Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Marta Shocket

Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 14d

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

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Alex Nelson @alxnelson.bsky.social · 14d

Sometimes you get a nice shot in dreadful light. Unfortunately the water was reflecting the sun right back at me as this great blue heron picked up a baby American alligator. #birds

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Katherine Siegel @katherinesiegel.bsky.social · 28d

You still have 5 days to apply for this awesome postdoc opportunity in the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Impact Lab at the University of Colorado-Boulder! This could be your backyard!

Image of five slanted rock formations (called the Flatirons) in the snow on a sunny day. There is a trail through the snow leading away towards the rock formations, which rise above some trees.

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MIDAS Network @midas-network.bsky.social · Aug 25

Two years post-doc position on viral phylodynamics available at CERP.
cerp-epi.com/fr/careers/

Careers - CERP

Two years post-doc position on viral phylodynamics Title of the position: Post-doc on viral phylodynamics Department: CERP (Center of Excellence in Respiratory Pathogens) and GenEPII (GENomique à visé...

cerp-epi.com

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Ben Harrap @bharrap.bsky.social · Jul 16

Introducing my new #rstats package {kitchensink}

Not sure what the right model to fit is? Should you allow random intercepts, slopes, both? What do Bayesian methods say?

Just call {kitchensink::throw} to fit every possible model and see how your results differ!

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · May 11

Thanks to everybody who chimed in!

I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist.

So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

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Dr. Courtney Murdock @ecodynvplab.bsky.social · Apr 11

New paper out! A common computational approach to predict organismal fitness and distributions in the field could vastly overpredict the potential range of thermal suitability for malaria transmission relative to performance characterized at constant temperatures: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mean daily temperatures predict the thermal limits of malaria transmission better than hourly rate summation - Nature Communications

Malaria transmission is sensitive to temperature and models of malaria typically account for daily fluctuations in temperature through a ‘rate summation’ approach. Here, the authors conduct experiment...

www.nature.com

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Prof Sadie J. Ryan (she/her) @sjryan3.bsky.social · Apr 11

"Mean daily temperatures predict the thermal limits of malaria transmission better than hourly rate summation" new paper now out in NatComm, led by @martashocket.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Figure maps in magma palette, depicting mosquito range countries in South Asia, against grey non-range countries and white non-land components. Legend for color range dark to light, most to least. Months of thermal suitability, S(T), for transmission of malaria by Anopheles stephensi in its native range in Central and South Asia predicted by models parameterized using constant and fluctuating temperatures.

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Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social · Mar 29

I received a heartbreaking email today: A paper in a special issue I’m editing is being retracted because one of its authors is afraid of losing their job and their legal status in the U.S. if they publish a scientific study on evolution. Yes, on evolution, nature's engine of diversity.

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MIDAS Network @midas-network.bsky.social · Mar 24

Don't miss this week's MIDAS Webinar Series featuring Dr. Jacob Barhak.

Date: Friday, March 28 - 1:00 - 2:00p EDT.

Topic: Lessons Learned from Modeling COVID-19: Steps to Take at the Start of the Next Pandemic

Register in Advance: pitt.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: MIDAS Webinar Series - March 2025. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

Title: Lessons Learned from Modeling COVID-19: Steps to Take at the Start of the Next Pandemic. Speaker: Jacob Barhak Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic spurred many computational modeling efforts. Man...

pitt.zoom.us

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Reposted by Marta Shocket

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Sep 19

If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

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Sarah B. Bassing, PhD @sbassing.bsky.social · Mar 24

This is a great resource! I just watched the first video and it inspired so many ideas for the quantitative ecology course I’m designing for the fall semester.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Sep 19

If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · Mar 19

At this point, it is obvious that it is not safe for scholars to travel the US. There are no easy solutions for conferences scheduled in the US this year but it should be cleary to everyone involved that they cannot just go ahead as planned.

Cas Ⓜ️udde @casmudde.bsky.social · Mar 19

18. French scholar coming for conference 🇫🇷

Denied entry and deported for anti-Trump views expressed on social media. 🚨

HT @profpech.bsky.social

Etats-Unis : un chercheur français refoulé pour avoir exprimé « une opinion personnelle sur la politique menée par l’administration Trump »

Le ministre de la recherche français a dit sa « préoccupation », mercredi, après cette décision des autorités américaines. Le chercheur du CNRS aurait subi un contrôle aléatoire à son arrivée, avant q...

www.lemonde.fr

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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · Mar 19

1/35 New paper out! @jamesTstroud and I dive into why long-term studies are crucial for understanding evolution. They reveal processes impossible to detect in short timescales and capture rare events that transform our understanding of evolutionary dynamics.

