James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 13/09/2026What does this mean “Approved by the White House”? It came from the President, who no doubt didn’t write it, someone else (in the White House) wrote it. Is there a separate entity to review? Or does it need court challenge? 011
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Fascinating article with interviews from Onion staff, and others, giving context to the 9/11 issue. 000
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Whoa. First thought: Please license to Apple (and Garmin, idm). Let us have it in a watch, not a big ring. Second thought: Does finger glucose match core glucose? Turns out, sometimes not! Capillary BG changes first, and can differ from interstitial fluid BG. Amazing tech tho, wow. 240
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 11/08/2026Fascinating chloropleth map of the USA showing the % of US-born adults born in their state of residence. New York almost solidly 85%. People didn’t plan to end up in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, even New Hampshermont. On the way somewhere, stopped on the way, stayed? 000
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 07/08/2026What an exciting time to be studying genome biology, alongside monumental advances in sequencing technology. Human and vertebrate telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genomes on the daily. Dataviz is going to need a major step up to help represent it all. Amazing work, fun times in science. 010
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 26/07/2026Love to see these words: “Thanks, on its way to CRAN.” Thanks Uwe Ligges! #rstats jamba-1.0.5 fixes a test for color conversion, edge case rounds slightly differently on one test machine. 🤷♂️ And new: reload_qmd_cache() Super useful when using Quarto for R with knitr cache enabled. 130
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 23/07/2026Elegant paper from the Guardia lab, first of many major papers to be sure! Congrats to @asmitasingh.bsky.social as well, great work! 031
Reposted by James M. WardZamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 22/07/2026"HPRC2 contributes 460 haplotypes that together capture over 99% of common variation observed in the All of Us Research Program v8 cohort" Also, coordinate system, transcriptomes,.. 0133
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 25/06/2026When you finally just catch the annoying fly that’s been buzzing about. … “Now what?” Seriously though, wonderful sketch! 120
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 25/06/2026Two talks, both of which describe paradigm-changing developments. ggsql brings ggplot2 dataviz to relational databases. Imagine all that wrangling already done at the database level gri-bullya (haha) brings Typst’s beautiful typesetting to the Rmarkdown/Quarto type of workflow. Stunning. 000
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Great timing, strong lineup of speakers including recently-re-discovered CUT&ID author @annanordin.bsky.social and that’s just 1/3rd of the morning’s presentations! 000
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 12/06/2026Remarkable CUT& adaptation that maps binding and performs IP to find protein partners? At the same time? My future Methods sections just got more interesting! (I hope, haha!) Excellent work by Dr. Nordin! @annanordin.bsky.social 141
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 08/05/2026I met Hadley Wickham! @hadley.nz Grateful for the time, the patience, the deep dive into AI, LLMs, sandboxes, and how on earth we might do quality checks for variable model output. Even the checkout history of his book at the NIEHS Library. Fantastic conversation with a generous human. 020
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 04/05/2026Wow, super excited to hear your talk, and I even wrangled into your agenda! I’ll be the one disproportionately enthusiastic. Haha. Safe travels. 010
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 01/05/2026@hadley.nz Hey Hadley, are you coming to North Carolina next week for the NIEHS talk? Celebrity excitement already activated, haha. 100
Reposted by James M. WardGene J. Mikulka @genejm1017.bsky.social · 02/11/2025If you are 25 years old, you have never known a moment where humans have not been in space. To celebrate the ISS's 25 years of permanent human presence in space, you can relive those moments thanks to Ben Fiest, who created ISS in Real Time. Visit here --- > issinrealtime.org #ISSInRealTimeissinrealtime.orgISS in Real TimeExplore 25 years onboard the International Space Station. 0219
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 08/10/2025From the first sentence of the Intro 🔥 and throughout, great paper and tool. Even the population PCA plot made a statement, really nice work. 010
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 16/08/2025Exciting work! And one more important pathway to add to the enrichment tests. 020
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 03/08/2025On urging an evidence-based approach to COVID origin. Reasonable review of the underlying logic. 010
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 30/07/2025The only opportunity here is finally to force Congress address it directly. They’ve been talking about it, with nothing definitive to address. Now, if nothing else (and it’s as close to nothing as it can be) there’s no more denying it. Congress passed flat budget, OMB acts as if they had cuts. 121
Reposted by James M. WardMichael Love @mikelove.bsky.social · 13/07/2025I recently ran a session at CSAMA with Laurent Gatto and this is the way. "Good enough" with knowledge of the tools that can help you get there. Here's some of the recs from the paper. 1378
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 11/07/2025Amazing paper, exactly what spatial transcriptomics is made for, and look at this system! Each hippocampus region lit up, it’s stunning. I was thrilled to play a part! #keepCA2weird 020
Reposted by James M. WardWEHI (The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) @wehi-research.bsky.social · 02/07/2025Researchers learned a function of enzyme MORC2, that helps organise DNA and turn off genes when not needed. Mutations in MORC2 cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a rare condition that weakens muscles. These findings could lead to new treatments. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 083
