Is Boogaerdt
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isboogaerdt.bsky.social
Is Boogaerdt
@isboogaerdt.bsky.social
31 followers 100 following 10 posts
(she/they) 🧠 MSc Medical Neuroscience student
Born on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
ginaravenscroft.bsky.social
this is unsustainable, the $600M underspend of the #MRFF could be funnelled, or at least partially funnelled, to supporting excellent #NHMRC applications that fall below the funding cut off because there is too little money in the pot #DiscoveriesNeedDollars #SaveOzScience
drnatsampaio.bsky.social Natalia Sampaio @drnatsampaio.bsky.social · Nov 26
An abismal 8% success rate for this year’s #NHMRC #IdeasGrant scheme. Must be an all time low. Congratulations to those successful, you really earned it! Commiserations to the NINETY TWO percent of applicants who didn’t get it… #australianresearch #discoveriesneeddollars 🥼🧪🔬🧫 🇦🇺
November 26, 2025 at 10:28 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
meodai.bsky.social
If you’re still hunting for color tools, I’m working on a more user-friendly version of meodai.github.io/poline/ keeping you huedrated
November 23, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
hubrechtinstitute.bsky.social
Joost Wijnakker from the @hansclevers.bsky.social group defended his PhD today. He found that the bacterial protein Invasin can support organoid growth without animal-derived Matrigel. A key step toward fully animal-free, defined organoid culture. Congrats! See www.hubrecht.eu/phd-joost-wijnakker/
Animal-free perspectives for organoid culture - PhD Defense Joost Wijnakker
Joost Wijnakker successfully defended his PhD thesis "Exploring Integrin Function to Enable Defined, Animal-Free Organoid Culture".
www.hubrecht.eu
November 24, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
destinationeu.bsky.social
This whole thing is out of control.
The Ecological Cost of AI Is Much Higher Than You Think - Truthdig
As the demands of AI grow, each generation of microchips requires more energy, minerals and water to produce, driving a ruinous cycle.
www.truthdig.com
November 13, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
ox.ac.uk
Scientists from Oxford's @rdm.ox.ac.uk have achieved the most detailed view yet of how DNA folds and functions inside living cells, revealing the physical structures that control when and how genes are switched on.

Find out more ⬇️
Oxford scientists capture genome’s structure in unprecedented detail
Scientists from Oxford's Radcliffe Department of Medicine have achieved the most detailed view yet of how DNA folds and functions inside living cells, revealing the physical structures that control
www.ox.ac.uk
November 11, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
samadams.bsky.social
Six people died from tampered Tylenol and the company pulled 30 million bottles off the market. ChatGPT is accused of urging seven people towards suicide, and OpenAI just assures us they’re still working out the kinks. Billions in investment, zero accountability.
OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
apnews.com
November 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...
‘Opposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessary’ | Radboud University
Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm – including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...
www.ru.nl
November 1, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
thierryaaron.bsky.social
"they fail to link climate action with things that matter to people: food poverty, fuel poverty, air pollution, inequality, job insecurity, lack of housing, unfordable or non-existent healthcare... they are constrained by only being able to offer pragmatic, ‘politically feasible’ centrism?"
As dreams of 1.5°C melt away, net zero’s reckoning is overdue
People’s inability to see past net zero shows it is no longer fit for purpose
www.technosphere.earth
October 23, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
abeba.bsky.social
the amount of academic research now using llms in research (synthetic data generation, to classify, annotate, or analyse large scale data, etc) is astounding. remember, just cus use of llms in research is becoming normalised does NOT erase the fact it degrades the research & undermine your results
October 29, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
hubrechtinstitute.bsky.social
Researchers at Hubrecht Institute and Radboud University developed an animal-free gel in which organoids can grow and expand long-term. The PIC-invasin gel allows for more consistent, ethical and affordable organoid research. @hansclevers.bsky.social @pnas.org 
🔗 https://f.mtr.cool/cekttmhhtn
October 21, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
minouette.bsky.social
Day 26 #SciArtSeptember prompt forage. My #linocut of #botanist Isabella Aiona Abbott (1919-2010), 🧪🐡👩🏻‍🔬 #histsci renown algae expert, celebrated seaweed cook, devoted teacher & mentor, expert on Hawaiian ethnobotany, the first Indigenous Hawaiian woman to earn a doctorate in science & the first woman
My linocut portrait of Isabella Aiona Abbott in indigo on cream coloured paper. She’s facing forward at a table in a shirt and sweater vest with a sheet with algae samples on the table. In my print, she is surrounded by algae of the Pacific, all of which appeared in Abbott's research publications, including several species she discovered, or based on images of specimen she personally collected or whose traditional use as food she documented. The algae are in pinks, khaki green and rust.
September 26, 2025 at 12:59 PM
isboogaerdt.bsky.social
Some very cool research! (Women's health used in a general sense here given that not all women have ovaries or can grow placenta etc.)
ausstemcell.bsky.social National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia @ausstemcell.bsky.social · Sep 26
‘The mini placentas and ovaries revealing the basics of women’s health’ – interesting read in Nature on ways lab-made organoids that mimic reproductive tissues ‘could point to treatments for common conditions such as pre-eclampsia and endometriosis’: doi.org/10.1038/d415...
The mini placentas and ovaries revealing the basics of women’s health
Lab-made organoids that mimic reproductive tissues could point to treatments for common conditions such as pre-eclampsia and endometriosis.
doi.org
September 26, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
olivia.science
I split AI into 3 non-mutually exclusive types (see Table 1 above): displacement (harmful), enhancement (beneficial), and/or replacement (neutral) of human cognitive labour. More later possibly, but see Tables 2 to 4 (attached or here: arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960) for the worked through examples. 2/n
table 2 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960 table 3 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960 table 4 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960
July 29, 2025 at 11:52 AM
isboogaerdt.bsky.social
An excellent article by @celesterl.bsky.social to remind us why generative AI should not be labelled as a "calculator for words" theconversation.com/generative-a...
Generative AI is not a ‘calculator for words’. 5 reasons why this idea is misleading
Big tech wants generative AI systems to seem like neutral, reliable tools – but the reality is far more complicated.
theconversation.com
August 21, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
jeroenpasterkamp.bsky.social
OUT NOW!! We developed a brain organoid slice protocol to study and manipulate human microglia in a 3D brain-like environment. Great work by Marta Cañizares Luna, Mayte Mars and Channa Jakobs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Protocol for generating and using human iPSC-derived microglia-containing air-liquid-interface cortical organoid cultures
Here, we present a protocol for generating long-term microglia-containing air-liquid-interface cortical organoid (MG-ALI-CO) cultures. This approach m…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 4, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
“It is irresponsible if ScienceDirect continues to have these AI features. The AI generated texts on ScienceDirect spread misinformation and pollute the scientific knowledge infrastructure. This harms science, researchers, lecturers, students, and ultimately also the public.”
August 13, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
Following the Netherlands, Australia has also initiated a letter: openletter.earth/an-open-lett...

