Ct values can be used to estimate epidemic dynamics UPDATE! Ct values are expected to change depending on whether the epidemic is growing or declining, and we harness this to estimate the epidemic trajectory. Lots of cool new analyses and methods!

And since today is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, let's highlight a few of them - just a few women among thousands of others who helped shape the world we live in today.

Thread.

Dorothy Hodgkin discovered the structure of insulin after 36 years of work.

"I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals."

Sophia Jex-Blake fought for women's rights to study medicine. She was involved in founding two medical schools for women.

"It seemed discreditable to Great Britain that all her daughters who desired a University education should be driven abroad to seek it."

Alice Augusta Ball developed the "Ball Method", the most effective treatment for leprosy during the early 20th century. She was 23.

Ada Lovelace is regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of computers and as one of the first computer programmers.

“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show.”

Did we get dietary saturated fats all wrong? The #HADLmodel provides a new understanding and an opportunity to get it right. THREAD👇👇👇
@simondankel @kariannesve

Increased dietary saturated fatty acids lead to increased cholesterol in lipoproteins, but we don’t know why. Enter the #HADLmodel, which explains changes in lipoprotein cholesterol as adaptive homeostatic adjustments that ensure optimal cell membrane fluidity and cell function.

We propose that circulating lipoproteins enable appropriate redistribution of cholesterol molecules between specific cells and tissues, to accomodate changes in dietary fatty acid supply, due to our omnivore nature and variable intake of fatty acids. #HADLmodel

Our #HADLmodel implies that circulating levels of LDL change for protective, not for pathological reasons; an SFA-induced raise in LDL cholesterol in healthy individuals is a normal response, while a lack of this needed response may reflect a deeper pathology in lipid handling.

Circulating lipoproteins may change for pathological reasons, when regulatory mechanisms become disrupted by pathogenic processes related e.g. to inflammatory processes. Diverging lipoprotein responses in healthy versus metabolically unhealthy individuals support this view.

I recently submitted my PhD dissertation titled "Illiberalism Beyond Borders. Dissecting Russian and Turkish External Influence in Bosnia and Georgia" at @FU_Berlin. Interested in what I found? Read this thread ⬇️

To begin with, I hypothesise that illiberal external influence (IEX) is more likely to contribute to the contestation of #democracy in a given polity when it appears in the context of a favorable domestic environment and the absence of liberal external counterpressure.

I particularly scrutinise the role of domestic elites in facilitating/obstructing IEX, based on findings by J. Tolstrup, @otansey, R. Vanderhill et al. I also look at how liberal ext. counterpressure can help prevent a major contribution of IEX to the contestation of #democracy.

Between 2016-2018, I conducted 95 interviews in #Tbilisi, #Moscow, #Sarajevo & #BanjaLuka (thx to all interlocutors!). Given the increasingly unfree environment in Turkey, I didn't dare to make a trip to Ankara, but talked to local experts about Turkish IEX in BiH & Georgia.

In #Bosnia, #Ankara has engaged in illiberal sponsorship of the Party of Democratic Action for many years. However, in both Bosnia and #Georgia, Ankara mostly exerted illiberal external influence after the 2016 coup attempt, following which it exerted pressure on the rule of law.