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@blancahimes

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18.11.2024
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Latest posts by @blancahimes

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Slide designs that present themselves: The assertion–evidence template Your slides are not your talk.

A simple design framework that will massively improve your slides and your public speaking
clauswilke.substack.com/p/slides-tha...

15.08.2025 11:10 👍 108 🔁 49 💬 2 📌 6
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Super excited to share our new phenome-wide comparison of polygenic and proteomic risk scores in 40,000 people. We find proteins generally outpredict genetics for disease incidence, but polygenic prediction remains important in heritable diseases. medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.10.25331242v1

15.07.2025 01:32 👍 11 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 0
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Lineage-resolved analysis of embryonic gene expression evolution in C. elegans and C. briggsae The constraints that govern the evolution of gene expression patterns across development remain unclear. Single-cell RNA sequencing can detail these constraints by systematically profiling homologous ...

Happy to announce our paper comparing embryonic gene expression between C. elegans and C. briggsae, work led by Christopher Large with Rupa Khanal and in collaboration with Junhyong Kim and Bob Waterston. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

20.06.2025 20:25 👍 81 🔁 32 💬 5 📌 5

😮

14.06.2025 13:28 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

In my 8 years on study sections, I never saw this

03.05.2025 16:40 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.

16.04.2025 21:00 👍 2630 🔁 603 💬 143 📌 127
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Calling all health professionals who document pt care in the EHR! lnkd.in/ek6V2thU Please take the trend burden survey so we can track and reduce excessive doc burden for clinicians. Only takes 2 minutes. #AMIA25x5 #trendburden

09.04.2025 14:12 👍 3 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
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Evidence Aggregator: AI reasoning applied to rare disease diagnostics Retrieving, reviewing, and synthesizing technical information can be time-consuming and challenging, particularly when requiring specialized expertise, as is the case of variant assessment for rare di...

New preprint! We worked with @msftresearch.bsky.social and @broadinstitute.org to see whether large language models (LLMs) can be useful to variant scientists in deciding whether genetic variants seen in a patient are responsible for their disease. tl;dr yes they can: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

15.03.2025 02:43 👍 143 🔁 47 💬 1 📌 1

In cutthroat cultures, people kiss up and kick down. They protect themselves by currying favor with people in power and exploiting those without it.

In supportive cultures, people speak up and shield down. They protect others who lack power by raising problems to those who have it.

04.03.2025 17:05 👍 686 🔁 170 💬 14 📌 14

FYI not only is Pubmed Central a good replacement, @dimensions-ai.bsky.social has a free version with almost complete fulltext search (80%+) for 152 million pubs and datasets. It includes all of Pubmed. You can even filter by Pubmed.

02.03.2025 08:40 👍 102 🔁 45 💬 5 📌 3
We're not done yet | 18F

I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F.

18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it.

We made this website to tell our story:
18f.org

01.03.2025 22:38 👍 93151 🔁 31039 💬 3190 📌 1401
Michelle Beutler cleared 67 trees off a U.S. Forest Service road in two days. It was the spring of 2023, after a record-breaking winter in the Stanislaus National Forest in California’s Sierra Nevada. Beutler, 59, worked alone with a chain saw to remove every fallen tree on a 10-mile stretch of road between the town of Long Barn in Tuolumne County and the popular Hull Creek Campground. She single-handedly finished the work so the road could open in time for Memorial Day.

As a recreation technician based out of the Summit Ranger Station in the Stanislaus National Forest, Beutler’s job was to clean toilets, pick up trash and maintain recreation sites and campgrounds up and down Sonora Pass. She’d typically drive her Forest Service truck 100 miles a day. She sprayed pit toilets with a fire hose. She wiped away graffiti and removed thousands of pounds of house trash, old furniture and useless stuff that people dumped in the forest. She extinguished hundreds of abandoned and illegal campfires. She assisted law enforcement during emergency accidents, helping officers navigate a swath of rugged forest land that she grew up on and knows intimately.

