@kofanchen@drosophila.social
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

kofanchen

@kofanchen@drosophila.social

Working with #Drosophila to understand #sleep and #circadian rhythm. Lecturer in #Neurogenetics at University of Leicester
#Han #Taiwanese. #parent. Some history and politics too.
searchable, opinions my own

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kofanchen, to random
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

Sigh...
"Britain’s universities are in freefall – and saving them will take more than funding"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/29/britain-universities-freefall-saving-them-funding-international-students

kofanchen, to random
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

"It's kind of impressive, even to me, we've done something that measurably changes how fast the Earth rotates," Duncan Agnew, the author of the study, told NBC News.""
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68684244

skinnylatte, (edited ) to random
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

I’ve been listening to language (Taigi) podcasts while running to help me stay in touch with the part of my brain that innately understands southern Min languages as a first language. I feel like I’m losing touch with it. Anyway, interesting content not available in English: heard a story investigating how the Taiwanese railway bento isn’t an ‘ancient’ food tradition like it’s perceived but rather one that came from Japanese colonialism AND food safety concerns.

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@mcmullin @skinnylatte in Taiwanese Hokkien it is ga-chu (cal-state)

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@skinnylatte I thought the concept of Bento is totally Japanese...?

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@mcmullin @skinnylatte I would not be surprised coffee is from Japanese Kanji, Japan modernisation movement translate many foreign words into Kanji and Chinese simply took them as they are, for example Science is one

deevybee, to Pubtips
@deevybee@mastodon.social avatar

My thoughts on eLife's publishing model, one year on.
http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/03/some-thoughts-on-elifes-new-model-one.html
#publishing #academic #journals #peerReview #preprints

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@albertcardona
One selfish thought: about 10 years ago we had a manuscript submitted to Elife which was sent reviewed but then rejected...wouldnt it be interesting for @eLife to reveal these types of submission now? not as publication but notes (with consent from submitting authors): as this type will be published in the new model, it would give a sense if editorial criteria has evolved with new model? Also just a feeling of what is not good enough looks like for eLife?
@deevybee

kofanchen, to random
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

#silentsuday

pvonhellermannn, (edited ) to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a “growth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever!

Here are my 8 reasons for this:

  1. POSSIBILITIES
    At a time of polycrisis, when the destructive fallouts of capitalist modernity are ever more apparent, anthropology highlights that there are myriad alternative ways of thinking and living; that there is so much to learn from other peoples in the world. 1/n
kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@urlyman @pvonhellermannn in this era of climate crisis and #anthropocene, it is very short sight to close down Anthropology Dept..

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@pvonhellermannn @urlyman I came to realise that education is deeply political: those thought of "Biology/Anthropology/Neuroscience is not popular and losing money blah blah" are rooted even in the middle school already, when the pupils are confronted with vocational decision..."can I make a living on what I love to do?" showing possible and diverse and unusual career pathway outside the societal sanctioned options in the school may not be a quick fix but is needed to happen

skinnylatte, to singapore
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

In many countries with a Chinese / Taoist population, you literally burn the stuff you think your dead ancestors need in the afterlife, so they can use them in hell (yes we believe everyone goes to hell)

I'm saying this now for future generations: I want the bicycle

#Singapore #Photography #TootSea #BikeTooter

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@skinnylatte I never question this myself 🤔, come to think about this, are they all in hell? My ancestors are protecting spirits we worship at each seasonal holiday, how did they protect us if they are behind the gate? But we did burn all sorts at the funeral ceremony, so where are they supposed to go if not hell? Perhaps there is separation between those just dead and those who need punishment? #mythology

kofanchen, to Birds
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

#birds not sure what this one wants from me....any Gongye Chang (公冶長) on Mastodon? #folklore
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongye_Chang

Starling calling on a pavement

kofanchen, to dragonball
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

😔🙏
Akira Toriyama, creator of manga series, dies aged 68
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/08/akira-toriyama-dragon-ball-creator-manga-series-dies-aged-68

kofanchen, to random
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

During my morning and evening commute, I enjoyed reading new papers from the paperbots on Mastodon, but every now and then I am reminded of how unbelievably exploitive the academic journals are when I cannot pass the paywall without my uni subscription #OpenAcess 😭 #openscience

elduvelle, to academia
@elduvelle@neuromatch.social avatar

Is it common that US universities don’t pay their faculty for 3 months every year? What’s up with that 🤔
#Academia #Faculty

