Victor Buendía / is on Nostr

Statistical Physics, PhD. Theoretical neuroscience, evolution, ecology and music.
RTDA researcher at Milan.
He/him.

Last Notes

2025-05-23 12:33:23

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@nprofile…fa4k I 100% agree with you that some EU orgs see this as an opportunity for grabbing talent that maybe would not have considered coming otherwise.
Also salaries in the EU are lower than the US ones. As the message you cite there says, the cost of living is lower. For some top scientists, I am sure they will be able to negotiate good conditions in specific institutions which are above their EU peers. So I do not think that this is getting people 'for cheap': they are getting the best we can give, which I believe is fair.
Also I see many EU scientist that are willing to help: there is a lot of people of danger in losing their jobs in an absolutely unfair way and institutions here are moving to try to offer them a chance. I think that community spirit is very good from the scientific community :)
My main complain was a different topic, the fact that research funding is lacking in some areas of the UE that is rarely discussed. There's a lot of talent there that unfortunately has a lot of impediments to do cutting-edge research. And it seems that resources can be available if one really wants them, so for people coming from these countries it can feel discouraging at times.

2025-03-25 10:48:02

Hi I did not connect too much in the last month or so because I have been writing applications and I basically lived below a pile of documents, research statements and similar stuff but for the moment things are over.
It's being a busy, difficult time. I really hope to get a nice tenure position. Please tell me I can do more research afterwards....

2025-01-15 14:34:15

Hi, scientists from the Fediverse! It seems that Nature is asking people about Twitter migration and if they are happier on #bluesky .
On Nature writers' minds, Bluesky is the only place to migrate to. There's not a single mention of the Fediverse in there! However, there is a small free text box where you can write your thoughts, in the step before "send" button. So I did fill the poll anyway, writing why I decided not to go to Bluesky but to Mastodon instead.
I thought that maybe if we get enough people to actually fill the survey and mention that they migrated to Mastodon, we can make a stronger case for open, free networks. It's an extremely short survey, so let's try! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00037-y
#academicchatter #OpenScience

2025-01-15 14:34:15

2024-11-25 10:43:20

For all the scientists out there: do you write science threads for general audiences? If so, which hashtags do you use?
I would like to start compiling options, especially to have hashtags for different languages. The idea would be to start getting consensus on common hashtags so people interested in science can follow the tag and read cool things in their preferred language.
If you know any hashtag or if you have suggestions, write a comment! :)

2024-11-19 13:00:18

I have just been invited by a known journal to review a paper about clinical trials on cancer.
My background is theoretical physics. I work on applications to neuroscience. I have never published anything remotely related to cancer. Why in the world would I get this invitation to review? It does frankly speak very bad of the journal.

2024-11-15 14:10:58

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@nprofile…xm42 a way to share experiences in a lab, and people should have this information when joining.

2024-11-15 13:31:42

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@nprofile…xm42 I really want something like this, but for PI reviews. There was some initiative but I cannot find anymore.

2024-11-15 09:12:12

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@nprofile…uc38 @nprofile…xm42 I hope this is merged soon, really really great work. Wish I knew more web programming and had some free hours to do s pair of PRs too. Making the site better is one of the best ways to make it more attractive for users :)

2024-11-12 16:41:27

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@npub1jzg…hc3a Several absurd requirements with the figure files, a lot of useless emails demanding changes in the proofs with not a lot of time to answer, the webpage gave me a lot of technical problems. Also their author database is not correctly normalized, leading to account duplication and associated trouble. All from their system, since they manually open an account for you on submission/review. I have also similar opinion from other people, especially with figure problems.

2024-05-16 08:36:36

For #archeology people: my girlfriend has published her first first-author study, on human-bear interactions in the #Paleolithic in Germany.
She worked super hard for it (and she was very stressed), the resulting paper looks beautiful and you might find it interesting. I know I don't have that many archeofollowers but she doesn't have any academic social media and I believe the paper really deserves a bit of publicity after all the effort :)
Hope you enjoy!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379124001021

2024-03-08 16:44:14

So yesterday night I wrote down my thoughts of #cosyne24 . In case you are interested, you can find them here: https://victorseven.github.io/2024/03/cosyne2024
If the post it's too long for you, the short version would be: it was great but I want better sandwiches at the lunch break and stronger philosophy in the panel discussion :)

2024-02-11 14:27:26

Today is the "Women and Girls in science" day, so let me recommend some colleagues I usually enjoy reading. Here in Mastodon, you have
- For computational neuroscience @npub1jdu…e9qn is a must-follow.
- @npub1zr6…wzwq has always nice Archeology content.
- If you want to improve your dataviz skills, just read @npub1klm…mjrd
- General neuroscience and philosophy, @npub1skv…aky3
- Ethics and misuses of AI, @npub1xz8…tz65
And, instead of reposting this thing, (1) go repost them and (2) make your own list!

2024-01-20 14:45:28

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@npub1skv…aky3 A rate model dx/dt= -x+f(Wx) with a random Gaussian connectivity matrix with weights Wij~N(0,V^2) will have this transition around V=1/f'(0). I'm relatively sure this is the simplest thing you can construct having a transition to chaos in a network as you want.
The demonstration that the transition is in fact chaotic was given by Crisanti and Sompolinsky in 1981. Check also Ostojic and Mastrogiuseppe 2017, is way more readable and includes Dale's law and spiking neurons too.

2023-12-04 22:14:49

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@npub15sw…x855 in ecology the typical thing is competition for common resources. So a potential answer for your question may be shared chemicals across neurons. But I'm not good in physiology, so I'm not sure how many of these there are and how important they can be :)

2023-09-23 15:36:43

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@npub1skv…aky3 @npub1ul2…3g8e I looked a bit at the paper and although the rest seems ok this paragraph is terrible in my opinion. "Maxima in a space" mathematically has no sense. It should be maxima of set of functions, or constraints. What is the space itself (is it a vector space? A surface?) and the nature of all abstract objects is not defined (what does it mean to "fix a dimension"? Is this a projection operator of some kind?). To me it seems like a bad analogy or lack of math understanding.