Sam Lord

Preprint alert! I’m publishing my last paper from my postdoc work on archaeal cell biology, with @mullinslab.bsky.social, @archaellum.bsky.social, @samjlord.bsky.social, @marleenvw.bsky.social, @arghya93.bsky.social, and more great folks (thread below with more details)

It’s “Washington’s Birthday,” officially.

New actin probe from @veselin-nasufovic.bsky.social et al! SiR-XActin and its variants are more photostable and less perturbative than SiR-actin or FastAct. And it's already available from @spirochrome.com! With some beautiful data from @chillinwithpfn1.bsky.social:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Application to the Astera Open Science program's user testing day Are you a Bay Area researcher in academia or industry? Do you want to make an impact on innovative tools designed to transform the way we work and think? Apply below to be a part of the Astera Open Sc...

Calling all Bay Area researchers for a paid opportunity: the @asterainstitute.bsky.social Open Science Program’s User Testing Day in Emeryville on Feb 11!

📍 Try cutting-edge research tools
💡 Share feedback
🍷 Network

Apply by Feb 5: forms.gle/1qk4PHjbee35...
#UXTesting #Biotech #OpenScience

@jjalston.bsky.social congrats on the Hanna Gray!

But the tapeworm text is mocking the raw guy? At least that’s what I’m hoping. I can’t believe that folks would intentionally get parasites.

I have to believe that the original video was done in jest.

Now we’ll get people complaining how it’s inappropriate to send reminders so early in the new year. 🤣

That time of year…

Corrigendum to ‘From e-waste to living space: Flame retardants contaminating household items add to concern about plastic recycling’ [Chemosphere 365 (2024) 143319]

Will you and @theatlantic.com publish a follow-up story that the dangers were 10x lower than the scientific paper originally claimed?

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Why shouldn’t we be 10x less concerned now?

The Study That Called Out Black Plastic Utensils Had a Major Math Error — WIRED Despite the correction, the study’s authors stand by their conclusions about the risks of certain kitchen utensils.

How can the dose be an order of magnitude lower than they first estimated, but then have zero change in their conclusion? Shouldn’t their concern about black plastic cookware be 10x lower now??

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I still miss the tan M&Ms.

Some folks are saying that authors can upload the author versions (not the journal-formatted version) to PMC before the embargo ends. Not sure what’s true.

Yes, that was my question. Seems like some folks are complaining that this is an “unfunded mandate,” but this seems like a free solution. :)

So isn’t that a free solution?

Can’t author just upload to Pubmed Central for free themselves? Or do journal policies forbid that?

What happens if a journal’s policies don’t allow posting before the embargo is up? Is that a thing?

“NIH reiterates that compliance with the Policy does not require the payment of an open access fee to a journal…free pathway to compliance can be achieved by depositing the Author Accepted Manuscript into PubMed Central for public availability upon the Official Date of Publication without embargo.“

HT1080 cells with various morphologies. DAPI (blue) Phalloidin (grey) GM130 (green).

Advances in microscopy mean we can now do more than just observe biology—we can control it. But how far can we really push this in mammalian cells with all their (beautiful but annoying) heterogeneity? 🧪🔬(🧵)

Speakers, try adjusting gamma on your images (e.g. 0.45) on your slides. Especially for images that are still hard to see after optimizing contrast. #CellBio2024

The #CellBio2024 lanyards:

Attending one of the MBL courses would be a better fit for a PhD. :)

If it is a typical scientific camera, the signal has been linearized by the manufacturer, but one could confirm that in the spec sheet of their particular camera.

The net gamma would be 2.2, because of the computer monitor. The system needs a 0.45 gamma correction to display a linear image again.

The problem is that scientific cameras don’t encode a gamma like consumer cameras do, so when the computer monitor “decodes” the image by applying a gamma of 2.2, the displayed image is nonlinear.

I agree that the best solution is a gamma LUT, so as not to change the pixel values.

Def true for the things you mention, but does anyone actually like the captions to be disembodied from the figures?

Sharing my latest preprint as a re-introduction to bsky!

biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Everyday, cells like this crawl through your body to protect you. While we know that their front 🔴 and back 🔵 polarity programs work together, how exactly do these two processes communicate?

I image living archaea at 76C (with @acharlesorszag.bsky.social )

I would say as long as you have at least 3 subsample measurements, it should look reasonable. Once you have thousands of datapoints, it makes sense to use violin plots instead of scatter plots for the subsample points. :)