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@elduvelle what! That is terrible 😭

kofanchen, to climate
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

Last night, I popped out for groceries, arrived at a traffic junction, got flashed by a sports car, all good, they drove off. But then seeing the whole street of parked cars, with me alone with shopping, suddenly a sense of overwhelming hypocrisy and anger hit:
until we change our behaviour, no way this #climate crisis will go away by having small groceries and food deliveries everywhere running 24 hours and every household having one or sometimes two cars, all in the names of convenience.

rakyat, to random
@rakyat@hachyderm.io avatar

Someone posted this on Threads:

Header: Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Infographic content:

  • China blames feminism on foreign influence from Taiwan, Japan & Korea

  • Taiwan claims that feminism is funded by China

  • Japan blames feminism on anti-Japanese groups in China, Taiwan and Korea

  • Korea blames feminism on forces in China

Source: https://www.threads.net/@shanshan88023/post/C3vt-KKyBA6/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@rakyat xenophobic misogynistic aside, I am intrigued by the mind of the infographic creater: why there are 3 way accusations for China and Japan but only one way for Taiwan and Korean?🤔

kofanchen, to random
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

Is this plateau over last few days marks the true global influx of mastodonian or just Spam influx from the Japan instances?🤦
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/111951191343295184

kofanchen, to japanese
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

Am I the only person think that the new Netflix #Japanese Drama "House of Ninjas"
https://youtu.be/gaDl_i80PYU?si=lH9hQ-ECwXmfilZi
is a great blend between The incredible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredibles and
Hitotsu Yane no Shita ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitotsu_Yane_no_Shita

Love it!

swarming, to random
@swarming@babka.social avatar

I’ve been thinking a lot about impermanence recently. About the vast scales of time of human history. How temporary it all is.

I imagine that the Romans once looked around at the sheer splendour of their civilisation, the technical advances and discoveries, the majesty of the great colosseums, and thought to themselves ‘this will live forever.’

I have to imagine that so to did the Egyptians as they looked upon the great pyramids of Giza or the Temple of Hatshepsut. The great Pharoahs buried in their golden sarcophagi for eternal posterity, their tomb looted within a few years by desperate thieves.

I imagine they consulted their historians, marvelled at the journey their peoples had been on, and how much smarter they were than those who had come before.

I wonder if we’re just like them, now. How would we know? Every civilisation, even those which lasted thousands of years, was unable to understand its own collapse even as they saw it with their own eyes.

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@dequbed @swarming
This is perhaps a prime example of "some" #Roman civil knowledge is lost 👇
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron

BBCRD, to mastodon

We’ve just published an update about this Mastodon trial which has been running for the last 6 months – you can read it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-02-extending-our-mastodon-social-media-trial

We are going to continue our trial here for at least another six months while we share our findings internally and seek more engagement from other BBC teams. We are also planning to start researching ways to publish more BBC content using ActivityPub.

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@BBCRD
amazing! "So far in the trial we’ve amassed around 60,000 followers across our six trial accounts, and we have had to do very little moderation of replies associated with our content. Reassuringly, most of the comments and feedback have been positive, welcoming both our interest and the way we have set things up.We’ve had really encouraging levels of engagement(i.e. replies, re-posts and likes) on Mastodon."

neuralreckoning, to random
@neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social avatar

I've been thinking a lot about how we could have a non-hierarchical science, and one idea has crystallised.

The way science is done now, senior scientists have a lot of decision making power: which papers get published, which grants get funded, who gets hired. This introduces a hierarchy and concentration of power that has both social problems (bias, well documented potential for abuse of trainees), as well as scientific ones (ideas that challenge old ways of thinking have a much harder time than they should).

