Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Collin Schwantes @collin-schwantes.bsky.social · 12h

Giving a lightening talk on Oct 23 at the Living Data 2025 conference on how the Wildlife Disease Data Standard connects micro- and macro- biodiversity data to facilitate the study of disease ecology.

livingdata2025.com/program.html...

Living Data 2025 - Conference Program

Explore the complete conference program with 700+ presentations across 4 days

livingdata2025.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

sarah @sarahjohnson.io · Aug 21

I was loving Claude Code... until I tried it with #rstats. Constant errors, wouldn't use the tidyverse even when asked, "optimized" functions were slower.

Frustrated, I started a session just to teach R to Claude and summarize what it learned into a CLAUDE.md file gist.github.com/sj-io/3828d6...

Claude R Tidyverse Expert

Claude R Tidyverse Expert. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

gist.github.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Timothée Poisot @ctrlalttim.com · 20d

Our software paper on SpeciesDistributionToolkit.jl is now published in @peercomjournal.bsky.social - peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....

A Julia toolkit for species distribution data

peercommunityjournal.org

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 21d

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change," a brief communication in the journal Nature Climate Change. There's a map showing regions of the world, and pie charts of relevant studies as they apply to different health impacts like "heat-related deaths" and "maternal and child health"

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Collin Schwantes @collin-schwantes.bsky.social · 21d

This really makes me want to buy vitamins and supplements

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Emily Riederer @emilyriederer.bsky.social · 24d

Really insightful post from Julie Tibshirani (spotted in LinkedIn, can't find on Bsky) reflecting on #rstats 's unique governance structure and what can be learned for other languages

jtibs.substack.com/p/if-all-the...

If all the world were a monorepo

The R ecosystem and the case for extreme empathy in software maintenance

jtibs.substack.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Timothée Poisot @ctrlalttim.com · 27d

The @panaction.bsky.social just published a fantastic briefing paper about the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system - take a look if you want the full perspective on what PABS is, and why it matters for both health equity and fair data governance.

www.pandemicactionnetwork.org/news/briefin...

Briefing Paper on Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) | Pandemic Action Network

www.pandemicactionnetwork.org

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Collin Schwantes @collin-schwantes.bsky.social · 28d

As someone who had only ever written packages in R, the PyOpenSci package tutorial made writing my first python package really easy. Can't wait to check this out.

www.pyopensci.org/learn.html

Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Noam Ross @noamross.net · 28d

Honored to be working to defend science against authoritarianism alongside so many inspiring colleagues such as @audreydrotos.bsky.social, @bnwolford.bsky.social, @scott-delaney.bsky.social.

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 28d

Often the news happens so quickly that there's little time for it, so we took a step back to talk about the stories of the researchers who have been fighting back against the Trump administration's assault on science.

w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social and @heidiledford.bsky.social

Scientists take on Trump: the researchers fighting back

Through lawsuits, grant tracking, whistle-blowing and more, resistance to the US war on science is growing.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · 28d

Book launch TODAY!

Please join the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Health Security today at 4:00 pm EDT for the book launch of "The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics," the latest from @mtosterholm & Mark Olshaker

www.csis.org/events/...

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Dr. Dawn Wright @deepseadawn.bsky.social · Sep 2

R Consortium ISC Grant Applications are OPEN w/a deadline of Oct. 1st! Get funded to contribute to the 🐇 R ecosystem.

At Esri, we're a proud member of the R Consortium and the ISC's Grant program has been pivotal in growing the Rspatial ecosystem.
www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/...
#GISchat #geogchat

R Consortium 2025 Grants Applications Open

R Consortium ISC grants open Sept 1-Oct 1. Esri encourages R developers to apply for funding to advance open science projects.

www.esri.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

rOpenSci @ropensci.org · Sep 2

✍️ [blog post] rOpenSci Champions Second Cohort: Projects Wrap-Up

🏆 Our second cohort of Champions completed the program. In this blog post, we share each champion’s projects, their achievements, and outreach activities.

Read the wrap-up by @yabellini […]

Original post on hachyderm.io

hachyderm.io

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Maëlle Salmon @masalmon.eu · Sep 2

Taller de hoy para el programa de Campeon(a|e)s de @ropensci.org @yabellini.bsky.social

¡Código hermoso, porque lo valemos! 💅

¿Quién conoce al teorema fundamental de la legibilidad? 🤓

codigo-hermoso.netlify.app#/

#RStats

index

codigo-hermoso.netlify.app

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Maryn McKenna @marynmck.bsky.social · Aug 25

Unnerving: The USDA has been seriously concerned about the devastating animal parasite New World screwworm crossing into the US from Mexico/Central America. Now there has been a *human* case, in MD. Farm Policy News aggregates several stories: farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/08/huma...

