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Nick Holmes

@thehandlab.bsky.social

handy neuroscientist | touch & movement | brain stimulation | neurobiography.info | @tmsmultilab.bsky.social https://tms-rat.org https://tms-smart.info | pod @theerrorbar.bsky.social theerrorbar.com | b. 335ppm C💚2 | pro birds | Associating with Professors

1565 Posts2010 Follower1095 Folgt
Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · last wk.

'Thank you for your grant proposal. We took a moment to upload it to the internet and the answer was "no". We value the time you spent preparing this work and we encourage you to do it again.' 🤬

John Stott@jpsastro.bsky.social · last wk.

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful. Review process As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it. Feedback on your application Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 2w ago

I had to disconnect my academic reference/notes database from the web last year - after ~20 years - because it was getting thousands of new bot queries every day, maxxing-out my resource usage & crashing all my sites. Thank you 'AI' 🤷‍♂️

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic.

Google Sorry... We're sorry... ... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. See Google Help for more information.
Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 2w ago

At home I use a 12-year old linux PC for most work. Upgrading from Ubuntu 2018 (yes!) To 2026 was very smooth, but the 8GB RAM was no longer enough - kept crashing. £50 on ebay later, I've maxxed-out on 32GB of second-hand RAM & it's like driving a brand new computer. #Reduce #Reuse #Recycle 😎 🏎

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 2w ago

To reduce the burden of applying for & assessing scientific #grant proposals: I suggest a "7-4-2-1" format: Proposals must be a maximum of 7 words. Feedback will arrive in 4 years. A single reviewer must choose between 2 outcomes: a) Funded or b) More detail required 1 word response is allowed.

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 2w ago

TFW: you do the most basic control for a "well-established" scientific protocol that hundreds of papers have used as a measure and... the control shows the same effect. So now I have another series of experiments to run 🙄. I'm so glad to have 13 project students this year 😊 🧪 #TMS #BrainStim ⚡ 🧠🧲

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 3w ago

Naturally, the grant application to build on the work 👇 with a series of tightly-controlled hypothesis-testing studies was rated "weak" and rejected. Anyone know how to get a grant funded? After 30 years studying the brain, and 25 years using #TMS & #EMG, i genuinely have no clue 🤷‍♂️

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This graph took me 3 years to make. It's perhaps the largest-ever #metaanalysis of #TMS #BrainStim data. It includes my first real scientific discovery 🧵: When you stimulate the hand with a brief electric pulse, your brain and spinal cord are momentarily less excitable: muscle output decreases 1/n

Muscle excitability (y-axis) plot against the time between stimulation of the hand (PNS) and stimulation of the cortico-spinal pathway (TMS) to the muscle (x-axis). The x-axis is in milliseconds, from 1 to 1000 on a log scale; the y-axis is the log10 ratio of muscle excitability with prior hand stimulation versus without. Each blue dot in the figure is a group mean, obtained from 353 papers. The blue line is the random effect meta-analytic mean; where the blue line goes thicker (between 17-64ms, then 100-320ms) there is a significant meta-analytic effect (i.e., the line is below zero, muscle excitability is decreased). The plot includes over 11000 datapoints. Most datapoints are concentrated in the 16-30ms period, which is studied as 'short-latency afferent inhibition' (SAI).
Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 3w ago

England's Wildlife Trusts are ~90% of the way to raising £30M to buy 3,800 hectares of #Northumberland. If you have some spare money, even just £10, they can really use it *before September 30th*! 🙏 #rewilding #wildlife 🦅🐿🐺🦉 www.wildlifetrusts.org/appeals/roth...

Donate to Secure The Rothbury Estate | The Wildlife Trusts

Stretching over 3,800 hectares, the Rothbury Estate in Northumberland is abundant with opportunity. It’s the largest continuous area of land to appear on the market in 50 years. Its sale creates a uni...

wildlifetrusts.org

Dr Kelly Birtwell@kellybirtwell.bsky.social · 3w ago

This has been a fantastic project to be involved in. The toolkit is freely available for anyone who wants to find out more about what research is, & how to get involved as a participant, or in helping design research ( #PPIE #Co-production). Useful for autistic & non-autistic people, & researchers.

Autism@Manchester@autismmanchester.bsky.social · last mo.

We're delighted to share with you our new, free resource: the Autism@Manchester Research Involvement Toolkit, which we co-produced with #autistic contributors and researchers www.autism.manchester.ac.uk/research/pro... Interested in research? Takes a look at any or all of our 4 modules -

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 4w ago

At the BBC, tariffs are always "slapped" on good and services. Never "applied", "levied", "placed", "put", "flung", "thrown", "rested", "stuck", "affixed", or "tossed". "slapped", "slapped", "slapped" Come on, BBC, get a thesaurus, dictionary, wordbook or lexicon! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

US slaps import ban on Canadian alcohol, motorbikes and other goods

It is the latest strike in a long trade war, and comes as Canadian counter-tariffs on US goods come into force.

bbc.co.uk

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social · 4w ago

lolz. $45 for this 22-year-old, 8-page pdf, but at least you can make the payment in 2 clicks! at some point we'll all have point-of-sale systems on our desks at home, we'll pay-per-article from our personal finances while working zero-hours contracts for Universities. Progress!

a standard-looking academic journal article, this one on the function of movement areas of the brain in patients with abnormal brain development. it's just that there's a PayPal link for the article - two clicks and it's yours for $45. The PayPal link is [chef's kiss]
Dr Keith Wilson 💭@keithwilson.eu · last mo.

Grim. There needs to be a renewed urgency to limiting temperature increases, and the duration of overshoot, as much as possible. Without dramatic cuts to fossil fuel use, we are heading for catastrophic levels of warming and loss of #biodiversity. #ClimateEmergency #GlobalHeating

Una Mullally@unamullally.bsky.social · last mo.

The battle to keep global heating from passing the agreed 1.5-degree threshold has been lost. This should be an era when human ingenuity works to save the planet from catastrophe. Instead the tech broligarchy is busy embarking upon ludicrous AI data centre “infrastructure” fuelled by coal and gas.

Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · last mo.

Who would like to guess why UK, US and European media outlets are not publishing 3,000 articles per minute about this www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraud

New evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...

dukechronicle.com

Katharine Hayhoe@katharinehayhoe.com · last mo.

I am a scientist – and the answer is climate change. Yes, there is nuance. Yes, it could take a long time to identify the precise mechanisms. But there is no question why ice and snow-related disasters are on the rise. Our planet is warming at an unprecedented rate, and humans are responsible.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · last mo.

In Nepal, it will most likely take months for scientists to understand exactly what led to deadly flash floods that killed over 1,000 people and left thousands missing. Early theories posit glacier meltwater and a thawing permafrost could have contributed to bedrock collapse.