Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 2d

In my blonde era

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 2d

Not saying the Trump coin is a good sign, but we do always have the living head of state on our coins in the UK.

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 6d

I think this kind of translational work is one of the best use cases for AI

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Reposted by Alex Hill

David Hodgson @dchodge.bsky.social · 8d

🚀 New tool: Reversible Jump MCMC running in your browser!
Built an interactive widget for fitting mixture distributions when you don't know how many components you need.

Check it out: dchodge.github.io/rjmc-widget-...

Dynamic Mixture Model Analysis

dchodge.github.io

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 8d

This is so cool! Javascript FTW 😍

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 11d

This is the picture my four year old brought home for me today.

Me: lovely honey, who's it a picture of?
Her: that's me in the pink dress, and that's a dead guy

*spotting my horrified look*

Her: don't worry, he was bad

Child's drawing of two stick figures - a girl in pink dress with brown hair, and a man all in black with no arms or legs and a sad face

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Reposted by Alex Hill

Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 12d

I'm giving a free public talk asking 'How certain is certain enough?' at @lshtm.bsky.social on Monday 24th November at 5.30pm, as part of the Global Health Lecture Series. From epidemic response and clinical trials to online misinformation and AI, I'll look at how truth emerges – and why it falters.

How certain is certain enough? | LSHTM

When faced with a new health threat, there are three crucial questions we must consider. What is going on? What can we do about it? And how can we communicate these things effectively? This talk will

www.lshtm.ac.uk

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 14d

At least one person on the panel would not have shared your ick!

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 14d

The US Department of Health announcing they've found the cause of autism has a similar vibe to the time the Egyptian army announced it had a cure for AIDS.

Crazy to watch US governmental institutions deteriorate at such a rapid pace.

www.bbc.com/news/blogs-t...

The Egyptian army says it has invented a device that can remotely detect and treat HIV and hepatitis.

www.bbc.com

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 14d

Another triumph for human tenacity, intelligence and compassion over the brutally indifferent force that is evolution.

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 14d

In my life I've seen treatments for AIDs developed, vaccines for Ebola and malaria, and now this. Medical science is one is the areas that still consistently seems to make these miraculous advances and I'm genuinely grateful to everyone involved.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time

One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 14d

Every debate at HowTheLightGetsIn festival on transhumanist themes:

Transhumanists: We should reduce suffering by all means available to us
Audience: *shaking heads in disapproval*

Opponent: This feels icky to me
Audience: *loud applause*

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Reposted by Alex Hill

David Hodgson @dchodge.bsky.social · 15d

🚨 New paper out in PLOS Computational Biology! 🚨

We're excited to share our new paper, serojump, a new probabilistic framework and R package for inferring infections and antibody kinetics from longitudinal serological data.

📄 Full paper: tinyurl.com/re7du3t2
R package: seroanalytics.org/serojump

A serological inference package using reversible jump mcmc

The `serojump` package provides tools for fitting serological models to antibody kinetics data using reversible-jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJ-MCMC). It enables researchers to model the dynamics of...

seroanalytics.org

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Reposted by Alex Hill

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · Apr 30

💡 Open science: A team of researchers at Shandong University has attempted to replicate Oprea (2024 AER). The results do not replicate.

Oprea 2024 reported an online lab experiment, and found that prospect theory anomalies occur not only for lotteries, but also for deterministic 'mirrors'.

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · Apr 15

I know of one account! From a feminist called Finn Mackay (who calls it 'sex dysphoria' for reasons they outline in their book). As someone who has body dsymorphia it sounds quite closely related, phenomenologically. Book is Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars: The Politics of Sex.

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · Apr 15

Amazing. How exactly could this be done while also respecting the previous clause (no ideological tests as hiring criteria?!)

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · Apr 13

"[A]ll civilisation involves an ever-increasing foresight for others, even for others as yet unborn". - Havelock Ellis, 1911

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Reposted by Alex Hill

Thomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · Apr 8

For the last couple of months I've been working on something and I'm excited to finally share an early preview:

Say hello to plumber2 🎉

plumber2 is a full rewrite of the plumber package for creating powerful webapis in #rstats. It takes everything we have learned from plumber and adds even more

What the Package Does (One Line, Title Case)

What the package does (one paragraph).

posit-dev.github.io

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · Apr 4

I'm writing a series of blog posts on the subject of women and free love, partly out of my interest in the history of free love, partly out of a sort of affectionate prurience about sex-positive women of yore.

This first one is about free love in the 1800s and the first woman to run for president.

Women and Free Love: Part One

Free love, women's suffrage, and Mrs Satan

www.alexlizhill.com

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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · Mar 17

Wild that Gen Zs appear to think Chappell Roan has written the first ever lesbian country song. Sorry KD Lang! Not to mention Melissa Etheridge, Brandi Carlile, Melissa Ferrick etc

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