Howie Weiss

Sept. 20 and 21 — Bruce Levin, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at @EmoryUniversity, will present the Russell E. Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology at Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library and virtually via Zoom. buff.ly/3Uo5Zio @PennStateBio @penn_state

I’m proud to be named a Champion of Science by the @scicoalition. Investments in basic research- especially at research universities- will drive American leadership in the next generation of innovation and technology. Thank you, @scicoalition, @penn_state, and @WSUPullman.

Super Bowl Confetti Made Entirely From Shredded Concussion Studies bit.ly/3gHnJ5I

See also althofer.de/miller-experim…

Legos in a washing machine - a model of the Miller-Urey experiment on amino acid formation in primordial soup, and more. Very cool. althofer.de/random-lego-st…

Type I Zoom error: you think people can hear you, but you’re actually on mute. Type II Zoom error: you think your muted, but actually people can hear you.

Vaccines that reduce infection & disease are needed to combat the pandemic. Here, @tianyangmao @BenIsraelow et al. describe our new mucosal booster strategy, Prime and Spike, to induce such immunity via nasal delivery of unadjuvanted spike vaccine 🧵 (1/) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Phenomenal paper just published in Science persuasively demonstrating that EBV causes most if not all multiple sclerosis. Phenomenal epidemiological design and technical achievement. 👏 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Our covid times :-) by @halltoons

The Microbial Olympics: 100 μm freestyle swimming. Reference: Nature Reviews Microbiology 10, 583–588 (2012) @joyfulmicrobe @micronimy @microbiologyjob @lucindaedoyle @NatureMicrobiol

Short NHS video on how to swab throat and nose for COVID using single swab. Not approved in US. youtu.be/5qHTBlxfNes

Good exposition of Bayes’ law applied to high false positive rate in genetic testing for rare diseases nytimes.com/2022/01/01/ups…

🧵It is now clear that we are going to have to get people to #MaskUp to get thru winter without US health care system collapse. #Omicron is way too contagious. #VaccinesWork & #GetBoosted, but they will not be enough on their own. So this thread is for people who hate masks:

Several vials labeled "smallpox" have been found at a vaccine research facility in Pennsylvania, the CDC said Tuesday. cp24.com/mobile/world/v…

Weiss group at Penn State looking to hire additional Postdoc to study how microbes grow and evolve in physically structured environments. Demonstrated computational modeling experience, especially, with PDEs or ML, is highly desired. psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic/j…

Much discussion lately in aerosol/disease transmission communities about the “5 micron cutoff” where droplets supposedly fall to ground w/in 1-2 m. @jljcolorado and @linseymarr has suggested ~50 microns. Here’s some video evidence for that. 50 micron droplets wafting in lab...

📌Evidence for airborne SARS-COV-2 transmission between 2 people who visited same bathroom 40 min apart* Conclusion backed up by contact tracing, CCTV, & virus' genomic sequence. *Bathroom was poorly ventilated due to malfunctioning air exhaust. Report: rb.gy/kz5xsh

"Don’t get me wrong. We need data produced from new technologies to advance understanding. But this is only the first step." go.nature.com/3k9EcSZ

Are there lab accidents and other anthropogenic disease sources? Yes. Are some of those events of a severity that could lead to outbreaks? Also yes. Here's our newly published list of 71 such incidents from 1975-2016 in @F1000Research: f1000research.com/articles/10-75…