Great if Ireland wants to join The Netherlands and Australia, and I hope many more countries take initiative. You have our support and solidarity. cc @olivia.science @marentierra.bsky.social
An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education
openletter.earth
July 8, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
If you agree with our 5 requests to our universities, please sign 🖊️ the open letter and don’t forget to confirm your email! ☺️🙏

openletter.earth/open-letter-...
• Resist the introduction of AI in our own software systems, from Microsoft to OpenAI to Apple. It is not in our interests to let our processes be corrupted and give away our data to be used to train models that are not only useless to us, but also harmful. • Ban AI use in the classroom for student assignments, in the same way we ban essay mills and other forms of plagiarism. Students must be protected from de-skilling and allowed space and time to perform their assignments themselves. • Cease normalising the AI hype and the lies which are prevalent in the technology industry's framing of these technologies. The technologies do not have the advertised capacities and their adoption puts students and academics at risk of violating ethical, legal, scholarly, and scientific standards of reliability, sustainability, and safety. • Fortify our academic freedom as university staff to enforce these principles and standards in our classrooms and our research as well as on the computer systems we are obliged to use as part of our work. We as academics have the right to our own spaces. • Sustain critical thinking on AI and promote critical engagement with technology on a firm academic footing. Scholarly discussion must be free from the conflicts of interest caused by industry funding, and reasoned resistance must always be an option.
June 28, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
clarekelly.bsky.social
Signed ✅️
Please consider adding your name to this enormously important letter. GenAI is not inevitable - universities are a crucial link in the chain of resistance. If we don't resist the mass profit-driven deskilling of the future, what are we even here for?
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Jun 27
Hello & HAPPY FRIDAY, as promised an open letter by my lovely colleagues and myself. Everybody, feel free to sign this even if you are not NL-based and ‼️ share ‼️ (anonymous signature is poss):

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia

openletter.earth/open-letter-...
Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia Our demands, see link
June 27, 2025 at 8:50 PM
isboogaerdt.bsky.social
This year’s Dutch Neuroscience Meeting #DNM25 was filled with superb talks & posters! Lots of exciting research happening in all pockets of the country (& beyond) 🌟 Special thanks to @fens.org for having me
June 21, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
lilykeane.bsky.social
Thrilled to see our review out in @natrevimmunol.nature.com together with my amazing mentors @jfcryan.bsky.social and Ger Clarke. @apcmicrobiomeirel.bsky.social @anatneuroucc.bsky.social @uccresearch.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A role for microglia in mediating the microbiota–gut–brain axis - Nature Reviews Immunology
This Perspective explores how the gut microbiota influences the function and heterogeneity of microglia, highlighting their roles in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, and discusses the ther...
www.nature.com
June 12, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
nickyscheefhals.bsky.social
What an incredible week at the GRC on Excitatory Synapses! Thrilled for the chance to share our work on building an all-human co-culture of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, astrocytes and microglia to better capture synapse biology in health and disease. A huge team effort driving this forward!
June 10, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Is Boogaerdt
abeba.bsky.social
"A new report from the UN' ITU has revealed a 150% average increase in indirect carbon emissions from four leading AI-focused tech companies – Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta - between 2020 and 2023" www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/ai...
AI boom drives 150% surge in Big Tech emissions
AI is scaling the tech industry’s emissions to dangerous levels, says a new report.
www.computing.co.uk
June 9, 2025 at 7:10 PM
isboogaerdt.bsky.social
Was great to hear about current (& future) research regarding therapies & disease modelling using stem cells from an excellent panel featuring Professor Sue AM, Professor Parish & Professor Young🔬💭 thanks to @ausstemcell.bsky.social for organising it & @tanyaha.bsky.social for moderating
June 6, 2025 at 7:59 AM