Human Case of New World Screwworm Confirmed in US - Farm Policy News

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday reported the first human case in the United States of travel-associated New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, from an outbreak-affect...

farmpolicynews.illinois.edu

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Kyle Copas @kylecopas.bsky.social · Jul 28

As a descendant of the #Stockbridge-#Munsee #Mahican, #Oneida, #Lenape, #Brothertown and #Montauk peoples, I struggle to express how much it means—personally and professionally—to support the work of the task group and @localcontexts.bsky.social in shaping #IDGov #IDSov within the @gbif.org network.

GBIF @gbif.org · Jul 28

News flash! ⚡ GBIF establishes an international task group led by Dr Lydia Jennings on Indigenous data governance to offer input and guidance for implementing the #CAREPrinciples within the GBIF network 🌱

Read more: 🔗 https://gbif.link/IDG

@localcontexts.bsky.social

peach coloured background with a drawing of a tree in a sphere depicted

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jul 28

🚨 NEW today in Nature Genetics: the LISTEN principles are a FAIR-compatible framework that will allow genetic sequence databases to seamlessly participate in new multilateral access and benefit-sharing systems, such as the CBD Cali Fund and the WHO PABS System. 🧬🧪

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The LISTEN principles for genetic sequence data governance and database engineering - Nature Genetics

This Perspective proposes a checklist of six database design considerations, LISTEN: licensed, identified, supervised, transparent, enforced and non-exclusive, aimed at ensuring access and benefit-sharing principles in open science.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Steph N. Seifert, PhD @stephseifertphd.bsky.social · Jul 14

🚨 Our team just released a reproducible Docker pipeline for RNAseq assembly and annotation designed for nonmodel organisms!

We're using it to explore how bats manage viral infections, but it's built for broad utility in wildlife transcriptomics. @viralemergence.org

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TATAT: a containerized software for generating annotated coding transcriptomes from raw RNA-seq data

Motivation: Many transcriptome creation workflows are not standardized, are difficult to install or share, prone to breaking as dependencies update or cease to be maintained and are resource intensive...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

The Carlson Lab @ Yale @carlsonlab.bsky.social · Jul 14

Open call: If you are a researcher working on a project estimating a cause-specific burden of disease attributable to climate change at regional to global scales, please reach out! We're looking for researchers who might be interested in joining a new collaborative network / workshop series.

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · Jul 2

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · Jul 2

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research.
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

Call for Support: – About BHL

about.biodiversitylibrary.org

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Timothée Poisot @ctrlalttim.com · Jun 30

🦠🌿🐦🧪 How can biodiversity monitoring help global efforts in disease surveillance?

With ✨ fantastic ✨ colleagues from @viralemergence.org and the @geobon.org working group on One Health, we try to identify three key lessons for the future.

🧵 A short thread!

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Biodiversity science and biosurveillance are fellow travelers

The failure to meet the Aichi targets to alleviate global biodiversity decline (Nature 2020) was a wake-up call to the biodiversity monitoring community (T

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Science Homecoming @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social · Jun 29

Infectious disease researcher Hailey Robertson writes home to Kansas, where bird flu reached four dairy cattle herds in 2024, to urge support for American science 🧪 🏠

Hailey Robertson @haileyrobertson.bsky.social · Jun 29

A bit different from my usual writing, but excited (despite the circumstances) to share my op-ed in the Topeka Capital-Journal! I discuss recent NSF funding cuts and what they mean for Kansans, both now and in the future.

🌻 www.cjonline.com/story/opinio...

Topeka scientist says NSF funds critical to infectious disease forecasting | Opinion

Planned budget cuts for 2026 would deepen damage to STEM education, jobs, and public access to taxpayer-funded data.

www.cjonline.com

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Collin Schwantes @collin-schwantes.bsky.social · Jun 23

Check out our new paper describing a wildlife disease data standard!

The Carlson Lab @ Yale @carlsonlab.bsky.social · Jun 23

Do you study wildlife disease? Don't just share your sequences - share your testing data! We've developed a minimum data standard and an R package to help you, and wrote a little how-to-share-data handbook for disease ecology and One Health surveillance projects 🦇🦟🦠🗺️🔢

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Noam Ross @noamross.net · Apr 25

📣 Current and former #USgov data scientists!

Join @ropensci.org + @openscapes.bsky.social on May 6 for a community support and networking event:

ropensci.org/events/datas...

Co-hosted by former feds (NOAA, NASA, DOE, NSF, NIH + Federal Reserve) to discuss their paths to other sectors. #dataBS

Non-Government Career Paths for U.S. Federal Data Scientists

A community support and networking event hosted by rOpenSci and Openscapes

ropensci.org

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Reposted by Collin Schwantes

Verena @viralemergence.org · Apr 28

Updated preprint: "A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance." With:
✏️ A new version of the standard
💻 A new R package to help you format your data
🦇 A retrospective mini-study of data sharing rates
Preprint here: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Got data? Reach out! 🦠🧪

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance

ecoevorxiv.org

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