Michelle Beutler cleared 67 trees off a U.S. Forest Service road in two days. It was the spring of 2023, after a record-breaking winter in the Stanislaus National Forest in California’s Sierra Nevada. Beutler, 59, worked alone with a chain saw to remove every fallen tree on a 10-mile stretch of road between the town of Long Barn in Tuolumne County and the popular Hull Creek Campground. She single-handedly finished the work so the road could open in time for Memorial Day. As a recreation technician based out of the Summit Ranger Station in the Stanislaus National Forest, Beutler’s job was to clean toilets, pick up trash and maintain recreation sites and campgrounds up and down Sonora Pass. She’d typically drive her Forest Service truck 100 miles a day. She sprayed pit toilets with a fire hose. She wiped away graffiti and removed thousands of pounds of house trash, old furniture and useless stuff that people dumped in the forest. She extinguished hundreds of abandoned and illegal campfires. She assisted law enforcement during emergency accidents, helping officers navigate a swath of rugged forest land that she grew up on and knows intimately.

When OMB head Russ Vought talks about deliberate efforts to put federal employees "in trauma" and make them quit their jobs, he's talking about people like Michelle, recently fired by Musk/Trump.

www.sfgate.com/california/a...

24.02.2025 00:04 👍 3391 🔁 1300 💬 70 📌 63
Streamlit

I've been developing a semantic search tool that covers not just bioRxiv and medRxiv, but the entire PubMed database. This means you can search across a massive collection of biomedical research using keywords, questions, hypotheses, or even full abstracts. Try it out: mssearch.xyz

16.02.2025 19:02 👍 930 🔁 219 💬 34 📌 16
Bar charts of employee tenure, salary, and age from the DOGE website. The y axis is unlabeled, and horizontal lines providing some sense of scale are unevenly spaced

Bar charts of employee tenure, salary, and age from the DOGE website. The y axis is unlabeled, and horizontal lines providing some sense of scale are unevenly spaced

not sure what's worse about the DOGE site: unsecured databases, leaking of classified information, or these chart crimes

15.02.2025 13:59 👍 1157 🔁 158 💬 67 📌 36

I was hoping that my first bsky post would be more cheerful. I recently joined NIH (NIEHS) as a PO. I fought hard for this position and was so excited to support health science from a new vantage point… I picked up my life and moved to NC. Unfortunately, my time at NIEHS was short lived.

16.02.2025 15:49 👍 607 🔁 114 💬 28 📌 7
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Leveraging large language models for academic conference organization - npj Digital Medicine We piloted using Large Language Models (LLMs) for organizing AMIA 2024 Informatics Summit. LLMs were prompt engineered to develop algorithms for reviewer assignments, group presentations into sessions...

Our paper on leveraging large language models for academic conference organization (the AMIA 2024 Informatics Summit) was published today in npj Digital Medicine.

#LLMs
#informatics

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

15.02.2025 01:15 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
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Unseen Commercial Forces Could Undermine Artificial Intelligence Decision Support Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform health care, yet without robust safeguards, unseen commercial interests could distort care by prioritizing profit over patient well-being. The ph...

My Perspective in @NEJM_AI. AI could distort clinical decision-making in ways that prioritize profit over patient care. Oversight & regulation must go beyond performance metrics alone to address hidden commercial forces that could shape decision support. ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

06.02.2025 16:14 👍 13 🔁 4 💬 2 📌 0

Excited to have a paper accepted in Nature Portfolio’s npj Digital Medicine today with Yuan Luo, Blanca Himes and Eileen Koski based on our experiences with the AMIA 2024 Informatics Summit.

31.01.2025 05:32 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

What a great set up! Is that your office on campus? If so, you’ve got one of the nicest ones I’ve seen 😁

