Dr. Or M. Bialik |📚|🔬|🌊|⚒️

Cartoon diagram reconstructing predatory interactions in the late Early Triassic ocean of South China. (A) Predatory interaction between a limulid predator and a polychaete annelid, based on limulid trackways and the compound trace at this study’s Dangwu locality in Guizhou Province, SW China. The uppermost sketch refers to polychaetes that bulldozes through the seafloor sediments, producing only Palaeophycus burrow form; the second and third sketches (downward) show that polychaetes emerge from the sediment, and move epibenthically on the seafloor. This activity attracts a limulid predator. The resulting compound trace displays a combination of a horizontal trail, Palaeophycus burrow, and two pairs of elongated scratch marks (or only the transition from a horizontal trail to scratch marks). The lowermost sketch indicates the limulid predator is hunting a polychaete prey. (B) Abundant pelagic predators such as reptiles, fishes, and ammonoids in the late Early Triassic ocean in South China, as well as predatory interactions between limulids and worms on the seafloor. The artistic illustrations were drawn by the authors.

Coming out of the Great Dying into the Triassic, food webs were whacked. Tracing relations between predators and their prey, as recorded by their traces in the sediment, shows it took several million years for things to recover. 🧪⚒️

Link: pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulle...

StarCraft® Army Bundle - Founders Edition Zerg & Terran

It looks nice, but I can't but help feel these models will be proxied or kitbashed into WH40K about as often as they'll be used in the actual game. The utility overlap is just too big (I mean... the Marines are on 32mm bases).

#Wargaming

Conferences, I don't consider as part of the cost of the paper; travel is spread between the different lines, depending on the need. Lab costs are in overheads, and RAs are in salaries and data generation.

And thanks @zoopel.bsky.social for sending this paper my way so I'll have something to keep me busy as I was sitting in the basment while missles were coming from above (nothing close to us as far as I know, only the sounds of interceptions).

Pathways of algal degradation in the sediment.

If you ever seen the seafloor after a seaweed bloom, it can get dark, and the mud might stink from decaying macroalgae. There are a lot of processes involved, mostly microbial. Nutrients have a surprising (to me) role in all of it. 🧪🌊
Link: pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

There are also other factors and nuances to consider, but that's my current general picture. So just remember, next time you see some scientific paper, is take A LOT of resources to produce one of those and get it out.

🧵 9/9

Honestly, I think it came a bit on the low end. As I said, I was conservative for a representative paper. I could have probably shot up the costs with how I counted labor or inputs acquisition (work at sea is expensive). Also, I probably forgot somethings.

🧵 8/9

Then there are the overheads, which I estimated at 20%. This covers things like the fractional cost of the instruments, computers, lab maintenance, whatever help we needed from admin, and all other costs that are a bit hard to place and that sort of happen in the background.

🧵 7/9

Publication also costs money sometimes, absurd color charges, article processing charges for open access, or just for the right to publish with the journal. Some of it is covered by institutes (not ours).

🧵 6/9

Services are stuff we can't do ourselves, things like professional editing, graphics, photography, etc. It's not something that is relevant for every paper, but it does come up from time to time.

🧵 5/9

Data generation covers analysis, such as doing measurements in the lab, but also other things like running models. Again, I'm being conservative here; there are more expensive outliers with either very large sample sets or very expensive analyses.

🧵 4/9

Inputs acquisition covers the cost of getting the samples (or other inputs) we work on. This can be an experiment, fieldwork, or a research cruise (usually an activity on a cruise, not the entire thing). I think I was very conservative here; some outliers were actually much more expensive.

🧵 3/9

The biggest line item is salaries. Roundabout a paper takes us about four to six months of labor (divided between a few people and sometimes over a longer period since people do multiple things). There are longers outliers, but this is within SD.

🧵 2/9

Cost item Minimum (€) Maximum (€) Salaries 41680 62520 Inputs acquisition 1000 40000 Data generation 3000 10000 Services 0 5000 Publication 0 5400 Overheads 9136 24584 Total 54816 147504

Found myself recently trying to estimate how much a paper coming out of my lab actually costs (for... reasons). It comes out between ~55K€ and ~150K€.
Been an interesting exercise, and I want to share with you what goes into these figures.

