These 'Beach Animals' were created by Theo Jansen as a fusion of art and engineering. The kinetic structures walk on their own and get all their energy from the

Announcing the 2021 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science. #SICSS is for grad students, post-docs & beginning faculty. Free for participants. @chris_bail and I are happy to tell you about all 20 locations. https://t.co/wolhtZIMc5 [thread]

SICSS brings together social scientists & data scientists interested in computational social science for 1-2 week events with intensive study & collaborative research.

Topics covered include automated text analysis, web scraping, non-probability sampling, digital experiments, ethics & much more.

All education materials created for SICSS are available open-source so that people who are unable to participate can still learn. You can also use them in your teaching. Here are materials from previous years:

Because of COVID, all SICSS locations will be online only in 2021.

When respected Scientists resign over the false narrative... Take notice... and thank them.

Google Translated Letter from

Prof. Dr. Thomas Aigner,
Department of Geosciences,
University of Tuebingen, Sigwartstrasse 10,
D-72076 Tuebingen Germany

Dear colleagues,
It was with the greatest astonishment, deepest concern, and indeed bewilderment, that I took note of the "7th ad hoc statement" from the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on December 8th, 2020.
In my opinion, this paper is not worthy of an honest, critical-

weighing science oriented towards the service and well-being of man. I do not have any medical expertise. However, as a scientist committed to nothing but the pure truth, I take the liberty of speaking up. I feel very alarmed by several points:

1. On November 27, 2020, a group of 22 internationally recognized experts presented the following report on the PCR test, the linchpin of the "pandemic", for the Eurosurveillance magazine:

"External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results". Quote: "This highly questions the scientific validity of the test".

The calamoid palms 🌴 have over 500 species spread across the world, but their higher-level relationships were a bit of a mystery. Until now.

Out today in #MolecularPhylogeneticsAndEvolution:

A robust phylogenomic framework for the calamoid palms https://t.co/JiCbSUlheH

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First some background info, so that you know what we are talking about:

Calamoid palms look a bit like snakes 🐍 (don't they!?!), because their fruits are covered in overlapping scales. And with their often fierce spines, they are equally fearsome. 😱

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They are classified into 17 genera, 10 subtribes and 3 tribes. They have an amazing variety of growth forms, from stemless to climbing to tree habit. 🌱🌴

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But as I said, their relationships have been a bit of a mystery. Here's the varying relationships previous studies found over the last 20 years.

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We tackled this mystery with a phylogenomic approach: we sampled almost a thousand genes (a hundred times more than previous studies!) of 75 species representing all calamoid tribes, subtribes and genera.

The resulting data matrix is pretty massive...

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1/

Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, I'll help you understand the basics of Binomial Thinking.

The future is always uncertain. There are many different ways it can unfold -- some more likely than others. Binomial thinking helps us embrace this view.

2/

The S&P 500 index is at ~3768 today.

Suppose we want to predict where it will be 10 years from now.

Historically, we know that this index has returned ~10% per year.

If we simply extrapolate this, we get an estimate of ~9773 for the index 10 years from now:

3/

What we just did is called a "point estimate" -- a prediction about the future that's a single number (9773).

But of course, we know the future is uncertain. It's impossible to predict it so precisely.

So, there's a sense of *false precision* in point estimates like this.

4/

To emphasize the uncertainty inherent in such predictions, a better approach is to predict a *range* of values rather than a single number.

For example, we may say the index will return somewhere in the *range* of 8% to 12% (instead of a fixed 10%) per year.

5/

10 years from now, this implies an index value in the *range* [8135, 11703]:

Neonicotinoids and why they need to stay banned 🐝

#SciComm #ScienceTwitter #SaveTheBees #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis

Neonicotinoids were banned by the EU in 2018 following multiple scientific studies which proved their severe detrimental impact on pollinators. Effects from neonics include reduced immune function, reduced foraging capabilities, and impaired cognition in bees.

The government has approved neonics for emergency use as a seed treatment on sugar beet. Yields have been impacted by beet yellows, transmitted by aphids. They argue that, because sugar beet does not flower and will not attract pollinators, the risk from neonics is acceptable.

Since the ban on neonics in 2018, the infection rate of beet yellows has increased year on year. Aphid populations have been proliferating due to mild winters, with no agrochemicals to solve the problem.

Sounds like a good case for neonics, right?

But this is the start of a vicious cycle. Climate change isn't going away. Winters will continue to get milder, resulting in the need for more and more pesticides to combat growing pest problems. Inevitably, this won't be the last time neonics are authorised for emergency use.