Becky Smith

@rlsdvm.bsky.social

331

Followers

472

Following

613

Posts

Epidemiologist at UIUC, working in One Health

Posts Replies Media

Reposted by

Becky Smith

Hey folks. We are three days from launching The Unfamiliars. Please please please sign up here and share the link. I apologize in advance for being That Guy, but I’ve got…well, everything, riding on this one. www.backerkit.com/call_to_acti...

Get Ready for The Unfamiliarswww.backerkit.com From Ethan Kocak - Get Ready for The Unfamiliars

I'm always shocked at how recent this was. Medical trial ethics is a remarkably young field

May his memory be a blessing. 🧪https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/tuskegee-syphilis-study-whistleblower-peter-buxtun-has-died-at-age-86/

Tuskegee syphilis study whistleblower Peter Buxtun has died at age 86www.seattletimes.com The whistleblower who exposed the Tuskegee syphilis study that left hundreds of Black men untreated has died at age 86.

Added Congaree to our National Park gallery wall - we buy from local artists for every park we visit

Happy caturday! These are my own #epicat residents

Trolled by my 7yo: "Hello, I'm an epidemiologist. Do you want to hear about skin?" #episky

Another new(ish) paper from my group, looking at interviews with parents to understand how they dealt with virtual learning during the pandemic While most struggled, some parents of children with disabilities found benefits from lack of distractions and better scheduling

Exploring Parent Perceptions of Virtual Learning in School: Learning During a Pandemic | Social Education Research ojs.wiserpub.com

Reposted by

Becky Smith

Hey there - question - does anyone know of some good examples of the use of Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) in ecological research? #phdlife #ecology #stats

New paper out from our lab! We used graphical neural networks to forecast West Nile Virus in Chicago area mosquitoes. Trying to get better at predicting where and when WNV will pop up at a finer scale. #episky #statsky

Forecasting West Nile Virus With Graph Neural Networks: Harnessing Spatial Dependence in Irregularly Sampled Geospatial Datadoi.org <em>GeoHealth</em> is a transdisciplinary, open access environment and health sciences journal from the AGU publishing high-quality original research articles and commentaries.

Reposted by

Becky Smith

Writing the intro to the Backerkit page and some of you might find it uh...relevant.

#episky, I must introduce you to Florence Nightingale, aka Flo, a true #epicat So named because she nursed kittens on my sister's porch before adoption

Got into a discussion with partner, who is a statistician, about A/B testing (completely randomized design) and segmentation (stratification) Why do people feel it necessary to create new words for existing methods?

Alright, y'all, Illinois is lagging! Help out!

Alriiight lots of progress made today! Thank you for all who contributed! West Coast 24 The South 125 Northeast 136 Midwest 171 Wanna finish off some states? Maybe even a whole region?? Make it happen givebutter.com/Wj5JGG

United States of Science 2024givebutter.com By Skype a Scientist

Reposted by

Becky Smith

IT IS TIME. The 6th annual United States of Science Challenge begins NOW. Each bubble represents classrooms we matched w/scientists over the last year. $10 donations fill in bubbles. The first region to close all their bubbles wins! givebutter.com/Wj5JGG

United States of Science 2024givebutter.com By Skype a Scientist

Congaree has the best spiderwebs, y'all

Reposted by

Becky Smith

Greetings from Congaree National Park. Forest bathing for a few days

Everyone needs this, whether or not they menstruate

“She actually didn’t realize she was severely ill and needed medical care.”

Teens say they learn more in school about frogs’ bodies than their own19thnews.org A California bill would require public schools to cover menstrual health as part of their comprehensive sex ed curriculum.

I'm heading out on family vacation, so sharing some blooms from my native plant collection #HomegrownNationalPark

#SER2024 session titled "COVID-19", because that's a fairly discrete category 😉

#SER2024 session on data innovations in social epi

#SER2024 teaching session, a thread of cool ideas

#SER2024 session on quasi-experimental design and instrument based methods

#SER2024 Plenary from Bill Miller on his experience trying to address racism as a white man. We may be almost a generation apart, but we grew up in similarly white rural NY, so I appreciate where he's coming from

Wow, our College of Medicine has an annual farm visit for the med students so they can better understand farm health concerns and challenges!

Reposted by

Becky Smith

This is wonderful advice on reading a paper review.

Just watched Dr. Fauci's interview with Stephen Colbert. His explanation of the state of the science on COVID-19 origins was good, BUT . . . his definition of zoonotic was WRONG. Zoonotic diseases are shared AMONG humans and other animals. They're not just one direction.

TFW someone asks for 20-30 minutes at your advisory board meeting and spends the WHOLE time talking. After sending the materials last week for them to review. How do you train scientists to elicit feedback? And by that, I mean shut up and listen.

This is what it feels like to read disease modeling papers by math people who don't collaborate with biologists

Broken Model xkcd.com/2945

Okay, I'm really getting sick of this - we have a systematic review that has been desk rejected from multiple journals, including Scientific Reports(!), for being "outside the scope" when the only difference between this paper and others they have published is the country (an LMIC).