25.12.2024 13:18 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Graphical summary of our paper.  In mice, prior lower airway exposure to diverse inflammatory stimuli, including chronic bacterial infections such as M. tuberculosis, acute bacterial infections such as pulmonary S. aureus, viral infections such as Influenza A, type-II allergic responses such as the OVA-Alum model, activation of pulmonary TLR9 by CpG or pulmonary TLR1/2 by Pam3CSK4
 leads to reduced viral burden upon subsequent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (SCV2). (2) This SCV2 restriction occurs prior to induction of SCV2-specific adaptive immune responses 
and is mediated through innate immune responses, including the induction of IFN-I, TNFα and IL-1 and sustained changes to the TRM (Tissue resident macrophage) cellular 
compartment and the pulmonary epithelium. (3) Innate cytokine and TLR signaling to both recruited immune cells and the pulmonary epithelium creates a microenvironment in the 
lung that limits early replication of SCV2. IFN-I signaling to pulmonary ECs (epithelial cells) increases expression of interferon-stimulated genes, that likely cell-intrinsically limit viral
 replication. TNF- or IL-1 suppress SCV2 independently of IFN-I signaling. TNF acts exclusively through radio-resistant cell types such as the lung epithelium, whereas IL-1 affords 
control both direct and indirectly, through either stromal and hematopoietic cell types, to restrict overall early SCV2 burden.

Graphical summary of our paper. In mice, prior lower airway exposure to diverse inflammatory stimuli, including chronic bacterial infections such as M. tuberculosis, acute bacterial infections such as pulmonary S. aureus, viral infections such as Influenza A, type-II allergic responses such as the OVA-Alum model, activation of pulmonary TLR9 by CpG or pulmonary TLR1/2 by Pam3CSK4 leads to reduced viral burden upon subsequent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (SCV2). (2) This SCV2 restriction occurs prior to induction of SCV2-specific adaptive immune responses and is mediated through innate immune responses, including the induction of IFN-I, TNFα and IL-1 and sustained changes to the TRM (Tissue resident macrophage) cellular compartment and the pulmonary epithelium. (3) Innate cytokine and TLR signaling to both recruited immune cells and the pulmonary epithelium creates a microenvironment in the lung that limits early replication of SCV2. IFN-I signaling to pulmonary ECs (epithelial cells) increases expression of interferon-stimulated genes, that likely cell-intrinsically limit viral replication. TNF- or IL-1 suppress SCV2 independently of IFN-I signaling. TNF acts exclusively through radio-resistant cell types such as the lung epithelium, whereas IL-1 affords control both direct and indirectly, through either stromal and hematopoietic cell types, to restrict overall early SCV2 burden.

Best #Nikolaus 🎅! Our paper on how the 🫁 microenvironment can shape #innate immunity against #viruses is out @sciimmunology.bsky.social This was a herculean effort brilliantly led by @pauljbaker.bsky.social who singlehandedly established the model in the lab during the pandemic. 🧪 #Immunosky 1/9

06.12.2024 22:37 👍 296 🔁 84 💬 28 📌 9

Incredibly honored to be interviewed in this special issue @naturemethods.bsky.social and have work from the lab highlighted!

Also, thanks for letting me share some thoughts on spatial atlases and where we are as a community to extract meaningful info from the these valuable data resources! 🧪🧬💻

07.12.2024 01:57 👍 48 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 1

Major crisis with dwindling #Pediatricians and Peds #subspecialists.

#PedsPulm: only 48% of positions, 36% of programs filled. Similar for others.

Need fairer compensation that reflects growing complexity. Not sustainable if pay is 40% of what adult medicine makes.

#Medsky #Pedsky #PedPulmSky

06.12.2024 00:29 👍 27 🔁 7 💬 2 📌 1

I agree

03.12.2024 14:51 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is an excellent short paper that provides a nice framework for thinking about building the evidence base for the efficacy of AI.

27.11.2024 16:27 👍 13 🔁 8 💬 1 📌 0

Ooohhhhh! Yes, agreed!

24.11.2024 23:18 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Really? I thought this was the friendly place

24.11.2024 14:20 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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🎨 In case anyone need…

The NIH BioArt Source is an awesome library of *free* professionally drawn illustrations for scientific presentations or figures. Downloadable in HD. Thank you NIH for this invaluable tool 🙏!

Check it out 👇
bioart.niaid.nih.gov

23.11.2024 15:49 👍 1206 🔁 494 💬 45 📌 28
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Read this detailed account of how Nancy Hopkins and others made progress for #womeninscience The young trainees in my lab had never even heard of the MIT report 😱

21.11.2024 00:14 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This may be a relapse and not a fix, but here I am. At least for now.

19.11.2024 02:38 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0