Recently, for class notes on probability/the central limit theorem, I wanted to recreate the table of 2d6 values that I made here. A really cool thing I found between that blog post and now is that gt has afmt_icon() operation that will replace text with its fontawesome icon.

Frustration, Conferences and Ludemes I had some things on the plate and obviously, I got stressed. And, as always, it somehow turned out quite ok. There were two conference presentations, and a self-imposed paper deadline to deal with, next to keeping several (too many) side projects running.

This week’s recap highlights a new tool from Wei Shen and Zamin Iqbal for efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes (LexicMap), a new tool from Heng Li for efficiently constructing and querying a sequence index at scale, an R/Bioconductor package for detecting and correcting DNA contamination in RNA-seq data, a method for dating gene age using synteny, how AlphaFold predictions for some types of conformations are

Version 4.5 of the DataCite Metadata Schema\ includes several changes supporting the identification and description of instruments. Several DataCite members were describing instruments in DataCite metadata before this capability was introduced and others are beginning to do it now. These existing efforts can inform the development of community conventions and help the broader community understand how to use instrument metadata effectively.

To orient

This is a story about a failure to apply dynamic programming to a woodworking project. I’ve been building a shed in my backyard, and for one section I decided to build the floor by laying 2x4 planks side by side. I didn’t feel the need to join them with tongue-and-groove, but I did notice that using 2x4s alone wouldn’t fit the width they were supposed to fill.

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP), an SFU Core Facility, is pleased to announce its flagship software, Open Journal Systems (OJS), has been chosen to underpin the European Commission’s Open Research Europe (ORE), an open access publishing platform. The €890K award comes after the European Commission (EC) released a platform analysis highlighting the importance of technological autonomy in achieving ORE’s long-term

The 28th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI) 2024 is just around the corner, set to take place in Berlin on 18-20 September!

Luke Horton asked in a comment on a recent post: *FACEPALM* How we’ve gone almost 17 years without posting about a hypothetical sauropod dissection is quite beyond my capacity. I am also contractually obligated to remind you that the TV show “Inside Nature’s Giants” shows dissections of a whale, elephant, giraffe, tiger, anaconda, giant squid, etc., so it’s probably the closest we’ll ever get.

There are lots of things that I have learned about kidneys and their functions since BK virus destroyed mine. Kidneys regulate potassium in your blood; they also control phosphate levels; they remove urea from the blood stream; they take excess fluid out of your body and blood; they produce the hormones that stimulate the creation of red blood cells; and a whole host more. Kidneys are the Swiss Army Knives of internal organs.

Over the past thirty years I have written five technical books,co-written three others,and edited a further six.Since 2007 they have all lived in GitHub repositories,as did the first versions of the Software Carpentry lessons that I helped to write.