Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
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jperkel.bsky.social
Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
@jperkel.bsky.social
5.8K followers 1.2K following 440 posts
Technology Editor at Nature magazine (@nature.com) #rstats #scicomm. Love is love. 💕
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jperkel.bsky.social
Writing scientific software is time-consuming and technical. Google’s new development workflow aims to automate the process by allowing software to evolve, building on both existing tools and online resources. New @nature.com, by @silverjacket.bsky.social 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Google AI aims to make best-in-class scientific software even better
An artificial-intelligence-guided software-evolution system tweaks tools to boost performance.
www.nature.com
October 23, 2025 at 3:41 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
Read this fantastic defense of independent journalism by @marisakabas.bsky.social. Bravo! 👏 www.thehandbasket.co/p/grennell-c...
Truth, morality and independence in journalism under the second Trump regime
My full remarks to students and faculty at Grinnell College.
www.thehandbasket.co
October 22, 2025 at 2:56 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
😱 Fascinating and terrifying thought experiment from @lauriewired.bsky.social: "The original sin of computing ... that no one can fix". TL;DR: how much can you trust your compiler? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu3l...
The Original Sin of Computing...that no one can fix
YouTube video by LaurieWired
www.youtube.com
October 20, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
mrsbettybowers.bsky.social
America-hating Antifa showing up for a *second* time today.
constant-tummyache.bsky.social Empathy @constant-tummyache.bsky.social · 23d
Sharing this 102 year old WW2 Vet who is fighting fascism a second time.
October 19, 2025 at 1:45 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
govpritzker.illinois.gov
Democracy in action, Illinois.

Proud of our state for peacefully showing up and speaking out together in one voice to fight back against Donald Trump’s takeover of our democracy.
popcrave.com Pop Crave @popcrave.com · 23d
View of the Anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protest in Chicago.
October 19, 2025 at 12:24 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
laminda.bsky.social
Meanwhile in Alabama
thekoolaidmom.bsky.social thekoolaidmom.bsky.social @thekoolaidmom.bsky.social · 23d
#NoKings event in Fairhope, Al.
A woman was arrested for "lewd conduct" because she was dressed in penis suit with a sign that said "No dick-tator"
3 cops on a 53 yo woman.
October 19, 2025 at 12:26 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
tommytang.bsky.social
12 years ago, I typed my first "Hello world!".
It is not easy to learn bioinformatics from scratch.
But it is possible if you put in effort and have a clear pathway.

read my story here divingintogeneticsandgenomics.com/publication...
October 18, 2025 at 1:15 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
Fluorescent proteins are usually distinguished by their color. A new breed of FPs can be distinguished by 'fluorescence lifetime', too! Interesting read from @sjmelchor.bsky.social @nature.com 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Time-resolved fluorescent proteins expand the microscopy palette
An innovative strategy has produced light-emitting proteins that can be differentiated both by colour and by how long the molecules remain in an excited state.
www.nature.com
October 17, 2025 at 6:40 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
“It’s a really nice, completely closed loop where the end user is also the data provider.” New @nature.com, a fascinating read by Heather Richardson on the rising use of 'digital twins' in #ecology. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Digital flocks, predators allow ecologists to simulate real-world animal behaviour
‘Digital twins’ of real-world objects are moving from manufacturing to wildlife management.
www.nature.com
October 16, 2025 at 9:21 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
'Digital twins' have been used to model everything from electronics components to UK hospital wards and even the nation of Singapore. Now, they are transforming ecology research. Heather Richardson reports @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Client Challenge
www.nature.com
October 13, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
lyz.bsky.social
I wrote about the Elizabeth Holmes of the media lyz.substack.com/p/let-the-al...
October 10, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
jenrubin.bsky.social
ANTIFA:
October 10, 2025 at 2:42 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
governorwalz.mn.gov
Can’t believe I have to say this, but in Minnesota you will continue to have the freedom to get your COVID and flu shots.
October 8, 2025 at 11:03 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
🧪
jperkel.bsky.social Jeffrey Perkel (he/him) @jperkel.bsky.social · Oct 2
Important story by @scattercushion.bsky.social @nature.com
clutchscience.bsky.social ClutchScience (Jen Phillips) @clutchscience.bsky.social · Oct 2
Very nice reporting on the importance—and the vulnerability— of model organism databases

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
October 7, 2025 at 5:55 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
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October 7, 2025 at 5:54 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
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October 2, 2025 at 7:08 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
New @nature.com, by @silverjacket.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Biothreat hunters catch dangerous DNA before it gets made
Microsoft researchers found a biological zero-day vulnerability — and created a software patch.
www.nature.com
October 2, 2025 at 7:08 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
Important story by @scattercushion.bsky.social @nature.com
October 2, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
napari.org
napari 0.6.5 is out! 🚀

Rapid-fire highlights are: colorbar overlay, custom startup script, and better and prettier documentation! Check out the full release notes here: napari.org/dev/release/...
Image depicting the napari viewer in grid mode with scale bars and color bars enabled
October 2, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
kendallsciwrite.bsky.social
At long last, the 2025 @nature.com global PhD Survey is out! This first article by @lindanordling.bsky.social charts the state of the PhD experience in 2025. Good news: satisfaction is high. Bad news: so is harassment and discrimination.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How money, politics and technology are redefining the PhD experience in 2025
Nature’s global survey of 3,785 doctoral students shows satisfaction has recovered from pandemic lows, but harassment and inadequate supervision remain widespread.
www.nature.com
September 30, 2025 at 9:54 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
The challenge of staying up to date with the scientific literature has become a burden for everyone from students to senior investigators. New @nature.com, three researchers offer strategies for separating the wheat from the chaff #phdlife #AI 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How to find the papers you need to read — and avoid the ones you don’t
With thousands of papers being published everyday, it can be a task working out which matter. Here are some tips to help you decide.
www.nature.com
September 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
alelazic.bsky.social
When's an #RStats movie coming to the silver screen?
September 26, 2025 at 6:38 PM
jperkel.bsky.social
"NumPy has been a driving force for my whole life." It was a real pleasure to speak with @numpy.bsky.social developer Travis Oliphant about NumPy, SciPy, and #Python: the Documentary! New @nature.com 🧪🐍 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Python, the movie! The origin story of the programming language comes to the silver screen
The creator of the NumPy and SciPy libraries reflects on their supporting role in the story of Python, now the subject of a documentary.
www.nature.com
September 26, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Jeffrey Perkel (he/him)
maxkozlov.bsky.social
NEW: Nature trained AI to predict which NIH grants from 2014 would have been cut if the Trump admin had its way back then — and what science would have been lost to history.

"The results show the damage that cuts in funding can do to research, and the unpredictable nature of the research process."
September 25, 2025 at 2:49 PM