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 17/06/2025Relevant to projects focusing on effects of long term elevated heat. 000
Reposted by James M. WardScott McGrath @smcgrath.phd · 14/06/2025For those of you who may not have known him, Dr. Atul Butte, a pioneer in informatics, was the winner of the 2024 Morris F. Collen award, a pinnacle achievement in our field, as part of his storied career. His passing is a major loss to us all. RIP Dr. Butte #MedSkyvimeo.com2024 Morris F. Collen Award Winner - Atul Butte, MD, PhD, FACMIThis is "2024 Morris F. Collen Award Winner - Atul Butte, MD, PhD, FACMI" by AMIA on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them. 43411
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 05/06/2025Random Reddit post whereupon J learned (1) click lighters generate a tiny EMP that can turn off a computer monitor, and (2) desk chair pistons can do the same 🤯 Will this become a feature of desk chairs? “Certified EMP-free” www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...reddit.comFrom the pcmasterrace community on Reddit: My monitor turns off when I light this lighter at this exact angle. What is happening?Explore this post and more from the pcmasterrace community 000
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 24/05/2025Again, reminder for American policymakers that return on investment is 2.5x for NIH funded research. Includes many short term benefits to cancer patients, and many medium term benefits broadly to health and quality of life. This research is not wasteful spending. 000
Reposted by James M. WardJeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 23/05/2025Senator Durbin noted that some (I believe Republican Senators) had indicated the US had been doing more than its share of biomedical research and it was time for other countries take a turn. I felt I had to interrupt to respond... 20356106
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 22/05/2025My “Step 2. Draw the rest of the owl” jokes might lose their edge if I could actually draw the rest of the owl like this! Very nice. 000
Reposted by James M. WardJulia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 11/05/2025Thanks to everybody who chimed in! I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist. So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:> 651124273
Reposted by James M. WardThomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · 07/05/2025I am excited to share a new version of svglite for #rstats with the world. It includes support for all the new features in the graphics engine as well as providing a more powerful and polished experience for embedding web fonts in the file. Read all about it her:tidyverse.orgsvglite 2.2.0A new release of svglite has arrived, and with it full support for all the latest capabilities of the R Graphics Engine. Further, it finalizes the new approach to handling web fonts and font embedding... 29127
Reposted by James M. WardChristina ❌👑 @copperlight.bsky.social · 06/05/2025Another win for Justice Allison Riggs, this time in US District Court! Let’s hope Jefferson Griffin finally accepts his loss. (He has one week to appeal.) Source: bit.ly/4iRIqK5 021
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 11/04/2025A new R-4.5.0 function “grepv()” mimics a function I’ve used for years in jamba: vgrep(): value-returning grep and moreso vigrep(): case-insensitive value Okay I’m not the only one. 👀 Next up, version-type sorting? To order chromosomes chr1, chr2, … chr9, chr10 030
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 05/04/2025Well said. All ballot applications so far (30,000+) have had valid license or SSN on their application, not one has lacked info. The core issue is a coding glitch that “didn’t match” DMV/ID records, and simply stored “unverified.” Headlines calling it “a twist” are wildly misrepresenting the story. 000
Reposted by James M. WardKevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 27/03/2025Genomics yields biological and phenotypic insights into bipolar disorder rdcu.be/efkLZrdcu.beGenomics yields biological and phenotypic insights into bipolar disorderNature - Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder. 1116
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 26/03/2025Great thread, I’m excited to dig deeper into this preprint. We’re facing similar challenges as well. Rough summary: The effects of using a human genome reference which is not fully representative of worldwide populations. 000
Reposted by James M. WardWake County Democratic Party @wakedems.bsky.social · 11/03/2025👇THIS is who NIH/NIEHS is! Every day of every week, these scientists work to discover and develop life-saving meds and treatments that benefit us all. We should be proud of what the scientific community in NC has achieved. Let’s be more vocal about it, because he’s right, this touches every family. 041
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 12/03/2025It me 6-7 years of avoidance, haha. Iltimately not too bad, and the CRAN reviewers were great. Now I’m ready to push other jam packages to CRAN or Bioconductor. Let’s go. 130
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 11/03/2025This package looks great! Anything with color, to help my brain see the patterns. 000
James M. Ward @jmw86069.bsky.social · 02/03/2025Step 7 is key. Ideal world, nothing gets past step 7 even in the face of firings. The driver is federal responsibility to uphold the law. “Simply need confirmation of the legal aspects, until then my duty to the American people is to prevent access until it is legally clear.” Not personal of course. 000
Reposted by James M. WardAngus Johnston @angus.bsky.social · 28/02/2025I've seen three different articles on this, because the guy who owns the company that makes this stuff reached out to the press. He's got 400,000 boxes of life-saving goo sitting in a warehouse, and if USAID won't accept it, he's going to have to throw it out. 6425671274
Reposted by James M. Wardc0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 15/11/2024Desperately screaming: "Computer, exit" has thus far not yielded the desired result. I'm on trial 6,534. Will report back on results of additional trials. 21720173