Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr. Amy Lee

@minisciencegirl.bsky.social

2.4K followers 1.7K following 310 posts

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Dr. Amy Lee @minisciencegirl.bsky.social · Nov 21

Every year, >200K newborns die from sepsis.
Our team used machine learning to develop a set of genes that can predict neonatal sepsis risk using at birth blood samples.
www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...

Predictive gene expression signature diagnoses neonatal sepsis before clinical presentation

Despite appearing healthy at birth, neonates who later developed EOS already had distinct whole blood gene expression changes at birth, which enabled the development of a 4-gene predictive signature f...

www.thelancet.com

5 48 170

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 6h

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

45 820 1.9K

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 1d

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

blog.genesmindsmachines.com

5 47 130

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 3d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

800 17K 37K

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

ᐯIᑕTOᖇ ᑎIᘔET, ᗰᗪ @nizet.bsky.social · 4d

🅶🆁🅰🅼-🅽🅴🅶🅰🆃🅸🆅🅴
🅰🅼🆁 🅰🆃 🅰🅻🅰🆁🅼🅸🅽🅶
🅻🅴🆅🅴🅻🆂 🅸🅽 🆃🅷🅴
🅽🅴🆆🅱🅾🆁🅽 🅽🆄🆁🆂🅴🆁🆈

⚠️ ~80% of neonatal sepsis cases in 10 Asian hospitals caused by Gram-negative bacteria. 𝘒𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 and 𝘈𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳 strains had extremely high AMR levels, leaving few effective antibiotics for newborns

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Pathogen distribution and antimicrobial resistance among neonatal bloodstream infections in Southeast Asia: results from NeoSEAP, a multicentre retrospective study

Neonatal sepsis in tertiary hospitals in Southeast Asia is predominantly caused by gram-negative bacteria, with high rates of non-susceptibility to commonly prescribed antibiotics.

www.thelancet.com

1 4

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Center for Advanced Microbiome Research & Innovation (CAMRI) @camri-igs.bsky.social · 4d

We're hiring a #postdoc with knowledge of the #microbiome, #microbiology, #bioinformatics, #computationalbiology to understand the role of the vaginal microbiome in women's health. #Baltimore #womenshealth

2 9 8

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Carole King @carolekingofficial.bsky.social · 7d

With the passing of Jane Goodall today, we lost one of the most consequential voices in environmental science and animal behavior. In 2002, she said, “We have found that…there isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.”
(Continued in comments)

42 510 2.3K

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Antimicrobial resistance #AMR @antimicrobial.bsky.social · 8d

Horizon Europe has launched a €253M AMR partnership to accelerate innovation and move potential therapies closer to market. The first funding call, focused on treatments, will open in November following a pre-announcement in mid-October.
sciencebusiness.net/news/r-d-fun...

Horizon Europe’s new antimicrobial resistance partnership looks to the market

Horizon Europe’s partnership for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) research launched last week with a plan to bring Europe closer to finding new anti-microbial therapies in the next decade. With more of ...

sciencebusiness.net

17 21

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Hall Lab @halllab.bsky.social · 8d

Come join us 2-4th March 2026 for a cracking #microbiome conference in Hinxton UK! Speaker line up is AMAZING and lots of opportunities for ECRs for selected talks, flash talks and posters.

Bursaries are also available!

See details below 👇

Wellcome Connecting Science Learning and Training @eventswcs.bsky.social · 8d

Showcase your microbiome research at our 2026 conference! #Microbiome26

Demonstrate how #genomics tools and technologies are contributing to a deeper understanding of the microbiome.

🗓️ 2-4 March
Submit an abstract by 24 November ✍🏼

📎 bit.ly/4kttBOX
#MicrobiomeSky #AcademicSky

Wellcome Connecting Science hybrid conference
Microbiome Interactions in Health and Disease

Conference dates: 2-4 March 2026
Location: Hinxton Hall Conference Centre, Wellcome Genome Campus, UK and online

Bursary and abstract deadline: 24 November 2025
Registration deadline
In person: 2 February
Virtual: 14 February

9 17

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Dorottya Nagy @dotnagy.bsky.social · 9d

To summarise our recent pre-print: Autocycler, the automated consensus assembler, when used with Nanopore long-read only Enterobacterales assemblies, produces more complete chromosomes and plasmids, with an accuracy comparable to hybrid assemblies.

Figure 2 from my recently pre-printed manuscript on the completeness and accuracy of Nanopore long-read only bacterial genome assembly for Enterobacterales. a) tile plot of chromosome circularisation, with assembler on the x-axis and sample on the y-axis, shows that the consensus long-read only assembler, Autocycler, circularised more chromosomes at 95% (87/92) than any other long-read or hybrid assembler. b) complex upset plot of plasmid reconstruction, showing that the best plasmid reconstruction was achieved by long-read assemblers incorporating the separate plasmid assembly tool, Plassembler, namely Autocycler and Hybracter, reconstructing >96% of plasmids.

