cellmorphosero.bsky.social
How cells stick to things and move around, microscopy, cats, garden bugs, forays into machine learning, occasional political snark. Asst Prof University of Bath, UK 🏳️🌈
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Getting Started
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Thanks! I wasn't thinking energy of photon to cell response, though. More like, to get the same level of activation in cells from the same quantity of different wavelength photons, you'd need more long wavelength photon detectors because each they get pinged less than the short wavelength ones?
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They won't.
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This is beautiful, and something to keep in mind when we feel 'unproductive'. Being a Maker when the spirit moves you is good; but being a full-throated a
Appreciator is also good. ❤️ 💙 💜
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Sure, there is absolutely no problem at all with training an LLM on LLM-generated text. Totally fine, works great.
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Isn't it just straight up illegal to drive without plates?
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We had one of these at Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh, PA, called The Rotor. I loved it!
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Does that have to do with the relative energy of the photons that activate them? That is, do we need more receptors for longer wavelength light and fewer for shorter wavelengths to get the same level of activation? Would be interesting to tinker with wv sensitivity and see if that changes % RGB.
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4. Most animals are born with eyes that are too short for their optics. The signal that tells your eye to grow longer and then stop when the image of the outside world is in focus is entirely contained within the retina. Even if you cut the optic nerve, the eye will keep growing all on its own.
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^^^This^^^
Whoever doesn't think that attacking trans people is the appetizer before the main course of gay bashing ... I have some news for you, and a foolproof crypto currency multilevel marketing opportunity for sale.
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And we can extrapolate the entire history of the universe from a crumb of toast.
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Oooh, L-Space! I hope there's an orangutan in charge.
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I think a mix is necessary. But teaching first and second year undergrads has made me aware of how much they need the foundations of critical thinking in order to build a framework. I think biology is harder to teach than math bc we may forget to train students how to think, not just give them info.
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Right, if they have *learned how to cook* & then make a choice to use ready-made ingredients, fine. But we are talking about undergrads who, by definition, do not know how to cook yet.
Seriously, after however-many years interacting only with postgrads, one forgets how much students don't know.
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Like, Qiagen kits are a great hack and a time saver. But the researchers who only ever used them don't actually understand what all the mystery stuff in the buffers are doing. Which is mostly okay - until something goes wrong. And they will never innovate a new or modified protocol that way.
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Sure, I am not arguing against tech. I work on ML projects myself. But we don't not teach kids how to do arithmetic just because calculators exist. Calculating machines make life easier and enable me to do things I couldn't do without them. But I know how to add and subtract.
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The better analogy than hunting is: a student at the Cordon Blue gets good marks on their dishes cobbled together from the finest ready meals, goes on Masterchef thinking they can cook, and gets absolutely crucified by Monica Galetti in the technical challenge.
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It's running drills. It's playing scales. We are all lazy and would rather not do hard work. But with practice, it will feel like it comes naturally. You'll get faster.
The point is not the marking, it's the doing. A low mark with good feedback is more instructive than a good mark with no feedback.
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You train brain agility in critical thinking by reading and presenting arguments you crafted by synthesising that reading in written work and oral presentations.
Which is what we teach undergrads to do.
Which is why we make them write essays (practice for papers) and do talks.
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The more apt analogy here isn't hunting versus cookery. It's cookery versus nuking a ready meal.
There are some tasty ready meals and I have nothing against eating them.
But if you've only ever had ready meals, you don't know how to cook for yourself from raw ingredients.
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And my point is that it's one thing to use a chat bot assist when you've already got 1) the skills to do the reading & writing work yourself (as you & I do), & 2) the critical thinking experience to sift through its answers to weed out the crap.
It's another thing to use it without having that base.
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Fair point. But what I teach is science.
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I'm not sure what your point is.
Aside from "gen AI isn't evil", which I never said it was. I never even said it didn't have uses. I am just reiterating that students don't learn to think for themselves by having a chat bot do all the work for their brains, which are in training.
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What does this question mean? That there's a flaw in an oral exam if you can't use ChatGPT for it?
I mean, I could probably pass an undergrad exam in some subjects by reading a lot of ChatGPT content about it. But not, like, a calculus exam with problem sets.
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Right, which is why we're going back to in person exams. Sigh.
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That's hardly what I'm saying, clearly, and not what the original article said, and not at all logical.
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I agree. But more important than the evaluation is the learning you get by *doing*.
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I don't think a student who relies heavily on ChatGPT would perform very well in an oral exam.
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Further evidence: I am much slower at doing molarity calcs without a calculator now than I used to be! Mental math and writing are muscles we need to work to keep supple.
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My point still stands. I use the Tocris online molarity calculator and recommend it to students because it is fast and helpful. But if they never learned how to make molar solutions, they'd be dependent on it. It would be a black box. They wouldn't be able to troubleshoot or innovate.
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But in real life, being able to synthesise and communicate complex information and, eventually, formulate and defend new ideas are important skills. That's the point of education, not hacking the marking system. The world may not be as patient as one's profs if one isn't communicating effectively.
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I can tell you don't read much undergraduate writing. 😆
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I don't think I am doing either nostalgia or resentment, thanks. I suspect we don't even disagree pedagogically.
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How is having to solve problems and show factual knowledge with oen and paper different from writing an essay? That's what I am after in an essay.
Oral exams are the same skills (very stressful imo!). The point is, the student is learning to synthesise and present info, not get ChatGPT to do it.
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But presumably you write papers now, no? Maybe you're the lucky outlier for whom that just comes naturally, but most people aren't.
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"Back in March, the government outlawed not only making content about gender reassignment available to minors but also any "promoting or portraying" of homosexuality, essentially banning all future Pride marches."
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Ah, the classic Good German sense of fun.
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You are a fucking failure. You will never be forgiven for ignoring the citizens of your state. People are hiding in their homes while you are fine. Fuck all the way off
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The other analogy I have used is, Do you think a good tennis player can improve their game by watching tennis matches? Yes. But can a person who has only ever watched tennis as a spectator win a match? No way.
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My college (university) calculus class we weren't allowed to use any calculators, so I got a B because I could reduce the equations all the way down to, like, x = 49/8 and no further. Fortunately we got credit for showing our work!
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I give my trainees a similar spiel about calculators. (In addition to saying, "Always check my math if I tell you something!")
Calculators are great. I use the Tocris molarity calculator on my phone all the time for accurate numbers.
1/n
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5/n And it's not just a lab thing. In any job you use your brain for, being able to reliably estimate sums & check math is going to come into it somewhere. ("How much is this gonna cost? How long will it take?")
Synthesising and communicating information - even if not exact - is as essential.
/fin
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4/n And I say this as someone with a glitchy brain that can't do mental math when someone is watching! But the level of math-fear and frequency of factor-of-ten errors I see in students is 😬
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3/n So, now, you don't have to work every sum out to the third decimal place in your head, but you need to be able to at least estimate calculations or recognise major gaffes before you waste your time (and my money).
The number box is a powerful tool, but basic numeracy is needed to wield it.
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2/n But you need to be able to have a reasonable notion about what numbers make sense. Are you expecting to add 1 ul or 10 ul to your culture? Will 1 ml of that reage t be enough for your planned experiment? If you mixed up numerator & denominator, would you even notice?