Lab meeting blog | 24 October

_posts/blog/2019-10-24-2019-10-24-lab-meeting.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Lab Meeting on 24 October 2019 ### REPLACE `DATE` with the date, eg: 18 July 2019
+categories: blog
+excerpt: Notes from the group's weekly lab meeting ### ADD a short description (or keep that one if you'd)
+tags: [lab-meeting] ### INSERT TAGS IF APPLICABLE
+image:
+  feature:
+link:
+date: 2019-10-24 ### UPDATE date
+modified:
+share: true
+author: kirstie_whitaker ### CHANGE to your author name (in _data/authors.yml)
+---
+
+This was a mostly all remote lab meeting from the _Turing Way_ co-working day at [MozFest House](https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/house/)!
+Kirstie, Malvika and Yo had a really great day brainstorming together at the [Royal Society for the Arts](https://www.thersa.org).
+
+<figure>
+  <img src="/images/lab-meeting/2019-10-24/Steps_MozFestHouse.jpg" alt="Two women working on laptops on large steps">
+  <figcaption>Yo and Malvika working on The Steps at MozFest House.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+## Celebrations and cool things to share
+
+**Patricia** has completed her [Carpentries instructor training](https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/)!
+Congratulations from all the lab!! ✨ 🚀 🌟 🎉 🍰
+
+She also signed up for [Hacktoberfest](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/) while she was doing the training and had a great chat with her SSI mentor 🤗
+
+**Sarah** submitted her [SSI Fellowship](https://www.software.ac.uk/programmes-and-events/fellowship-programme) application this week!!
+All the lab have their fingers crossed for her 🤞 😬 🤞 
+
+**Kirstie** was a mean lean blog writing machine earlier this week so her big update is that there are [lots of blog post PRs](https://github.com/WhitakerLab/whitakerlab.github.io/pulls) to review please 🙏
+
+**Yini** shared a paper _"Daily blue-light exposure shortens lifespan and causes brain neurodegeneration in Drosophila"_ (doi: [10.1038/s41514-019-0038-6](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41514-019-0038-6)).
+The researchers find that daily exposure to blue light accelerates aging (in flies) even in flies with genetically ablated (rendered without function) eyes.
+She reminded us all that if we're using our computers and phones a lot to be taking care of our health and diet at the same time 👯
+
+**Elizabeth** congratulated Kirstie on being elected to the [BIDS Steering Group](http://reproducibility.stanford.edu/bids-steering-group-election-results/)! 🎉 ✨
+
+**Yo** shared a survey that her friend [Elsa Loissel](https://twitter.com/elsasci) has developed on mental health in academia and unofficial support channels.
+Everyone is encouraged to fill it out before it closes on November 24 2019.
+
+* Survey: [https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/eLifeMHsurvey](https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/eLifeMHsurvey)
+* Article giving context: [Mental Health in Academia: A question of support](https://elifesciences.org/articles/52881)
+
+**Louise** has almost completed her four [Hacktoberfest](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/) pull requests.
+She's been working with other research engineers at the Turing on [AIrsenal](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AIrsenal/), a package developed by some REG members for choosing fantasy football teams using AI 🥅 ⚽️ 🦶
+
+**Isla** is missing MozFest this year 😢 to hang out with some people who are working on [zksnarks](https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks/).
+It's a privacy tool which is presently implemented mostly for cryptocurrencies and based on some very cool maths which is where Isla became interested.
+It's a method to prove you have knowledge (the solution to some equation say) without giving that knowledge away and she's thinking about potential new applications where we need to argue knowledge without exposing all the behind the scenes working.
+
+**Malvika** is working on her, **Yo** and Bérénice's mentoring program: [https://openlifesci.org](https://openlifesci.org).
+You can now follow them on twitter: [@openlifesci](https://twitter.com/openlifesci).
+
+She also recommended [Unnatural Selection](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/17/unnatural-selection-netflix-docuseries-gene-editing) on Netflix if you're interested in ethics in science.
+
+**Konrad** is building his lab website inspired by Elizabeth's question from [last week's lab meeting](https://whitakerlab.github.io/blog/2019-10-17-lab-meeting/).
+
+**Ang** is exceited about a new result using machine learning on functional MRI images to map an abnormal developmental subtype in adolescence, including inter-site validation.
+
+## Questions we're thinking about
+
+**Patricia** is wondering if she works too quickly?
+She's been noticing that she gets drafts sent around for comments much faster than other folks around her.
+In general the lab thought that she's probably doing a great job - it probably doesn't make much sense to be worried that she's *"too fast"*, and drafts for comments are really fantastic!
+
+This question did spark a different discussion about how being in a new job often means you aren't tapped on the shoulder for the many "other" duties that build up over time.
+There's so much invisible work of being interrupted to "just answer a quick question" either in person or online.
+We also discussed trying to set some healthy boundaries at the start of a new position!
+
+**Sarah** is wondering how to approach a large refactor of a live service?
+She's been trying to integrate the Turing's cluster into the [Binder Federation](https://blog.jupyter.org/the-international-binder-federation-4f6235c1537e) and it's proving to be really difficult!
+The configuration was initially set up for just a Google cluster and so there are a lot of parts in the default setup that aren't relevant to a new cluster but have to be included so that the upgrades don't fail 😩.
+The lab basically gave her a bunch of moral support and validation that this is a really hard job!!
+We also discussed scheduling downtime for this (totally free) service and how much drama that would cause 😬
+
+**Kirstie** asked which topics the lab wanted to cover in lab meetings in November & December?
+There's an issue to capture the ideas: [https://github.com/WhitakerLab/WhitakerLabProjectManagement/issues/314](https://github.com/WhitakerLab/WhitakerLabProjectManagement/issues/314).
