So quantixed occasionally gets correspondence from other researchers asking for advice. A recent email came from someone who had been “scooped”. What should they do? Before we get into this topic we have to define what we mean by being scooped. You were working on something that someone else was also working on – maybe you knew about this or not and vice versa – but they got their work out before you did.

I recently got a new GPS running watch, a Garmin Fēnix 5. As well as tracking runs, cycling and swimming, it does “activity tracking” – number of steps taken in a day, sleep, and so on. The step goals are set to move automatically and I wondered how it worked. With a quick number crunch, the algorithm revealed itself. Read on if you are interested how it works. The watch started out with a step target of 7500 steps in one day.

Many projects in the lab involve quantifying circular objects. Microtubules, vesicles and so on are approximately circular in cross section. This quick post is about how to find the diameter of these objects using a computer. So how do you measure the diameter of an object that is approximately circular? Well, if it was circular you would measure the distance from one edge to the other, crossing the centre of the object.

As with children’s toys and clothes, books aimed at children tend to be targeted in a gender-stereotyped way. This is a bit depressing.

Here’s a quick tech tip. We’ve been writing papers in TeX recently, using Overleaf as a way to write collaboratively. This works great but sometimes, a Word file is required by the publisher. So how do you convert from one to the other quickly and with the least hassle? If you Google this question (as I did), you will find a number of suggestions which vary in the amount of effort required. Methods include latex2rtf or pandoc.

Back in 2014, I posted an analysis of the time my lab takes to publish our work. This post is very popular. Probably because it looks at the total time it takes us to publish our work. It was time for an update. Here is the latest version.

I am now running a new module for masters students, MD997. The aim is to introduce the class to a range of advanced research methods and to get them to think about how to formulate their own research question(s). The module is built around a paper which is allocated in the first session. I had to come up with a list of methods-type papers, which I am posting below. There are 16 students and I picked 23 papers.

Another post using R and looking at Twitter data. As I was typing out a tweet, I had the feeling that my vocabulary is a bit limited. Papers I tweet about are either “great”, “awesome” or “interesting”. I wondered what my most frequently tweeted words are. Like the last post you can (probably) do what I’ll describe online somewhere, but why would you want to do that when you can DIY in R? First, I requested my tweets from Twitter.

I wondered how many of the people that I follow on Twitter do not follow me back.

We have a new paper out. The title is New tools for ‘hot-wiring’ clathrin-mediated endocytosis with temporal and spatial precision . You can read it here. Cells have a plasma membrane which is the barrier between the cell’s interior and the outside world. In order to import material from outside, cells have a special process called endocytosis.

We have a new paper out! This post is to explain what it’s about. Cancer cells often have gene fusions . This happens because the DNA in cancer cells is really messed up. Sometimes, chromosomes can break and get reattached to a different one in a strange way. This means you get a fusion between one gene and another which makes a new gene, called a gene fusion.