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

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · Mar 18

“The Trump administration has canceled funding for an ongoing 30-year, nationwide study tracking patients with prediabetes and diabetes, researchers said, at a time when top officials have emphasized their determination to curb the incidence of such chronic conditions.”

NIH cancels funding for landmark diabetes study at a time of focus on chronic disease

The Trump administration has canceled funding for an ongoing 30-year, nationwide study tracking patients with prediabetes and diabetes, researchers said.

www.statnews.com

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Greg Ragland @sleepyfly.bsky.social · Mar 18

This was a fun review to work on with James deMayo. We highlight genome-enabled studies from the last ~20 years that provide lab and field perspectives on (often rapid) thermal adaptation. Thanks to JEB for fantastic editorial support!

Journal of Experimental Biology @jexpbiol.bsky.social · Mar 17

Evolutionary genetics studies are often used to predict how species may adapt to climate change. In their recent Review, deMayo & Ragland discuss why these studies are only somewhat useful for predicting how invertebrates will respond to climate change

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

A screenshot of the Review article titled '(Limited) Predictability of thermal adaptation in invertebrates' by James deMayo and Gregory Ragland

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Kryštof Chytrý @krystofchytry.bsky.social · Mar 14

Hi there, my student is making a survey about the use of R packages in Ecology, could you please spend two mins on filling it 🥹 Very appreciated! And if you could spread it further (RT), that would be just awesome. ❤️

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Exploring R Package Usage in Academia

I am running a quick survey to find out which R packages academics use the most in their research and teaching. The goal is to see which tools are essential, spot any gaps, and maybe even discover som...

docs.google.com

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Sarah Finn @romanceofbooks.bsky.social · Mar 17

An album of over 200 pressed seaweeds collected by an anonymous Victorian collector. A transcribed poem is pasted as title page, it begins: "Oh call us not weeds, we are flowers of the sea."

I saw this at UW-Madison Special Collections 🌊📚
CA 19285

#seaweed #herbarium #naturalhistory

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bes-quantitativegroup @bes-quantitative.bsky.social · Mar 17

** Upcoming quantitative conference: **

📈 Environmental and Ecological Statistics Conference 📈

1-3 July, Lancaster, UK. Contributed abstract submission closes 1st April.

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Sal Keith (she/her) @salkeith.bsky.social · Mar 17

Interested in ecological/environmental #stats? Join us at the EnvEcoStats conference at Lancaster Uni 1-3 July 2025 envecostats.wordpress.com 14 days left to submit an abstract - come on ecologists! @bes-quantitative.bsky.social @besmacro.bsky.social @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social #RStats

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Conference

Co-organised by Glasgow University and Lancaster University

envecostats.wordpress.com

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Dr. Courtney Murdock @ecodynvplab.bsky.social · Mar 6

And some fun pictures from the field in Surat, India.

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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · Mar 6

“It’s extremely alarming that grants that have been vetted by the scientific community and deemed important and impactful to understand the world are now being cancelled because of political ideology,” says @lkfazio.bsky.social.

“This is direct censorship of scientific research.”

Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants

Studies that touch on LGBT+ health, gender identity and DEI in the biomedical workforce could be terminated, according to documents obtained by Nature.

www.nature.com

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Benny Borremans 🇧🇪🇺🇸 @bennyborremans.wildlifehero.org · Dec 27

Disease ecologist starter pack -- reply with people/organizations to be added or with related lists/feeds

#diseaseecology

🦠🐀🦠🦇🦠🦭🦠🦆🦠 go.bsky.app/RwAuiNT

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Francis Windram @franwin.co.uk · Mar 5

🧵 Now it's time for another R thread. So let's talk about the .data pronoun from rlang/dplyr. #R #dplyr #rlang

A code interface showing the following code: `.data[[var]]`

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Kit Yates @kityates.bsky.social · Feb 28

The populist right is damaging US science.

Here's what I think we should be doing to ensure that the UK does not suffer the same fate.

🧵

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