Ilya Ruvinsky
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ruvinskyilya.bsky.social
Ilya Ruvinsky
@ruvinskyilya.bsky.social
Lots: dev bio, neuro, social signals, worms.

Some: comments re practice of science, art, nature.

Occasionally: something funny.
Dear @dev-journal.bsky.social, do you know what makes your claim of "format-free submission" a LOT less credible?

Having in place ridiculously arcane formatting rules for submission!

This must change!
February 13, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Ilya Ruvinsky
It’s been a tough few weeks. My 10yo daughter was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive cancer called interdigitating dendritic cell sarcoma (IDCS). I’m reaching out to identify clinicians/patients who have encountered pediatric IDCS or other (non-LCH) dendritic or histiocytic sarcomas cases.
February 8, 2025 at 9:21 PM
100% this experience on multiple previous occasions.

Sharing in the worm community is outstanding!
The C. elegans community is so awesome and down to earth!

Today I asked for a strain and got a wonderful response to my email 8 minutes later. And yes, this is also just another proof that people in our community (including Nobel prize winners!) are into sharing reagents.
January 24, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Strongly endorse:
January 14, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Care to estimate the relative frequency of these four categories in 2024?

Also, how about A, B, C for Category 4 (Huge, Medium, Minor)?
The four basic kinds of scientific papers:
1. Noise (no claim and no evidence)
2. Resource (no claim but lots of data)
3. Conjecture (makes a claim, but no evidence)
4. Scientific advance (both makes a claim and presents evidence)
January 2, 2025 at 2:40 PM
!
December 22, 2024 at 1:35 PM
Sharp. Thoughtful. Insightful.

Probably the best thing you will read about academic publishing today, this week, this month, or this year.

DO IT!
It is far easier to rattle of a list of things wrong with the current system than to replace it with something better. I'm old enough to have sat in a room > 20 years ago, listening to @mbeisen.bsky.social explaining, after his scientific seminar, how open access was THE thing that was going to 1/n
December 20, 2024 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Ilya Ruvinsky
Hi. I'm Andrew. I own New England's oldest map store because last year I moved across the country after an old guy retired and gave it to me Willy Wonka-style. Visit my store in Rhode Island. www.mapcenter.com
December 17, 2024 at 11:18 PM
@currentbiology.bsky.social does it again!

Our environments are considerably more complex than we typically think. Is it really so surprising that there are broad swaths of biology we don't even know about, let alone don't know how to interpret?

www.cell.com/current-biol...
Latitudinal gradients in air density create invisible topography at sea level, affecting animal flight costs
Air density affects the costs of animal flight. This is well-established for flight at high altitude. Shepard et al. show that changes in air density cause regional differences in flight costs at sea level due to latitudinal temperature gradients. They discuss the implications for species distributions and for global change.
www.cell.com
December 16, 2024 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Ilya Ruvinsky
Natasha Staller and Gary Ruvkun, from yesterday's ceremony with the King of Sweden! 🏆
December 11, 2024 at 2:57 PM
I agree that these are serious concerns. To me, the answer to "is it worth it?" strongly depends on whether the assertion "papers get better… but not by much" is true. Do we actually have serious estimates?
If peer-review really qualitatively improved papers, then if I had read the preprint, I would subsequently go read the reviewed version. But usually, if I've read the preprint, the message doesn't change, and I don't read the final version. Sure, papers get better… but not by much. 3/3
December 12, 2024 at 10:52 PM
This describes the process pretty well.
Almost ready to start writing - just need to quickly read everything that has ever been, or will ever be, documented about this topic
December 12, 2024 at 10:31 PM
Reposted by Ilya Ruvinsky
We could also have PI fantasy league. +5 points for a glam mag publication, -2 for a Not Discussed R01 application, etc etc.

I will workshop this idea in order to find a scoring scheme that alienates everyone on the planet.
December 12, 2024 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Ilya Ruvinsky
Just had an idea
December 10, 2024 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Ilya Ruvinsky
New preprint just dropped. This is the first of my "sabbatical papers" - conceptual/synthetic papers trying to address broader questions of body-plan evolution.
1/5
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
The Development and Evolution of Arthropod Tagmata
ecoevorxiv.org
December 11, 2024 at 11:57 AM
As the Nobel Award Ceremony is about to begin, what a valuable lesson was reminded to us all by the lectures given by Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun - some of the best science is done in the spirit of curiosity-driven research and genuine collaboration with friends and colleagues.

www.nobelprize.org
The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org
Nobel Prize award ceremony
www.nobelprize.org
December 10, 2024 at 3:02 PM
Great study, Ethan! Congratulations!
1/12 1. I’m very excited to share the first piece of my postdoc work! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
December 6, 2024 at 3:45 PM
Neurons regulate the germline

@odedrechavi.bsky.social
@bjornschumacher.bsky.social

Impressive!
December 6, 2024 at 2:43 PM
Turns out parental brains are thinking about offspring.
@odedrechavi.bsky.social
@bjornschumacher.bsky.social
@meital.bsky.social

Impressive!
Scared to share this after 10 freaking years of waiting, but here we go: We found that temperature *perception* can change the biology of the next generations, even when “it’s just in the parents' head”. Read how C. elegans neurons control epigenetic inheritance!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Perception of Temperature Even in the Absence of Actual Change is Sufficient to Drive Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance
Can processes occurring in one individuals nervous system influence the physiology of the descendants? Here we explored the provocative hypothesis that parents sensation or perception of environmental...
www.biorxiv.org
December 6, 2024 at 2:41 PM
December 6, 2024 at 2:59 AM