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

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]:

The number 666 relates to the carbon atom, and man. Carbon-12; one of 5 elements in the human DNA is composed of 6 protons, 6 electrons and 6 neutrons, which equates to 666. 
.@realDonaldTrump
.@GenFlynn
.@RudyGiuliani

https://t.co/odzm9VTdwZ

Thread for today. /0

It is fashionable for people to create sympathy to the unseen / unknown organisms. The poor things that can't stand up and fight for their own existence.

It makes for a brilliant narrative. It melts your hearts. And you get to play saviour of the oppressed by outraging. /1

But, for most part, such things are also false.

Amazon are the lungs of the world. Never mind that most of the world's oxygen production happens in open oceans. But these are harmless ones. Of course, we all love to maintain forests.

However, some things are sheer scare mongering.

For instance - take this: coral reefs will be permanently gone if mean / median temperatures raise by 1°C ..

But, really - how? Then you get a lecture on how CO2 will affect calcification.

Dig a bit deeper from another angle+

+ and you find that the earth was much much warmer during the age of Dinosaurs. So much so, that we had cold blooded lizards growing to sizes of buildings. Surely, there must have been tons of CO2 then!

And the ocean temps were quite high too.

With @franklowery our new study on attributes of T cells that contribute to successful cell therapy in cancer patients in @ScienceMagazine today w/ colleagues @slgoff_SB, @NCI_CCR_SB @theNCI a TL;DR thread on key findings with caveats :) 1/10

has a long history of using tumor infiltrating T cells (TILs) to treat cancers since well.. before I was even born. We analyzed our most successful melanoma ACT trial for cell surface phenotypes in TIL infusion products of patients (aPD1/immunotherapy naive) /2

Surprisingly we found a CD39- TIL subset (CD39-CD69-, DN) associated with ACT-response. TBH we were expecting the opposite (CD39+). We only included CD39 bcz multiple groups (e.g. Simoni et al, 2018) had reported CD39+ as enriching for anti-tumor/neoantigen reactive T cells. /3

CD39- DN TILs RNA/epigenetics resemble stem-like memory progenitors, and in vitro were able to self-renew, and give rise to other CD39+ subsets. OTOH the most dominant subset of patient infusion products were CD39+ CD69+ (DP) and these guys were terminally differentiated.. /4

So, to clarify we specifically analyzed tumor-specific mutation-reactive Tcells. Turns out, ACT-responders had pool of neoantigen-reactive TILs in the CD39- phenotype, while non-responders did not (despite other irrelevant CD39- Tcells) -> not all CD39- T cells are bystanders /5

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

1/10

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. 😱

2/10

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. 🌱🌴

3/10

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.

4/10

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...

5/10

1/ #LBBB generates often a classical pattern on #EchoFirst. The pattern is very distinctive in Tissue Doppler of the septum.

The classical pattern arises from the time lapse of the activation and relaxation of the two walls, creating a pattern of interaction due to a sequence temporal imbalances of the tension between the two walls.

2/ As the septum is activated first, it contracts (shortening - septal flash) without activation of the lateral wall, which stretches. This generates slower pressure build up than a normal IVC, which then is prolonged.

3/ During ejection, the LV volume decreases, so both walls shorten. Tension, however, declines first in the septum, as this was activated first. This leads to a tension imbalance, so the lateral wall continues to shorten, the more relaxed septum stretches.

4/ The stretching of the septum builds up an elastic tension in the septum, which is released as recoil, when tension declines in the lateral wall, showing a post systolic shortening in the septum which is due to elasticity.

Wonder why your Ph.D./Master's application is being rejected?

Here are some insider reasons (from a committee member) that result in such "Love Letters" 👇

- A Short Thread

1) First, you should know that sometimes, an independent reviewer is required (especially in the US) to review applications even after PIs must have selected their candidates. So, even if any bias slips through the PI, the independent reviewer will pick it up.

2) Having said this, there are three major issues that application reviewers/committees often find with your application. These three components make your applications almost challenging to assess.

3) NUMBER ONE - Incomplete Applications

This occurs when you do not upload the requested documents needed to evaluate your file. Think of a candidate that did not send a GRE score when the institution clearly requires it for admission.

4) NUMBER TWO - Error laden Essays

This is particularly interesting because based on reports from this resource person, it is not particularly about how little your experience is but how you communicate it error-free or at least extensively minimized. This gives headache!

Why English as the Universal Language of Science Is a Problem for Research

Where do most of the researchers and inventors around the world appear today? What is their mother tongue?
1/8

The obstacle to many researches in our country is that many of the documents and research articles that they need to do research are available in English only 80-90%.

