Dr. “rare nut“

Aquatic and computational microbial ecologist. Passionate about all things tiny and omnipresent—the good, the bad, and the unknown!

[Dr. “rare nut“ @SaudiDaudi]

@PatagoniaAqua Hi Patricia, I noticed that the button for DM was removed. However there is one for chatting privately on a persons profile where you need to provide a key code to start. Let me know when you are online.

[Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash]

StrainMake: reproducible hybrid metagenomics with MAG recovery and strain-level resolution https://t.co/g0IboOtThI

[Huiluo Cao 曹慧荦 @hlcao]

DeepSeMS: revealing the hidden biosynthetic potential of the global ocean microbiome with a large language model | Nature Computational Science https://t.co/DCNzKeCHCm

[Trends in Microbiology @TrendsMicrobiol]

Beyond methanogenesis: expanding roles for methanogenic archaea https://t.co/m4RB01HEEH

[Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash]

Diverse phages of ammonia oxidizers with the potential to modulate nitrification https://t.co/UgGwQ36D9L

[Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash]

Improving tolerance to fluctuating light through adaptive laboratory evolution in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis https://t.co/YAeqVlVNps

[Oded Rechavi @OdedRechavi]

Important announcement!!!🫵💥💫

Would you have a tooth pulled if it helped your chances to get an important grant funded?

Absurd question (obviously), but the situation right now is so bad funding-wise, that I bet some of you actually considered it for a second…

Well, don’t get desperate - we created a new tool that might help! (keep your teeth!)

I’m excited to announce that as of today we are officially releasing “QED for Grants” for everyone. What started off as an extension of our existing paper review platform, grew in the last few months to an entirely new design. We’ve been working like crazy on this, and although we have more things we want to add in the (very near) future, we decided to release our AI for grants NOW, earlier than planned. It’s not perfect, no AI is, but for the first time, when I run my own grants through @qedscience, I feel it gets the research, finds real problems, and gives me very useful feedback that I can implement before submission. It’s like sending it to 20 scientists from my domain, knowing they’ll agree to dedicate their entire week to carefully read and comment on every line.

It’s very important to write your own grants yourself, it makes you think hard and you learn a lot from doing it, and q.e.d’s system is designed to preserve these positive aspects and augment them - you get feedback on your own writing, we don’t write for you!!

But at the same time, a typical PI spends many months every year writing proposals and sadly only a tiny fraction gets funded, even if the ideas are good. When you are forced to submit an unreasonable amount of grants the quality of the writing drops, and rejection rates increase. Not because the essence is bad. It’s simply too competitive right now (the cuts made it so much worse) and if your proposal is not super clear and tight, and if it’s not a perfect fit for the grant you’re submitting, you’re doomed.

Our grant solution is not an authoring, text-generating tool. It gives you constructive feedback on your writing (it comments on the deep things, not grammar and typos). It’s meant to help you with the questions that torment you late at night (“is this a good fit?”, “Is this novel enough?”, “Did I miss something?”). Tens of thousands of you already use q.e.d to improve your manuscripts and critically read papers, we built the grant tool by the same principles (you’ll identify many of the features that you told us you like).

We’ve processed thousands of proposals, learned where things fail, where reviewers get stuck, why good ideas come out weak. We interviewed hundreds of scientists, and also experts who work in funding agencies and university research authorities, and implemented their feedback (we’re constantly looking for more feedback). Our AI is always happy to give you constructive (and polite!) critique, and it will go through your grant line-by-line, forcing you to improve clarity, flag weak points, and push the whole thing to a higher standard. We study, in scale, what gets funded and what doesn’t, and what is the perfect fit for each type of grant.

So please, use it, pressure-test it, tell us where it fails, and together we’ll improve it every day to put you in the best position for actually testing your ideas in the real world. As always with q.e.d, the system is completely secured and private, and we are NOT training on your data (see the FAQ on our website).

Please like, retweet, and share with your favorite colleagues! (link to the platform below in the thread👇)

[Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash]

Quantifying phage-host dynamics using droplet microfluidics https://t.co/VyudZmW5uJ

[Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash]

Improving metagenome binning by integrating intrinsic features and taxonomy https://t.co/0XG8E75ddg

[Huiluo Cao 曹慧荦 @hlcao]

Decade-long warming accelerates antibiotic resistance in grassland soils | Nature https://t.co/5PuTJXeCga

[Huiluo Cao 曹慧荦 @hlcao]

Benchmarking of shotgun sequencing depth reveals the potential and limitations of shallow metagenomics and strain-level analysis | Nature Microbiology https://t.co/yy83nQhT1E

[German Simply 🇩🇪 @GermanSimply_]

Things Germans say that confuse everyone else 🇩🇪😂

"Das ist mir Wurst."
Literal: That is sausage to me.
Actual meaning: I don't care.

"Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof."
Literal: I only understand train station.
Actual meaning: I have no idea what you're saying.

"Tomaten auf den Augen haben."
Literal: To have tomatoes on your eyes.
Actual meaning: To be oblivious to what's happening around you.

"Jemandem die Daumen drücken."
Literal: To press thumbs for someone.
Actual meaning: To keep fingers crossed for someone.

German idioms hit different. 😭🇩🇪

Drop one you know 👇🏽

[Pon｜食と健康 @PonNutr]

腸内細菌に感染しているファージ同士が会話（クロストーク）をしていて、感染するだけか、溶菌（攻撃）するかなどのタイミングを伝え合っていることが分かったという #Cell の論文

https://t.co/2TUGQGEPv0

[Dr. Melanie Blokesch @MBlokesch]

Excited to share that our latest paper is published @ScienceMagazine
We show that HGT via natural competence drives diversification of chromosomal integrons in V. cholerae.
Thanks to Laurie, Sandrine, Loriane & Alexandre for their help with this study🥳
https://t.co/Efzmjj8MD6

[Dr. “rare nut“ @SaudiDaudi]

@MikeBales One of your best!

[PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research @PHAGEJournal]

Pleased to see #taxMyPhage updated to reflect the ICTV Master Species List taxonomy.
More details: https://t.co/4H4rDrv2bJ
Standalone tool: https://t.co/JosCQVx2YK
Webserver: https://t.co/kB7LHeE6FC
Thanks @milja001 & @TSPKU for keeping us updated!
#phagetaxonomy

[Tominaga K. (tomiken) @pacyc1841]

PlasAnn: a curated plasmid-specific database and annotation pipeline for standardized gene and function analysis | Nucleic Acids Research | Oxford Academic https://t.co/RbOfEpL58b

[Tominaga K. (tomiken) @pacyc1841]

Nocturnal hydration prepares desert cyanobacteria for dawn-light harvesting by inducing phycoerythrin synthesis | PNAS https://t.co/FTGuABCMPA

[Science Advances @ScienceAdvances]

A new analysis suggests that the expansion of wastewater treatment plants across China has caused methane emissions in the country to grow by 12% per year since 2003. https://t.co/7V1B8LSonW