Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. This post introduces Belen Febres-Cordero , the new manager of the ScholCommLab. In this interview, Belen shares what excites her about her work, both inside and outside the lab, and two pieces of advice from childhood that have shaped her curious and lively approach to research and life.

In mid-2024, I’ve moved back to using vim as my main text editor, both for code and prose like this blog post. Something like 15 years ago I had dabbled a bit with vim, but never much more than being able to perform simple edits and get the hang of the hjkl navigation. Good enough to quickly make minor edits from any shell, but not a whole lot more.

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has published an article about my open letter to the Royal Society regarding the evident contraventions of its code of conduct by one of their Fellows, Elon Musk FRS. Unfortunately, Frederick Attenborough’s piece contains errors, omissions and speculative rhetoric which together contrive to misconstrue the meaning and intent of my letter.

Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) fördert den Aufbau einer nationalen Servicestelle für Diamond Open Access in Deutschland. Unter dem Akronym SeDOA entsteht während der ersten dreijährigen Förderphase eine zentrale Anlaufstelle für das Publizieren im Diamond Open Access (DOA). Diamond Open Access (DOA) meint das Publizieren im Open Access ohne Gebühren/Kosten für Autor*innen und Leser*innen.

Over the next century, biotechnology is poised to revolutionize how we live, work, and address some of humanity's most pressing challenges. In fact, breakthroughs in biotechnology and related emerging technologies are already allowing scientists to produce targeted cancer therapies, engineer more resilient crops, create sustainable materials, and develop solutions to mitigate environmental pollution. But why now?

Rare Sight: Dolphins Spotted Swimming in NYC’s East River Imagine the bustling cityscape of New York City with its famed skyline and countless iconic spots. Now picture something unexpected: dolphins gracefully swimming along the waters adjacent to one of the world’s most vibrant metropolises.

Is digital pathology heading the same way as music streaming? For most labs, the financial and human cost of keeping the infrastructure and delivery of digital pathology in-house is probably too high. But what this will mean for research and teaching activities that rely on easy and unfettered access to data is a tricky problem. Choosing to keep some things small and local is a tool to future-proof our transition into modernity.

As part of my work on Knowledge Commons, I want to make more of our development process open, welcoming, and transparent, by using blogging. So I will be writing some technical posts on what I’m doing there and how I’ve overcome various technical challenges. In this post, I want to set out how I got BuddyPress notifications into a separate application (our new “Profiles” app). First: why am I doing this?

The Rogue Scholar science blog archive has started to automatically add all blog posts to the subject area community of the blog. Rogue Scholar uses the 48 OECD Fields of Science and Technology subject areas since September 2023 and blog authors pick a subject area when they join Rogue Scholar.

tl;dr: Blog posts here can now have a little button at the bottom that can pull in “comments” that are made by replying to a post on the Fediverse (i.e. Mastodon et al.). Some days ago, I saw the nifty little “comment” integration that FOSS Academic Robert W. Gehl has on his blog, which in turn were inspired by some other integrations.

I added Flux XII, a US aqueous organic RFB company, R-Flo, a Ukrainian all-iron flow battery company, and Unbound Potential, a Swiss membraneless RFB startup, to the list.