Can't anyone read and understand research articles so easily? Why is that?
2/8

Today most scientific papers are published in English. What is lost when other languages ​​leave?

Plagiarism in research articles Should not be. What is Plagiarism?
3/8

Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.

In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution.
4/8

plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.

In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution.
5/8

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.

Extremely excited today to reveal the first of two great works (magnus opera?), just posted on bioarxiv, applying regulatory network analysis techniques to PDAC expression data to dissect the underlying biology of the disease. Tweetorial time! 1/

Eight years ago I launched an enduring collaboration with Andrea Califano @ColumbiaCancer to apply his regulatory network analysis techniques to #pancreaticcancer. So many amazing scientists have contributed to this work: @paslaise @hc_maurer @AlvaroCurielGa1 @ElyadaEla 2/

What is “regulatory network analysis”? At it's heart, it's a way of extracting more useful information from expression profiles. A fundamental flaw of differential gene expression (DGE) analysis is the assumption that each gene is independent. Biologist KNOW this is not true! 3/

DGE treats all ~25K detectable genes as SEPARATE variables, performs 25K T-tests, and then slaps on a multiple hypothesis correction to make the statisticians less dyspeptic. There is no consideration of the relationships between genes! 4/

Yet we KNOW genes are co-regulated in SETS by transcription factors and other REGULATORY FACTORS. Biologist: “p21 is a target of p53”. DGE: “Shhhh”. These relationships are completely ignored by expression analysis. THIS IS A TRAVESTY! 5/

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.”

In a number of Sunday papers:
Scientific advisers said it was “hard to see” when the restrictions would end as new variants continued to emerge, delivering a potentially devastating blow to the travel industry. The prime minister said that after progress with vaccinations...

...”what we don’t want to see is all that work undone by the arrival of a new variant that is vaccine-busting”.
The idea is planted in people’s mind that this virus is mutating in such a way as to evade prior immunity. This is completely unfounded, certainly as regards immunity..

...gained naturally, after repelling the virus (which well around 99.9% of the population do, fewer, obviously in the very elderly & already ill, more in those younger & well). It’s important to appreciate that upon infection, the human immune system cuts up an infectious...

...agent into short pieces. Each of these short pieces of protein are presented to other cells in the immune system, like an identity parade. Our cells have a truly astonishing range of abilities to recognise different protein structures, and there will be some which recognise...

...each of the pieces of the invader. The cells which recognise a piece are instructed to multiply selectively so that, after a few days to a couple of weeks, our bodies contain large numbers of virus piece specific cells. These have a range of functions. Some make antibodies...

The Review: GW 23 - A thread

Hi everyone, welcome to the latest edition of “The Review” where me and @urboihamza look ahead to the upcoming double GWs and chip strategies in detail:

#FPL #FPLCommunity @OfficialFPL

(Data taken from @FFScout and @FFH_HQ with consent)

Before I start, an update on the Fantasy5: There have been no winners for two consecutive GWs now, so I feel the organizers have been more sympathetic in setting targets yet again this week. This might be your best chance to win £10k! Link below:

At this point, I’d also like to mention that I post about FPL on my Instagram too, so if you have an Instagram account, do follow up here:

I’d like to dedicate this Review of mine to my dear friend Dylan who is an avid FPL player and a regular reader of my pieces. He is battling a brutal illness so my thoughts are with him and his family during these tough times – stay strong lil bro and good luck!

Q: What is the optimum strategy for FPL managers wildcarding sometime soon who do not have their Free Hit in hand?

I’d like to credit to @BenCrellin for his outstanding work helping to shed more clarity on the double GWs coming up. Southampton winning against Wolves...

Here is another very enjoyable conversation, with @Pandata19’s scientific advisory board member, Dr Jay Bhattacharya. Key ideas in this thread.

We are making world-changing decisions on the basis of evidence that is not very good. Vast scientific evidence tells us that infection fatality rates are much lower than originally expected. A small fraction of people get severe illness. 2/10

The scientific community has been resistant to evidence not supporting the majoritarian view, preferring instead to gin up panic, focusing on the worst case for everything the virus does & the best case for everything lockdowns do, and ignoring the range of uncertainty. 3/10

Academe is a strange place now, with debate stifled. But there's a sense some are opening up to considering opposing views. This is key, since suppression of views stops knowledge from progressing—the end of science. Public health norms of unified messaging complicate this. 4/10

Why did we, from the start, assume we knew nothing about this virus, instead of assuming a reasonable prior? Low susceptibility was evident early on. Assuming any virus is new is hard to square with our deep-time co-evolution with viruses, & their slow evolution. 5/10