1 16 25

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

MarkH @markhoofnagle.medsky.social · 10d

Gonna livestream this for sure. These guys are the actual scientists at war with govt reppression of important science that has life and death consequence.

Not the whiny sexpests like Krauss who are just mad they don’t get to fly on the Lolita express anymore. Hate that I have to clarify that.

Michael E. Mann @michaelemann.bsky.social · 20d

Please come out (or participate via livestream) for our #ScienceUnderSiege event at the storied DC bookstore @politicsprose.bsky.social, featuring my co-author @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social & yours truly,
Thursday Oct 2: politics-prose.com/mann-hotez

2 7 25

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Waggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 11d

Review @cp-trendsimmuno.bsky.social Decoding immune aging at single-cell resolution
cell.com/trends/immun...

5 22

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · Sep 3

It's the anniversary of Alexander Fleming returning from summer break & finding his Staph. aureus culture plate had been left open with mold growing on it that killed bacteria.

Let's focus on what came next: how do we go from an agar plate in 1928 to 2.3 million doses ready on D-Day, June 1944?

Synthetic Production of Penicillin Professor Alexander Fleming, holder of the Chair of Bacteriology at London University, who first discovered the mould Penicillin Notatum. Here in his laboratory at St Mary's, Paddington, London (1943).
This photograph TR 1468 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.

12 160 480

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Mary Fernando M.D. 🇨🇦 @maryfernando.bsky.social · 13d

Reading tributes to Dr. Darren Markland and am verklempt by how many of you he touched by telling the truth.

“It was public criticism of power that only an intensive-care doctor doing the hard work during the pandemic could fling about without being fired.”

edifyedmonton.com/urban/innova...

A photo of Dr. Maryland and his buddy, Hobbes the dog.

6 23 120

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

John M. Drake @jdrakephd.bsky.social · 14d

Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization.

Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

#ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology

1 21 36

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 14d

I and other participants of the Novel Approaches to Preventing Publication Bias Workshop, hosted by the NINDS Office of Research Quality in May 2024, have published a framework to encourage the publication of null results in science: 🧪

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Ending publication bias: A values-based approach to surface null and negative results

Sharing knowledge is a fundamental principle within the scientific community, yet null and negative results are still being underreported. This Consensus View discusses the problem of such publication...

journals.plos.org

1 11 26

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 14d

Hillary Clinton: "When I hear people like Kennedy talking about getting back to a time where we aren't vaccinating, we're drinking raw milk - yeah, & people didn't live! I mean, this is so crazy, it's so wrongheaded, it's so shortsighted and it's going to cause deaths... it already is costing lives"

520 4.5K 16K

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 17d

Remember: If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game.

The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can be changed.

400 3.9K 13K

Dr. Amy Lee @minisciencegirl.bsky.social · 16d

Yep. I am looking at you, liquid handling robots.

Nick Loman @pathogenomenick.bsky.social · 16d

A bit like spiralling publication costs we need to start having a proper discussion around lab equipment servicing costs. These are often completely disproportionate to the cost of instrument and the service that is provided and seem to serve as a cash cow for vendors.

1 8

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 16d

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways.

I could write a whole article about this, but as one example:

“To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…”
No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

24 230 920

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16d

Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases.

This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122

Prestige over merit: An adapted audit of LLM bias in peer review

Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly integral, though largely informal, role in scholarly peer review. Yet it remains unclear whether LLMs reproduce the biases observed in human de...

arxiv.org

12 210 460

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social · 18d

Vote with your dollars.

1.4K 6.8K 28K

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Timothy McBride @mcbridetd.bsky.social · 17d

Call for Applications
WashU School of Public Health Faculty at All Levels

The Washington University School of Public Health is seeking outstanding faculty at all levels

See call for list of areas where applications are particularly encouraged
apply.interfolio.com/173629

7 8

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Prof Mike Yearworth @mikeyearworth.bsky.social · 17d

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

www.computerworld.com

120 1.8K 3.6K

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Graham Dellaire @docdellaire.bsky.social · 18d

AI psychosis is now a “thing” - between this, misinformation, online radicalization and identity fusion (where a social cause, political stance or strongly held view becomes deeply intertwined with your identity), we really are racing towards our own demise as a species.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Long talks with chatbots left these men with 'AI psychosis' | CBC News

Reports of delusions fuelled by conversations with AI chatbots have been growing, with some cases involving psychotic breaks, hospital stays and even violence. Two Canadians have launched an online su...

www.cbc.ca

1 1 4

Reposted by Dr. Amy Lee

Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 19d

David Rose, the police officer and Afghanistan veteran with a wife and 2 small children, was murdered by a white, right wing extremist man a month ago over antivaccine conspiracies pushed by RFK Jr. and this administration. He did not get recognition from political leaders or even much news coverage

Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 19d

"My thoughts turned to David Rose, who volunteered to try to prevent another such attack on our country, and then, when back home, ran toward danger once again to help his fellow Americans."
www.thebulwark.com/p/a-hero-dav...

A Hero We Didn’t Deserve

Remembering David Rose who ran towards danger.

www.thebulwark.com

11 530 1.4K