Ever since @JesseJenkins and colleagues work on a zero carbon US and this work by @DrChrisClack and colleagues on incorporating DER, I've been having the following set of thoughts about how to reduce the risk of failure in a US clean energy buildout. Bottom line is much more DER.

In Academia, people aren’t always supported when they need it. I want to share what @WesternU did when my husband died right after the pandemic shutdown. It should be shared with other uni’s as a model for empathy and proactive care when someone is in crisis.
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#AcademicChatter

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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Heres the story of how I volunteered to be infected with 50 parasitic worms (hookworm) for a year as part of a research study. Check out this thread & follow me for more #parasite & marine biology content [t]
#ScienceTwitter
imgs: https://t.co/hH5YsfS0ay https://t.co/kVurE6BbTS

1st some background on the parasites I got. Hookworms are blood-feeding nematodes that live in the intestine of mammals including cats, dogs & humans. ~500 million people are infected with hookworm, mostly in tropical and subtropical areas including the southern USA

Infection with many worms (100+) can cause anemia, which is most problematic in kids, pregnant women, and the elderly. This clinical study was launched to try to develop a vaccine against hookworms to prevent infection

People become infected when baby worms living in the soil penetrate their skin. Baby worms hatch from eggs that infected people poop out. Where plumbing is scarce, poor waste disposal is a common source of heavy infections (100s to 1,000s of worms)

I volunteered to be vaccinated with an experimental hookworm vaccine (I was also paid). After vaccination, the vaccine (or placebo idk) was tested by infecting me with 50 hookworms (Necator americanus) that penetrated my skin from a patch of gauze I wore on my wrist for 1 hour

Some 1300 years ago in Karnataka there lived a genius who wrote "Gaṇitasārasan̄graha" (which is earliest text devoted entirely to mathematics)

The man who's work later borrowed by Arabs & Europeans

Thread on "Mahāvīracharya" astounding but forgotten legacy

Mahāvirachārya was patronised by rashtrakuta king amoghavarasha

His book"Gaṇita-sāra-saṅgraha"is earliest text devoted entirely to Mathematics

He has described the currently used method of calculating(LCM)of given numbers.The same method was used in Europe later in1500CE

Mahavira wrote "Gaṇita-sāra-saṅgraha" (GSS) in 8th century CE which contains some 1100 slokās & contains elementary topics in arithmetic , algebra , geometry , measurements , logic , number theory , dynamical systems etc

A sheer mathematical genius

He was devout jain
His magnum opus "Ganit sara sangraha " start with a sloka bowing to the glory of the jinas

"संख्याज्ञानप्रदिपेन जैनेंद्रन महत्वेशा,
प्रकाशितम जगतसर्व येन तम प्रणमाम्यहम"

He also praised his predecessor aryabhata , brahmagupta & other greats in his works

The importance & popularity of "Gaṇita-sāra-saṅgraha"was so huge that it enjoyed statues of most important textbook of mathematics in South Indian for over 3 centuries

A large no of manuscript copies of
"Gaṇita-sāra-saṅgraha"whr discovered in Kerala shows it's popularity