When preparing images for publication, it is good practice to check how accessible they are for colour blind people. Using a simple bit of code, it is possible to check an image – or a whole figure – in ImageJ for accessibility. For example, Figure 1 from our recent paper. Originally looked like this: Using the script we can see how it appears to people with different types of colour blindness.
I recently finished An Essay on Science and Narcissism by Bruno Lemaitre. I found this book really insightful and thought I would write some notes about it here. The book was published in 2016 although I only just got around to reading it. You can grab a copy for free here.
We have a new paper out. It’s about how chromosomes get shared during cell division. The paper in a nutshell In science-speak Misaligned chromosomes outside the exclusion zone become *ensheathed *in multiple layers of endomembranes. This event consigns the chromosome to missegregation and generates a micronucleus. In normal language Cells can make mistakes when they divide.
Quantifying the degree of colocalisation of two signals in microscopy images is very tricky. Lots has been written on this topic, including in my book The Digital Cell. The focus of this post is on visualising colocalisation . One way to look at colocalisation is two think about two sets of objects and how many of each set overlap. This is sometimes referred to as co-occupancy or object-based colocalisation .
In-person science meetings are returning. It’s a sad fact that during the pandemic, we failed to make virtual events work as a complete replacement for in-person meetings. Despite it being clear that online meetings solve many of the accessibility and sustainability issues that surround in-person events, there’s an appetite for things to return to the way they were. For better or for worse. So what went wrong?
A new paper means a new paper explainer. This post is all about our new paper on clathrin assembly. Some background info Endocytosis is the way that cells take up material from the outside world. The cell can make tiny vesicles that bud inwards from the cell surface and pinch off to travel inside the cell. This process is important for lots of things that cells do, so there is a lot of interest in how endocytosis works.
We have a new paper out! This post is to describe what our paper is about. The paper is free to read, so please take a look if you are interested. Gabrielle Larocque, Daniel J. Moore, Méghane Sittewelle, Cansu Kuey, Joseph H.R. Hetmanski, Penelope J. La-Borde, Beverley J. Wilson, Nicholas I. Clarke, Patrick T. Caswell &
There are perennial topics of discussion on Science Twitter. An example of this is: should figures be at the end of a manuscript are interspersed in the text. These topics tend not to be resolved because there are strong arguments (and personal preferences) on each side. I am not sure whether it is even possible to get people to agree with you using reasoned argument on Twitter.
PhD students sometimes get the same bad advice on writing their thesis. I call this advice the Rule of Three . Typically, they get told that their thesis: Will take 3 months to write Should have 3 results chapters Should be 300 pages These bits of advice have one thing in common: they are all wrong. If you have been organised (see below), it should not take 3 months to write a PhD thesis.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, different countries are experiencing various restrictions including lockdowns. Some of these restrictions alter our ability to do science: by hindering lab access or taking time away from researchers for homeschooling. So, what impact has the pandemic had on scientific output? One way to look at this – for biology – is to look at newly deposited papers on bioRxiv.
