THREAD: Understanding pivot. Growing pressure from world population life-style will reach a point where it is damaging the capacity of Earth systems to an extent where life support will be challenged. It is simply a question of at what stage governments act. 1/X

https://t.co/xvP6tVlIaE
Quite a surprise. Ferguson isn’t qualified to comment on such things. He lacks understanding of basic biological concepts, partly explaining why his predictions are often so extreme.

That said, I’ll take him as an ally. It’s clear we’re already at herd immunity. How can I be sure? London had a huge peak of excess deaths in spring. The timing of peak deaths showed clearly that the pandemic was self-limiting. Recall much debate about whether the interval...

...between lockdown & peak deaths was long enough for lockdown to have been the cause of reducing deaths? The answer was “no”. But it was close & I can understand people thinking “well, it’s close, so perhaps it was lockdown that did it?”, thereby establishing a foundational...

...myth favoured by those who genuinely believe lockdown saves lives (it clearly doesn’t).
I’ll get to London & here immunity. But those wavering about the evidence about lockdown in spring really will benefit from cogitating on this graph.

In blue are the 30 trusts with the earliest date of peak deaths in spring. In red, the 30 with the latest peak deaths. For me, this is proof that national lockdown, which began Mar 23, played no role whatsoever in turning the pandemic. You’ll see some areas had peak daily...

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Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, we'll cover *State Quantities* and *Flow Quantities*.

This mental model can help us analyze many different entities -- from complex engineering systems to publicly traded companies.

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A "State Quantity" is something that's associated with a *specific point in time*.

For example, the number of followers a Twitter account has is a state quantity. This number can go up and down over time. But at any one *specific* time point, it's fixed.

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Similarly, the amount of cash a company has is a state quantity.

This cash balance can also rise and fall over time.

But pick any one *specific* time point -- and the company can only have one *specific* cash balance at that time point.

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By contrast, a "Flow Quantity" is something that's associated with a time *interval* rather than a time *point*.

For example, the number of followers gained by a Twitter account is a flow quantity. It's meaningful only when we specify a time interval (eg, the last 30 days).

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A simple analogy is that a State Quantity is like a photo -- a snapshot at a particular *point* in time.

But a Flow Quantity is like a video -- a record of events that take place during a particular time *interval*.

Heres the story of how I volunteered to be infected with 50 parasitic worms (hookworm) for a year as part of a research study. Check out this thread & follow me for more #parasite & marine biology content [t]
#ScienceTwitter
imgs: https://t.co/hH5YsfS0ay https://t.co/kVurE6BbTS

1st some background on the parasites I got. Hookworms are blood-feeding nematodes that live in the intestine of mammals including cats, dogs & humans. ~500 million people are infected with hookworm, mostly in tropical and subtropical areas including the southern USA

Infection with many worms (100+) can cause anemia, which is most problematic in kids, pregnant women, and the elderly. This clinical study was launched to try to develop a vaccine against hookworms to prevent infection

People become infected when baby worms living in the soil penetrate their skin. Baby worms hatch from eggs that infected people poop out. Where plumbing is scarce, poor waste disposal is a common source of heavy infections (100s to 1,000s of worms)

I volunteered to be vaccinated with an experimental hookworm vaccine (I was also paid). After vaccination, the vaccine (or placebo idk) was tested by infecting me with 50 hookworms (Necator americanus) that penetrated my skin from a patch of gauze I wore on my wrist for 1 hour

Wonder why your Ph.D./Master's application is being rejected?

Here are some insider reasons (from a committee member) that result in such "Love Letters" 👇

- A Short Thread

1) First, you should know that sometimes, an independent reviewer is required (especially in the US) to review applications even after PIs must have selected their candidates. So, even if any bias slips through the PI, the independent reviewer will pick it up.

2) Having said this, there are three major issues that application reviewers/committees often find with your application. These three components make your applications almost challenging to assess.

3) NUMBER ONE - Incomplete Applications

This occurs when you do not upload the requested documents needed to evaluate your file. Think of a candidate that did not send a GRE score when the institution clearly requires it for admission.

4) NUMBER TWO - Error laden Essays

This is particularly interesting because based on reports from this resource person, it is not particularly about how little your experience is but how you communicate it error-free or at least extensively minimized. This gives headache!