🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

Are you based in the UK and interested in #teaching #statistics (in the #lifesciences but even outside!)? Would you like to discuss #challenges and #strategies with other people from different disciplines?

Then we invite you to a #workshop based upon a cross-UK survey of undergraduate teaching in study design and data analysis for #Biology, #Biomedical Science, #Medicine and #Psychology. The workshop aims to critically examine teaching practice with an eye on improving research reproducibility as a part of science reform.

What can you gain from the workshop?

- Cross-disciplinary perspective on the challenges faced and approaches to overcome them, and solidarity that comes from openly discussing challenges;

- Resources for teaching/to influence teaching of stats in an attendees’ own institution;

- Opportunity to benchmark your teaching programs versus those nationwide;

- Opportunity to gain “outside the box” (cross-discipline) perspective on why and how to teach study design and analysis;

- Knowledge of approaches and software people are using across UK to do/teach data analysis.

The workshop will occur *12 June*, 2024, at the University of Manchester. We anticipate the fee will be less than £20 (and will most likely be free)

Below, we provide links to (1) view the workshop's itinerary and (2) to sign up to indicate your general interest (we are gauging interest at the moment for organisational purposes; registration will follow).

Link for itinerary:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fj_VN3_bJ9H1kXpXqFjVqPR6Kbg5ErVFq7iKldlltu0/edit?usp=sharing

Link to indicate interest:
https://forms.office.com/e/yfTsyPe49e

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Organising committee:

- Crispin Jordan (University of Edinburgh)
- Nicola Romanò (University of Edinburgh)
- Kasia Banas (University of Edinburgh)
- Vanessa Armstrong (Newcastle University)
- William Kay (Cardiff University)

Science journalism never fails to disappoint.

https://www.vox.com/culture/24108638/3-body-problem-science-physics-theory-explained-how-real-is-it This is one of those "the real science behind the show" things, and it says faster-than-light communication is possible through quantum entanglement. The author completely misses the point of the expert quote cited. #Ansible

Up and at 'em, people! These dungeons aren't going to crawl themselves!

Some guy was saying some quite disgusting anti-trans stuff on facebook. I called him a moron, and he tried to shame me for name calling. This was my response:

As I have said countless times, I will always call people the names that they are.. dont want to be called a moron, dont be a moron. As someone who insists on only addressing people by their genitals I figured you would be in full support of such a concept. I guess its not so great when people label you in a way you dont want to be labeled huh?

#LGBT #LGBTQ #Trans #TransRights

I want to apologize to the whole #fediverse community, sincerely, for my recent behaviors over the last 4 months.

If i have been rude or even short tempered with any of you my apologies you likely did not deserve it. Read on if you’d like to know the story and you can decide if I should be forgiven or not.

I know several months ago I made a similar apology, and this may fall on deaf ears, but I hope some of you will hear me out.

First off my last apology came at the face of an Israeli mob death threat on both me and my family. That added a lot of stress at the time and certainly led to me being a bit rude with some people, not an excuse but I do want to rehash it a bit for context. Many of you have noticed since then I do not go out without an open-carry weapon on my hip, this is why.

That said that is not the source of this apology but it is loose related.

I have been dealing with some health issues that, while not life threatening they have severely limited me in some ways. Specifically a very severe sleep disorder. The sleep disorder, and a brain fog that made it very hard for me to think and function normally. In and of itself these werent the root cause, there were underlying issues. But my attempt to treat the symptoms (since the underlying causes we unknown) actually led to a worsening of symptoms long term despite providing some help in the short term. I will explain.

Most of my life I had ADHD as a diagnosis, but it had never been a hindrance to me, in fact I saw it as something that improved my intellectual abilities overall. However this diagnosis allowed me to receive an adderall prescription to try to address the sleep disorder and brain fog, not to treat the ADHD directly, which I have been on for about the last 4 months. It was a low dose (20mg once a day in the morning to wake up). At first it addressed my symptoms with amazing results, but over time it led to a cure to my sleep issue but the brain fog got much much worse. In addition to that my irritability when interacting with people was worse and I have been quite dis-tempered with some of you, and I am deeply sorry for that if this describes you. It certainly continued to cure the sleep issue however and since normal sleep is needed for me to do my work i felt i needed to continue.

Recently however I decided to take matters into my own hands and stop relying on doctors. Instead I got labs through shady means to test for things doctors were dismissive of and wouldnt in the past let me get authorization to have tested. Namely my testosterone levels, thyroid hormone levels, and various blood sugar indicators. These tests revealed three underlying issues: 1) A severely low T-level (so low the tests couldn’t even register trace amounts) 2) An extremely high Thyroid-stimulating hormone, 3x above the maximum normal range 3) metabolic disorder causing blood sugar and insulin irregularities (which likewise led to extreme runaway hunger).

At this point I found a doctor who was finally willing to listen to me, armed with a mountain of ill gotten blood tests and managed to convince her to test me properly for verification and finally treat my underlying diseases.

As of about a week ago I started treatment for my underlying diseases, needing to take injections of about 3 drugs, soon to be 4. Knowing that the root cause could finally be addressed I figured around the same time last week I could quit both the adderall and the sleeping medication entirely. Now that the underlying treatments are starting to work, and the old treatments out of my system I feel the best I’ve felt in years. I already lost 16 lbs, my brain fog has mostly evaporated, and while my sleep is still recovering it was quite improved last night… So while i have a ways to go to be 100% I am already back to my old self, how I used to be before the brain fog began. and certainly doing better than I was doing even 6 months ago.

I will do my best, going forward to treat you all with the respect and due consideration you deserve. Again my apologies.

So I finally figured it out.

I decide to buy a new birdwatching monocular. The one I picked is the same brand with my current 8x42 binocular. And I argued that purchasing a telephoto camera like nikon P950 or Canon SX70 HS is not worth. I generally use phone to take pictures and I'm fine with that. And I don't want to carry extra weight.

Also looks like Nikon and Canon are moving forward from telephoto cameras and now it's too late to go into that line of products. And the performace is relatively similar to my phone. So why don't I just use my phone?

The birdwatching monocular I'm planning to buy has 20x to 60x zoom with 82mm objective lens, combined with 3x telescope lens from my phone, I can get 180x zoom (I hope that's how physics works). And It saves money. That's the main point.

Now I'm looking forward to get my first month of salary 😋
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And when I don't watch bird, I can use it to watch my neighboor. (jsut kidding)

Our newest paper has been published. Based on machine learning with k-medoids #clustering we identified three different signatures of #thyroid #homeostasis that predict the prognosis of patients with #Takotsubo syndrome.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38502972/
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2024.105063

@freemo You haven't been short tempered with me that I recall, but just to say sorry you've had all that and glad you're (from the sound of it) on the right track now

@freemo @mitexleo it's no different to a resistance group killing three nazi occupiers in France, and the whole village bring slaughtered in retaliation.

#oradoursurglane

@Vincarsi

Difficult to discuss solutions, if the problem can't be properly defined.

@freemo @aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom

@freemo

Hang in there. You definitely do not want to be cycling with uppers and downers. You will not get good sleep and you do not want to tax your liver because your liver has to work well when you sleep.

Your liver is what re-charges your brain to prepare for the next day, so no surprise you were dealing with the brain fog.

@randahl I feel like the judge should have made it a point to make this day fall on christmas.

Wait isnt it ramadan! Even better, its a gift to the Muslims, Trump is going to love that :)

Moin Europe! 🌤️

We are one day away from the fire sale of Trump's assets. 🔥

Have an excellent day! ♥️