However, I wouldn't want to entirely eliminate the collective expertise of senior scientists. It's always amazed me just how well some of them can cut through nonsense and see to the heart of an issue. I distinctly remember enthusiastically going to one of my postdoctoral advisors to talk about my latest complicated modelling idea and getting the response "yeah you could do that but what would it tell us about X?" and realising that they were completely right. I avoided months of fruitless work thanks to that one ten minute conversation.

But do they need to have decision making power to do that? I don't think so. We should give decision making power to junior scientists: they should decide what ideas they work on, how to carry out their research, where to do it, who to collaborate with, and what to publish. The additional role of senior scientists is to give the junior scientists advice, which those junior scientists are entirely free to ignore. You don't need to force people to listen to advice. If the advice is good, freely given and not binding, people will seek it out. And there's no reason it has to only be senior scientists who are in this advice giving role, and no reason that as a senior scientist you need to be in this role if you don't want to be.

This inverts the power dynamics in a really progressive way. With this approach, there's no way to impose your idea of how science should be done on anyone, instead you have to persuade them. This is exactly how it should be. By placing arbitrary authority at the heart of science we've made it unnecessary for established ideas to argue for their value, because the holders of those ideas can just deny publication, grants and jobs to those who disagree. Why bother arguing when you can do that?

An obvious follow-up question is: OK, but then how do you allocate funding? It's a good question and one I'm happy to discuss ideas about. But it's not a case of us having a good answer already and needing a strong argument for an even better way. The current system is a hierarchy whose very nature is contrary to the basic values of science. I suspect almost any alternative would be better. Personally, without a clear winner in mind, I suspect the best approach would be heterogeneous: let's try out different ideas and see what works instead of all the countries in the world converging more or less on variations of this same basic formula.

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@neuralreckoning this thread went so fast so not sure I missed similar idea already, one thought about funding in the situation when grant writing is still required: only bench worker allow writing grant, most of the power comes from the fund, it is almost already the case one for independent postdoctoral fellowship, so all we need to do is to have transitional period (said 10 years), and by 2034 we have a total ban on current lab heads to submit grants 😁, YES this would be total disruptive

skinnylatte, to food
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

Extremely economical Chinese home cooking

  • ‘dried goods’ last a really long time
  • you can get normal quality (Chinese groceries) or splurge on super high quality (Chinatown ‘medical’ shops)
  • you can make lots of different meals with the same set of things
  • the water you use to soak mushrooms becomes a vegetarian stock you can use in anything

Today I’m soaking the stuff I need to cook my favorite ‘fuzhuk’ stew

Will probably live toot along later

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@skinnylatte For former 1st and 15th of the month in Taiwan, it is somehow quite wide practice also among Taoists @benjamingeer
Edit: obviously the lunar month

A_J_Millar, to privacy

It's reporting season for UK academics funded by . UKRI mandates use of , a commercial product that was originally spun out (maybe from ?) and is now owned by 🙃. For the first time IIRC, I will have to accept Elsevier policy when I upload my outcomes.

Oligopoly and massive vertical integration in this sector: in medium term, most likely to benefit .

➡️ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
@pluralistic

➡️ https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230206
@brembs

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@A_J_Millar @elduvelle

I tried and it cannot be skipped :(

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

Half thinking of starting an hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.

Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail.

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@pvonhellermannn
A couple of years ago, University of Leicester lost the Neuroscience dept.
Uni continues to recruit neuroscience undergraduates and the restructured colleagues were moved to our dept as teaching only. Apparently Neuroscience is losing money
But we haven't entirely recovered the research skillset and reputation, both crucial for Neurogenetics research in my dept.
Your thread and this below 👇 from @neuralreckoning made me seriously consider Uni fiance
https://neuromatch.social/@neuralreckoning/112130922886185462

kofanchen,
@kofanchen@drosophila.social avatar

@pvonhellermannn
The Chinese students dependency reminded me the pretext of Sino-British War in the 19th century, where Britain demanded free trade mainly to access the massive opium consuming market ( other #histodon may correct me here, at least that is what I as told in high school).

However, some counter examples here: We also have substantial Chinese students but in my case they are usually better students ( we are not a Russell group) also quite a lot of civil movement among them.

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