Reposting from last year since sadly NWS is back on the front page

Brandon Hayes@brandonhayes.bsky.social · last yr.

Screwworm is making headlines because of this rare imported human case, but a slightly important omission from these articles is just how *insanely catastrophic* a New World Screwworm (NWS) epidemic would be on people, livestock, pets, and the US economy. 1/7

Biggest scandal on Bluesky right now, unfolding in real time!

Dr. Adeene Denton@spacewhalerider.com · 5mo ago

WAIT Y'ALL I just checked their supplementary data table and they don't even include The Core (2003). What is this gross oversight

Just a few days left to apply to one of these postdoc positions in my Unit at @pasteur.fr!

Simon Cauchemez@scauchemez.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Two postdoc positions for a number of exciting epidemic modelling projects opening in my Unit at @pasteur.fr in beautiful Paris. Deadline for applications: 13th April. More details at the following link: research.pasteur.fr/job/two-post...

Serious suggestion: let's send a poet to the Moon. No knock on the science nerds, who are load bearing, but maybe we need to diversify our space dorks and include an English major.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 6mo ago

#Artemis crew to Mission Control, after seeing and attempting to describe the eclipse: "And if you could give me about 20 new superlatives in the mission summary tomorrow, that'll help my vocabulary out a bit. Thank you."

#RP_INRAE Peste porcine africaine : des scientifiques d’INRAE, de @envt.bsky.social et de @anses-fr.bsky.social ont créé un modèle original pour évaluer les transmissions entre porcs domestiques et sangliers, mettant en évidence une transmission bidirectionnelle. 👉 url.inrae.fr/4det9nr

Merci @inrae-france.bsky.social pour cette belle vulgarisation de notre travail—un modèle original pour mieux comprendre les transmission PPA entre les porcs domestiques et sangliers 🐖↔️🐗 www.inrae.fr/actualites/p...

Thrilled to share our latest pub in @natcomms.nature.com, where we quantify interspecific transmission contributions to ASF epidemic spread. Sincerest thanks to both co-authors and reviewers! rdcu.be/faKf9 @timvergne.bsky.social @envt.bsky.social @anses-fr.bsky.social @inrae-france.bsky.social

A multi-host mechanistic model of African swine fever emergence and control in Romania

Nature Communications - African swine fever is an important disease of domestic pigs that can also affect wild boars. Here the authors use a multi-host mechanistic model to investigate the relative...

rdcu.be

Our new study bit.ly/4srWRKd looks beyond “where could the virus survive?” and asks a more practical question: if Oropouche is introduced into a community, where is it most likely to ignite an outbreak. #orov #arbovirus #brazil

Ecological and demographic drivers of Oropouche virus transmission - Nature Health

Nationwide analysis of 30,086 confirmed Oropouche virus cases in Brazil between 2014 and 2025 shows that rural municipalities had over 11-fold-higher incidence than urban areas and identifies demograp...

bit.ly

just suffered psychic damage reading the phrase "stochastic means having a random variable"

Happy #SuperbOwl 🦉 Sunday to all who celebrate.

The HPAI Modelling Challenge launches tomorrow! If you haven't received a calendar invite for the kick-off meetings despite submitting a registration, please contact us at hpai-modelling-challenge at wiliman-id.eu

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

This OpEd, by the inspirational @drdemetre.bsky.social in today’s @washingtonpost.com, is one of the best pieces of science writing of 2025 I’ll be assigning it to my students next semester in my class on ‘policy writing—turning evidence into public health action’ Thx Ed, for the free access link👇

Edward Nirenberg@enirenberg.bsky.social · 10mo ago

link without paywall: archive.ph/vXqVf#select...

