Spectral entropy outperforms MS/MS dot product similarity for small-molecule compound identification | Nature Methods
Compound identification in small-molecule research, such as untargeted metabolomics or exposome research, relies on matching tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectra against experimental or in silico mass spectral libraries. Most software programs use dot product similarity scores. Here researchers introduce the concept of MS/MS spectral entropy to improve scoring results in MS/MS similarity searches via library matching.
Quantifying social organization and political polarization in online platforms | Nature
Mass selection into groups of like-minded individuals may be fragmenting and polarizing online society, particularly with respect to partisan differences. Here researchers develop a neural-embedding methodology to quantify the positioning of online communities along social dimensions by leveraging large-scale patterns of aggregate behaviour. Applying this methodology to 5.1 billion comments made in 10,000 communities over 14 years on Reddit, they measure how the macroscale community structure is organized with respect to age, gender and US political partisanship.
Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides | PLOS Computational Biology
The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.