I love submitting revisions at 6:30pm on a Friday. I am certain that handling editors absolutely love receiving them at that time too.

It's Science Week and the theme is "Then. Today. Tomorrow." UCD Babylab is at the Dublin Explorium to talk to parents about the past, present and future of infant research.

Nothing will quite beat the first day I saw that the mountain was out as I crossed Red Square.

Do students utilise "utilise" because it sounds technical and formal, instead of using "use" even when it's more appropriate?

UCD Babylab members have been regularly writing short blog posts about our work. Newest post from Florencia Sandoval Gomez, a MSc student studying the body schema in infancy.

Every time I return to code I wrote previously I think "WHAT A MORON, what was I trying to do?", change it, then realise there was a logic to what I did before and that the code worked correctly and as intended. Think of the hours of work I could save if I had a little self-belief!

Today at roller derby practice I got complimented on my visible trap muscles and on my scent (residual perfume from yesterday), and I'm going to be floating on those affirmations all weekend.

Many years ago I was at a seminar by a former policymaker whose message was "always be alert when doing research for policymakers because they are going to want to box your research in so much it gives them the answer they want". This is going to be a tiny box, if there's even a box at all.

The change in REF rules is a boon to the procrastinators among us. All this data I've never got around to analyzing/writing up, those papers, it could all be yours for the low, low price of a job (the complete dearth of available jobs notwithstanding)

My wonderful UCD Babylab colleagues are hosting an event for parents of toddlers, to talk about play and share ideas about it. Feb 17th in Dublin city centre www.ucdbabylab.com/world-caf-2025

If anyone has a keen and talented undergraduate student who would like to work on infant EEG and motor development in Dublin this summer, please pass this along. Lots of other interesting projects available too - but I'm plugging mine!

#infantstudies Founding Generation Summer Fellowship now open for student applications! The program pairs promising students with researchers from around the world who conduct cutting-edge science. Apply by February 14. infantstudies.org/founding-gen...

Irish astronomer Agnes Mary Clerke died #OTD in 1907. In 1885, she published A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century. This book became commonly used for its discussion of the spectroscope. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_M... www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/searc... #womeninStem

Anyone else feel dirty uploading their tracked-changes manuscripts in the submission portals? I know it's encouraged but it really feels like inviting someone to look through the window at your madness.

Just finished my annual rewatch of Love on the Spectrum, sorry, I mean Pride and Prejudice (2005).

Meta's framing about current moderation being "just out of touch with mainstream discourse" feels chilling. Media companies and owners play a huge role in determining what is "mainstream", including mainstreaming the idea that caring about someone's genitals and promoting eugenics is mainstream.

🚨 My team is hiring an undergraduate intern (UK universities only) - a great opportunity, if I can say so myself! Please share widely. Want more info? See here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

As someone who's been keeping one eye (and now to my great dismay, both eyes) on UK academic job ads for the past few years, the trends are interesting. "Ability to provide a positive student experience" is current, translation "Can you keep students happy as staff numbers are shaved to the bone?"

Kids are gross, and parents constantly have to deal with their shit (literally). Do they habituate to disgust? 💩 🧠 🧪 In this new preprint, we show that #parents are indeed less #disgust avoidant than non-parents, but only after their (youngest) has started weaning. doi.org/10.31234/osf... (1/3)

This one has been circulating for a while as a preprint but it's nice to have it out! Well done to my colleague Adam Attaheri for taking the lead on synthesizing a huge amount of brain and language data. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

As a long-term attendee of group exercise classes, I can report that Pilates instructors have the most deranged music selections (and that's why I go to class). The undefeated champion is the instructor who cracked out the X-Files theme song in the middle of class.

While researching the origins of some myths about child development, I discovered that less than two months after the original "Mozart effect" report in a letter to Nature, someone's reply pointing out weirdness in the reported numbers was also published.

In 2022 I was looking at all the ads for faculty jobs in UK Psychology and thinking about what a great position I'd be in by 2025 with my funded fellowship and a bunch of REF-able papers under my belt. Looking around at the redundancies and hiring contractions all I can say is... Oops.

As I get ready to complete the US-based phase of my fellowship, I have set myself a goal of doing things I can't back home. Who said Americans don't value public transit? The buses were the least battered vehicles at the demolition derby.

Been saving this for my first post here. As part of a new Research Training Group on Curiosity to be established at Göttingen (www.uni-goettingen.de/de/681631.html), we advertise a PhD position in developmental curiosity research in my group. More details here: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/document/...

Is getting scooped still a thing that people care about? Commercialisable work notwithstanding. Even the stuff that being "first" is supposed to help with - prestige publications, grants - is based way more on luck, networks, existing profile than just being "first".

Researching US vs UK job markets, I found a blog post that noted the difference in, uh, perceived stakes between PhD students in each place. They attributed it to students spending longer, getting more embedded in the US. A throwaway line struck me as more important: UK has a social safety net.