Dan Stowell

@danstowell

I'm a scientist of sound. I apply machine learning to birdsong. Associate Professor of Computational Biodiversity, at Leiden University and Naturalis (the […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Dan Stowell@danstowell· 6d

I'm trying to get to grips with the relation between tea, vitamin C, and dietary iron:

It's a complex pen-sketch of maybe(?) relevant chemistry, with arrows pointing in many directions. Some might be wrong

Dan Stowell@danstowell· 8d

"It's been rather hot" was... the title of a blogpost I wrote 4 years ago https://mcld.co.uk/blog/2022/its-been-rather-hot.html & here's a visual comparison for our current heatwaves 4 years later. They're quite similar, but reach higher (over 30°C more […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The plot shows a red band for the typical "daily max" temperature range, stretching out over a whole year left-to-right, and also a blue band for the typical "daily min" range. This year's temperatures in my region are plotted in grey, and you can treat all those grey spikes at the top as anomalously high. About 5 separate heatwaves maybe, with 4 of them going above 30°C? Each of them short.

Dan Stowell@danstowell· 13d

...but you don't know which one. One frog always tells the truth, one always lies.

Seen in Wikipedia: "A Giant Water Lily, one of which can support up to 32 kilograms of weight"

Dan Stowell@danstowell· 23d

Tea grown in the Netherlands! It's real! We visited yesterday, "Het Zuyderblad" near Eindhoven

A whole field of lush green tea plants! The farmer herself shows us how the tea is plucked, holding out some young leaves and buds from the top.

Her dog also wanted to help show us around

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Jul 13

Fascinating #dataviz of which countries are really being "efficient" in their use of arable land to produce calories for humans. The pattern is dramatic - but it's not hard to find the reasons! #food […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Map titled "percentage of calorie production available as food". High values in green over much of Africa, India, China; low values in purple over USA and South America (and somewhat too for Europe and Australia)

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Jun 23

Today at Naturalis we're hosting a meeting of European biodiversity portals, about the use of AI nature recognition. A popular event, with a lot of nature informatics experts. #biodiversity

Busy meeting room at Naturalis. On the right is Vincent, welcoming everyone

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Jun 10

Career news: Next month I am taking up a position at the University of Leiden (@universiteitleiden) in the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science! I'll be Associate Professor of Computational Biodiversity, and continuing my work with Naturalis. #computerscience

Me in front of a large modern building. If you can read the clues (in Dutch) you'll be able to decode it as the Gorlaeus Building - Leiden University Faculty of Science

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Jun 7

Going to the new art music venue in the Hague, "SoundHouse", for their tea and music afternoon today... #denhaag

The front door, in fact with the logos for quite a few little art orgs

Dan Stowell@danstowell· May 28

Once more - Tilburg university campus in the summer! #tilburg #Netherlands #academicchatter

Green grass, blue sky. Trees dotted around. The fountain in a nearby pond gives you a clue to the chilled out soundscape

Dan Stowell@danstowell· May 19

Found some more photos from our @bioacousticai event last month. This one should be my new profile picture:

Well, it's me, pretty far away, waving in a friendly manner and possibly trying to draw attention to the sign next to me that says "Bio Acoustic AI". However, your eye is definitely drawn to the huge stuffed toy giraffe on the floor below and pretty much stealing the show

Dan Stowell@danstowell· May 15

Morocco is beautiful and fascinating. All the people we chatted to were lovely. #Morocco

At sunset in the Atlas mountains, the hill shade passes over a cluster of small rectangular buildings, mostly all brick-red matching the landscape from which they spring. One of them was our host for a night.

Dan Stowell@danstowell· May 8

Thinking about traditional moorish art, and the distinction between "geometric pattern" versus "algorithmic pattern". These visual designs are geometric. But definitely not algorithmic: humans make these by heuristically matching/filling the pattern, not by […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

A traditional Moroccan geometric pattern. It's from a wall in Fez. It's clearly very geometric: an octagon encompasses a symmetric radial pattern which converges to 16 spokes in the middle

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Apr 29

@nomnomdan Also this lovely travel bookshop

Isn't it best when a bookshop is kinda cluttered while simultaneously ordered? Here in front of the bookshelves we meet a globe, perhaps to make sure e understand the shop's theme, some lovely columns, some reading lamps...

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Apr 25

Dutch friends: This is the BEST worst auto-translate I've encountered. Please read this history of the lekkerbek! #Dutch #funny Original and translated:

Original: De geschiedenis van het lekkerbekje

Over het ontstaan van het lekkerbekje doen verschillende verhalen de ronde. Zo zou het lekkerbekje ontstaan zijn in het Noord-Hollandse IJmuiden1. Een viskraam verkocht daar graatloze visfilet en vond dat deze specialiteit toch wel een andere naam nodig had dan een ‘gewoon filétje’. Aan de keukentafel werd besloten: laten we het een lekkerbekje noemen. Het gaat in het bekkie en het is lekker!