NEW!🦠🌡️ : What makes a "dengue year" like 2023-24? It's hard to pin down an answer unless you can homogenize out all the spatial variation and temporal trends. But once you do, the answer is pretty clean: dengue years are hot years. Last one of the year (unless...?) 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

another day, another article with fake or misleading citations and substandard methods being published in a megajournal despite my rejection recommendation 🤷

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

We did some stats, stats on cats. To find FIV rates, in strays and pets. With sequenced strains, evolution was tracked, Now in Vet Research, Cat stat map graphs 🥳 🐈‍⬛ 🧮 🗺️ � @pierrebessiere.bsky.social @epidesa.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Seroprevalence and genetic diversity of feline immunodeficiency virus in outdoor cats in France - Veterinary Research

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a retrovirus that causes lifelong infections in cats and may lead to immune dysfunction. Despite its importance for feline health, there is limited FIV data from...

link.springer.com

H3N2 preprint: there are concerns of a severe incoming influenza season due to the drifted H3N2 K clade. We at @psioxford.bsky.social analysed epi data and ran scenario models to see what we could discern about K clade transmission dynamics: zenodo.org/records/1770.... (1/18)

Fresh start to the day with some Grade-A LinkedIn AI slop

🌈 The website for the inaugural rainbowR conference is now live! 🎉 🗓️ Save the date: Feb 25th-26th, 2026 📣 Call for submissions is open 👯 We're bringing together LGBTQ+ R users to promote our work and foster connections among community members conference.rainbowr.org

– rainbowR conference

conference.rainbowr.org

Sure academic spam and predatory journal solicitations are unwanted clutter, but starting the day with being called "eminent" and told "your recent publication has been provisionally selected for the "Best Researcher Award."" Why yes go off queen 🥰

(With apologies to Randall Munroe)

This is today at 3pm uk time. As a change of pace I think there will be a fairly heavy #julialang component

Sam Abbott@seabbs.bsky.social · last yr.

For this weeks #epinowcast seminar at 3pm UK time online we have Sandra Montes speaking about dynamic survival analysis and optimal control policy for infectious disease modelling. www.epinowcast.org/seminars/202...

I love this. Explainer: There are 100 outcomes (all squares) each equally likely. Wiggly lines event happens 20% of the time; grey event happens 30% of the time. >

David K Butler@davidkbutler.bsky.social · last yr.

This came up in the staff meeting today: how the ordinary English meaning of the word “independent” does not describe at all how a Venn diagram looks, and what to do to fix that. #MathSky www.adelaide.edu.au/mathslearnin...

yeah we're into LLMs (Large Lamb-bridge Models)

Incidentally, in my experience this is the ultimate way to tell an arts nerd from a stem nerd. Arts nerd like the aesthetics of the left side, stem nerds like the logic of the right side. Linguists, being right at the periphery, refuse to choose sides.

Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · last yr.

Fight. "," or "",

a bit delayed, but still hot: ‪‪A phylodynamic study, conducted in southwestern France, on the importance of farm density when it comes to avian influenza spread: www.nature.com/articles/s42... @claireguinat.bsky.social @epidesa.bsky.social

Poultry farm density and proximity drive highly pathogenic avian influenza spread - Communications Biology

A study using phylodynamics to investigate highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N8 spread in southwestern France in 2020 and 2021 demonstrates that a single introduction led to rapid spread, mainly in duck farms, with farm density driving transmission.

nature.com

Chuffed to announce that registration for the HPAI Modelling Challenge is now open! Interested in testing your modelling team's outbreak response capabilities in a synthetic, peacetime setting? Want to contribute to the improvement of HPAI epidemic preparedness? Check out below:

HPAI Modelling Challenge@hpai-mod-challenge.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 Registration is OPEN 🚨 Join the International Mathematical Modelling Challenge on HPAI! Participate alongside other modelling teams as you: 🌍 simulate outbreaks 🧮 test management strategies 🤝 strengthen epidemic preparedness #HPAIModChallenge #HPAI #Epidemiology #OneHealth #DiseaseDynamics

Recently came across the really useful term 'Moat of Low Status' from Cate Hall. It describes why we find it so difficult to take steps required to fulfil our ambitions - if we're already good at one thing, it's hard to endure being bad at something else.

Learn to love the Moat of Low Status

It hurts, but less than you think

usefulfictions.substack.com