+
+**Elizabeth** recommended [Research Resource Identifiers](https://scicrunch.org/resources) (RRIDs) [to a project](https://github.com/bids-standard/bids-matlab/issues/20) this week and realised she hasn't seen many software projects use them!
+She was wondering where and when folks in the lab would recommend them?
+Kirstie [shared a talk](https://youtu.be/Ncq2s3lZvYA) at INCF in Warsaw for more information.
+Her personal feeling is that digital object identifies (DOIs) are fine for software so she'd recommend those rather than RRIDs for software.
+She found them really valuable for animal models and reagents though!
+
+**Yo** asked the lab what interesting things they've been doing to relax lately?
+(Random, zany, or mundane answers were all welcome!)
+
+An incomplete list:
+* Watching [Gourmet Makes](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtIunYVkv_RwB_yx1SZrZC-ddhxyXanh) online
+* Jigsaws
+* Listening to podcasts and audiobooks
+* Binging interior design shows on Netflix
+* Cooking projects
+* Lying on the couch watching Strictly Come Dancing and Great British Bake Off with your phone on the other side of the room!
+* Breaking Bad
+* Making music with friends
+* 5k runs at 9am on a Saturday morning ([www.parkrun.org.uk/](https://www.parkrun.org.uk/))
+* Knitting and crochet
+* Doodling
+
+**Alex** wondered if signal from surface fMRI better than the signal from "inside" the brain?
+Both Kirstie and Konrad said that yes it likely is for two reasons: 1) the cortex is on the surface so that's where most of the signal is coming from and 2) surface based registration is much more accurate across different people.
+So in general there's higher quality signal from surface analyses than volume based processing.
+
+It's an open question about whether the white matter tracts have much functional signal in them.
+KW and KW both said there's not much use looking at them, but Ang shared a paper showing that there are differences in between task and rest in those regions: [10.1073/pnas.1711567115](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711567115).
+
+**Ang** is looking for a python trick to deal with very large matrices: approximately 90000 x 90000 to be precise!
+
+**Konrad** is looking for recommendations for interactive apps for presentations?
+[Slido](https://www.sli.do) is nice but expensive so looking for alternatives.
+Unfortunately the alternative that Kirstie suggested ([MentiMeter](https://www.mentimeter.com)) has the same limitation on number of questions for the free plan 😭 
+
+**Georgia** is off to her first [Mozfest](https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/) this weekend and is looking for recommendations from people who have been before!
+
+In no particular order:
+
+* Balance going to sessions that you know will be useful and those that are purely exploratory.
+* The [Openness](https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/spaces/openness/), [Neurodiversity](https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/spaces/neurodiversity/) and [Digital Inclusion](https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/spaces/digital-inclusion/) spaces will be super relavent to the [Citizen Science project](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/autisticacitizenscience) but the others are SO interesting.
+* There are lots of conversations that happen on the slack workspace so consider joining that
+* There will be lots of tweets too if you feel motivated to join the social media dark side 😉
+* The [Science Fair](https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/house/friday/) on Friday night is one of the most exciting ways to get a zooming fast overview of lots of different aspects of MozFest.
+* The coffee is free and delicious.
+* Bring business cards or stickers to share with the awesome people you meet.
+* You won't be able to go to all the things, but have fun anyway.
+
+**Yini** asked for recommendations of books about the history of London.
+Kirstie shared one she has seen but not read: [A Short History of London: The Creation of a World Capital](https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Short-History-London-Creation-Capital/dp/0241369983) and recommended [Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain](https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Notes-Small-Island-Journey-Through/dp/1784161195) for a very readable and fun exploration of the UK more broadly.
+
+**Louise** has started her new project looking at synthetic data (QUiPP) with a big literature review together with the rest of the team.
+They're using [Zotero](https://www.zotero.org/) to keep notes on the papers together, which is okay but kind of clunky, for example you can't easily share annotations on the papers themselves and the interface isn't that great.
+It'll work, but she's looking for tools that might be better solutions?
+
+**Alex** is wondering what python linters and code analysis tools are people using and why?
+Automated styling and checks are a great way to make software collaboration more seamless.
+**Yo** uses [pep8speaks](https://pep8speaks.com/) for one of her projects.
+It's a nice robot 🤖 that tells people off (politely) for not making their code [pep8](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/) compliant.
+Everytime someone pushes a commit to GitHub the robot updates its comments so eventually the comment just says "well done for writing compliant code" 💖
+Kirstie, on brand as usual, pointed out that there's a draft chapter in _The Turing Way_ on linting that needs a reviewer: [#498](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way/pull/498).
+
+## Anything else
+
+We focused the in person discussion this week on _The Turing Way_ project including (but not limited to):
+
+* Improving the [Collaboration Cafes](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way/blob/master/project_management/online-collaboration-cafe.md) by creating a public calendar so folks can add it to their schedule easily.
+  Potentially also writing up a little summary of what happened at each cafe to make it easier for folks to know what to expect.
+* Sending regular contributors stickers to say than you for being part of the community.
+* Updating the Turing Institute [webpage for the project](https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-projects/turing-way-handbook-reproducible-data-science) at [issue #726](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way/issues/726)
+* Building a list of mailing lists to send the monthly newsletters to.
+
+<figure>
+  <img src="/images/lab-meeting/2019-10-24/Lunch_MozFestHouse.jpg" alt="Three women at a restaurant table smiling">
+  <figcaption>We didn't work on the <i>Turing Way</i> the whole day, there was a delicious Wahaca lunch too 😉.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+Everyone's welcome to join the conversation at _The Turing Way_ [Gitter channel](https://gitter.im/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way) and at the project [GitHub repository](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way)!