in the name! You can sneakily use h5info/h5read on a cloud netCDF4 file and it just works 😸 uk.mathworks.com/help/matlab/...

uk.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentra... If you're wrangling big multi-session datasets this means you 😸

uk.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

MathWorks is running a short survey on how people use some newer scientific/engineering file formats in MATLAB - HDF5, NetCDF, Zarr… the latter two are new to me! If you use these in your research, 5 mins of your time will help shape where MATLAB goes next

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Michelle Dawson @autismcrisis.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"findings indicate a trend toward reduced motor preparatory benefit from predictability in autism"? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... "results focus attention on reduced spontaneous predictive motor preparation as a possible sensorimotor contribution to autism's more visible manifestations"?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reduced Motor Preparation and Altered EEG Signatures of Prediction in Autistic Adults

During EEG recording, autistic and non-autistic adults were presented with auditory sequences where tones cued the probability of a subsequent imperative target. The autistic group showed less effect...

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Your university likely (100% in the UK) has a campus-wide licence so you already have MATLAB, Simulink and 100+ toolboxes for nothing. Check before you pay for anything. #MATLAB #MATLABAmbassador #academicsky #CodingTips

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Stuck at 2am with nobody to ask? Two things I did not have in 1998. MATLAB AI Chat Playground, free and MATLAB tuned: uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentra... MATgpt: chatgpt.com/g/g-QFTjbeK3...

uk.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Finished Onramp and wondering what comes next? Mike's post on The MATLAB Blog maps out the road after the basics. blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2025/...

blogs.mathworks.com

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Or skip the reading entirely and just dive in. MATLAB Onramp is free, browser based, likely less than two hours, and hands you a certificate at the end. 😸 matlabacademy.mathworks.com

matlabacademy.mathworks.com

Self-Paced Online Courses - MATLAB & Simulink

Learn MATLAB for free with MATLAB Onramp and access interactive self-paced online courses and tutorials on Deep Learning, Machine Learning and more.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Start here: the 2026 Student's Guide, written by Ben Pasquariello and posted on the Student Lounge blog. blogs.mathworks.com/student-loun... Prefer to watch? Ben's companion video to that post covers the same ground in one sitting. Ten essential tips for beginners. youtu.be/KGn5m-LD9Ng

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I learned MATLAB on the job as a research assistant in 1998. No training, no Stack Overflow... just me and the massive brick of a manual! If you are new to MATLAB this term, or just need to brush up... you can have it far easier than I did. 😸

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Reposted by Dagmar Fraser

Institute for Research Software @softwaresaved.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

⬡ Today, we become the Institute for Research Software. For 15 years, we've worked as the Software Sustainability Institute to make research software more sustainable and properly recognised.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

If I survive a week on the Spey, I'll report back on whether my own stroke profile converged towards this MATLAB optimum... 🚣‍♂️ #MATLAB #MATLABAmbassador #Kayaking #Biomechanics #RiverSpey

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I also found this cheerful post from someone using MATLAB to understand tidal currents while sea kayaking: kayakdave.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/u... Apparently the overlap between "people who kayak" and "people who immediately open MATLAB for anything" is larger than I had imagined 😺

kayakdave.wordpress.com

Using MATLAB to Understand Currents

I’m always looking for ways to connect my Engineering background with my many outdoor interests. This may be the geekiest thing that I’ve attempted yet. As a graduate student, I have spent countles…

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

So maybe it is "no differences between elite performers" indicates a universal optimum... or just the same coach! 🤔

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

If you're going to declare something optimal, the Spanish national team just before Athens 2004 is not the worst place to start 😼 In fact, looking up the results, Spain came away from Athens with Olympic gold and silver in sprint canoeing.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

• measure six elite paddlers • find no significant differences between them ... • average the strokes • declare that average the Optimal Stroke Profile 😺

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

The authors came up with an Optimal Stroke Profile! As someone currently obsessed with kinematic invariances, I was intrigued by how exactly they arrived at the "optimal" in the title...

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

The workflow feels remarkably familiar. It's the same sort of biomechanics pipeline we still use today, just done long-hand rather than wrapped up inside a polished commercial interface such as Qualisys, or hidden away behind a markerless black box of automatic annotation.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

📹 Four cameras 🔴 Reflective markers 📐 3D reconstruction using Direct Linear Transformation (DLT) 📊 MATLAB analysis

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

The authors analysed 60 seconds of video from six Spanish national-team kayakers, recorded just before the Athens 2004 Olympics. Four cameras tracked reflective markers attached to the paddle, the resulting 3D trajectories were reconstructed, and custom MATLAB code was used to quantify the stroke.

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Dagmar Fraser @dagmarfraser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This week I'm mostly paddling down the River Spey 🚣‍♂️ Having never kayaked before, obviously the first thing I did was Google "MATLAB kayak". Surely MATLAB is the perfect tool for me to learn the perfect stroke? 😺

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