Een andere theorie heeft te maken met het soort vis dat men vroeger gebruikte voor het lekkerbekje. Men gebruikte namelijk wijting, maar deze vis stond niet echt goed bekend, omdat dit als kattenvoer werd gebruikt. De wijting is zelf letterlijk een lekkerbekje, omdat hij zich graag tegoed doet aan garnalen. De smaak van garnalen proef je ook terug in de vis. Om de wijting toch te kunnen verkopen, werd de gepaneerde versie daarom verkocht als het lekkerbekje.

Auto-translated English: The history of the good-kip

Different stories circulate about the origin of the nicebeam. This is how the nice-kledge should have originated in IJmuiden 1 North Holland. A fish stall sold a gracious fish fillet and found that this specialty needed a different name than a ‘just philétje’. At the kitchen table it was decided: let's call it a nice little. It goes in the beck and it is good!

Another theory has to do with the kind of fish that were used for the nice ass. We used for ordination, but this fish was not really well known, because it was used as cat food. The ordination itself is literally a nice treat, because he likes to enjoy shrimp. You can also taste the taste of shrimps in the fish. In order to be able to sell the drainage, the breaded version was therefore sold as the nice bee.

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Apr 24

This was a fabulous Bioacoustic AI week (@bioacousticai) here in the Netherlands! We welcomed our Doctoral Candidates and researchers to meet Dutch researchers for discussions, research planning, plus a desert hike, and a bat walk! #bioacoustics

the sign says Bioacoustic AI ... up here!

Panel session: people discussing in a steel-and-glass room with some quirky decor

Me and the gang, walking through the sandy desert-like inland dunes of the Netherlands

Now why are all these people clustered around the edge of a small lake at dusk as the light fades, looking intense? It can only be one thing: listening for bats!

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Apr 12

A local jackdaw has been carefully placing pebbles on our balcony railing, and the neighbours' too. Labelling territory? Casting a spell? #corvids

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Apr 4

Lots of amazing imagery at the "Woman, Life, Freedom" exhibition in Amsterdam's Resistance Museum. Recommended. #Amsterdam #iran #museum

Lots of placards. Striking graphic designs

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Mar 25

I gave an invited class to ecologists in Göttingen this week. In return I was given honey from the university orchard, harvested by ecology students!

It is of course a pot of honey. I should have photographed the other side which mentions the university's Functional Agroecology department

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Mar 2

Tilburg University campus is pretty lovely, on the first springlike day of the year. Soundtrack is blackbirds, goldcrest. Also, it's my 5th anniversary working here. #tilburg

Grass, trees, a little lake, a bench to sit on...

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Feb 18

This report by @ketan is excellent. It's extremely valuable to make a clear difference between which "AI" has a huge environmental cost, and which "AI" is expected to give climate benefits. I research in this area! Great to have this documented […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Figure 1 from the report, showing that "traditional AI" is where the climate benefit claims come from, while "consumer generative AI" is where the huge energy consumption occurs

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Feb 4

I'm interested to follow the reaction to "fatbikes" in the Netherlands - here, this term doesn't just mean anything with fat tyres, the trend is ONLY for e-bikes with fat tyres and a reclining low-effort seat posture. Popular among teens. Many adults are […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

A stencilled image on a graffiti wall. You can tell it's a fatbike? Well it is. And there's a slogan too: "Low IQ high BMI"

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Jan 27

This is me trying to get to work this morning... When @chuuchuu says Dutch trains are a LOT more reliable than German ones, I really wonder! (This morning's timetable is annoying but not unprecedented. I'm still going out to get on that one disrupted but not cancelled train)

If my toot sounds tired, then these little red warnings under each train on the timetable must be the reason. Journey not possible, cancelled, disrupted, cancelled, etc

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Jan 19

Northern lights over Leiden!

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Nov 28

I'm at the first international #permacomputing meetup!!!

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Oct 30

Poster presenting the results of the "bioacoustics on tiny hardware" challenge https://biodcase.github.io/challenge2025/task3

Stefan Kahl in front of the poster, in a busy room. Can you tell which bird it is?

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Oct 29

The second keynote of #BioDCASE begins: Professor Rosa Maria Alsina Pagès, acoustic monitoring for cows, chicks, and plankton!

Rosa at the lectern. The aforementioned animals are on the slide!

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Oct 29

Kicking off #BioDCASE with a keynote lecture from Stefan Kahl (of #BirdNet fame). 3 billion bird sound observations - what to do with them

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Sep 28

I like tea.

That's why I look so excited to be standing at the entrance to the Brussels Tea Festival!

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Sep 13

My train from Osnabruck is delayed by 1h40. When life gives you lemons, wir machen brotzeit!

A cup of "Friesland" tea and a German pretzel, sitting happily in the sunshine

Dan Stowell@danstowell· Sep 13

Lots of #ibac2025 folk all taking the big train from Denmark back to Germany! #academictravel