🧪 | 🧵 1/9

Workshoping this a bit more (😬 might actually start writing this, rather then finishing the projects I should), for the first time I find myself a bit annoyed with English not being gendered, I could do some interesting things in this scene with gendering.

Just managed to finish dinner when the sirens went up. Came back out from sheltering now, no harm or injury here... although it was getting long enough to test bladder control for some.

Page from X-Men United #1

It's not a nation, but it's nice to have a school again. Always happy when the X-Men are allowed to build something, even if we all know editorial will demend it's tragic destruction.
Let's see what @eveewing.bsky.social and @tiagopalma.bsky.social have for us...

Phylogeny of cheilostome bryozoans with ancestral state reconstructions of mineralogy. Species names are omitted where mineralogical and phylogenetic data match only at the genus level. Jur.—Jurassic; Cret.—Cretaceous; Pal.—Paleocene; Ol.—Oligocene; Mio.—Miocene; L.—Late.

I always teach in class that the mineral preference of marine organisms for their skeleton has to do with ocean chemistry when they evolved. Cheilostome bryozoans were an odd one out, but looking at their originations, they might after all not be. 🧪⚒️
Link: pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

Me - I need to finish #editing this book.
My 🧠 - I have a great opening line for a new book: "There is a specific kind of torture in waking up most mornings and seeing in the mirror the person you most want dead."
Me - I hate you. It's a really good line. Now I want to write that.

#Writing

|sigh| The infinite joy of reading the news and realizing all this mess might have been for nothing, made things worse, and we'll all be back here again in a year or two.
<slam head against table>

(Or it might not. Who knows? The news mostly gets me more confused, and I'm going to turn it off)

Ho... that's annoying and ridiculous. Not only is that is well within fair use, it also defaces the work itself and lessens it.
But that's unis for you...
I ended up putting my thesis on Zenodo, so there will be a version out there looking like I wanted it.

I think it's a normal state of being for most of us, about five minutes after submitting.
So far, interesting! My main complaint is the lack of figures (in the version I found), having a visual element would have helped communicate some things there.

Printed and primed Range Crusher from Heros Infinite next to a few 28mm models for comparison. Specifically, a bike that I'm using a a referance for the colors

So naturally, I'm going to try to do everything with brushes (and sponges).
Also... couldn't help myself, and had to remodel, print out, and bash some parts to make it unique (and one already broke as I was setting the picture).

Printed and primed Range Crusher from Heros Infinite next to a few 28mm models for comparison.

I needed a new project, something that would take a while, so I could keep busy and not think too hard if there is a series of missile alerts... so I printed a Chaos Land Raider proxy for my Sisters.

Damn, this thing is big.

#Miniatures #MiniPainting

Fundamental Concepts and Critical Developments in Sex Education This comprehensive resource equips emerging and experienced sexuality educators with contemporary frameworks for trauma-informed, equitable, and anti-oppressive education.It provides foundational prin...

A note on access, I'm sure some institutes out there have access to Routledge - none I work with do. But this chapter was accessible through Google Books.

books.google.co.il/books?id=VpJ...

Classroom with a teacher writing: Reimagined in the center of the mind map, from which Porn literacy and Pleasure branch off. Originally found here: https://www.wunc.org/podcast/embodied-podcast/2022-04-08/reimagine-sex-education-sexuality-gender-identity

In this day and age, where porn is just another type of media accessible to just about anyone seeking it, it might be time to openly start talking to young people about what it is, how to process it, as well as what should and shouldn't be learned from it. 🧪

www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

A friend recommended to me @sophiepilbeam.bsky.social's dissertation (which I won't link, for reasons). So... reading it now, it's a cool thesis, happy there is work on the topic.

(It's great I have some friends on this particular wavelength, should get more)

Wait, who thinks that narwhals aren't real? What fundamental societal changes must we urgently do to fix that?

A friend summarized this wonderfully to me in a DM: Did this dude just give 3 of his friends 500 bucks to talk to them about each other's smut writing?

(cited with their permission)

I have to cite this amazing line from the conclusions: "Listen to the voices of young adults. Do not assume that we need to be protected from our emerging sexuality or that this emerging sexuality is even something to be fearful of. This only projects and perpetuates further shame and judgement."