There has been discussion over the past week about what the new @Apple M1 chip means for bioinformatics. Some have predicted the end of compbio on @Apple. Others are more optimistic.
We got a Mac Mini & @pmelsted easily compiled kallisto bustools #scRNAseq on it. Results below:
Several points: 1. Compilation of code on the M1 ARM architecture was easy for kallisto and bustools because they have few dependencies. In fact we did it before for the ARM Rock64 which is why this time there was no problem with the M1.
2. @Apple has done a great job with Rosetta 2. M1 emulating x86 is still faster than previous Macs. And the extra cores are great for running kallisto. macrumors.com/2020/11/15/m1-…
3. The M1 running native code appears to be ~20 faster than the Rosetta 2 emulator. That 5nm fabrication has made a difference! And it turns out that @pmelsted's minimalist engineering has paid off so kallisto and bustools can take advantage of this.
4. I respectfully disagree that nobody wants to run bioinformatics tools on their laptop. It's very convenient at times and many kallisto users work with the software locally.
5. @pmelsted and @sinabooeshaghi et al. are wrapping up some improvements to kallisto and bustools with new releases for both tools coming soon. We'll include the M1 binaries with those releases.
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In @NobelPrize news, the 2013 chemistry laureate links to a thread that says NIAID is "reminding people of their importance" right now because of a "vested interest" in maintaining high levels of @NIH funding, funding which they do not deserve.
From the outset of the #covid19 pandemic, it's been clear that risk of death increases sharply with age. But why? The intuitive hypothesis is that ACE2 expr. increases w/ age, but early in April, @sinabooeshaghi and I showed the opposite is true in mice. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Now, in a paper from the labs of @tuuliel and Christenson, @silvakasela et al. have performed a careful analysis in human, and they find the same.
BTW we saw the same patterns for ACE2 expression with sex in mice, namely males had *lower* levels of ACE2, and @silvakasela et al. find the same in humans despite the risk of death being much *higher* for males.
Trump was administered REGN-COV2 by compassionate use request. "...this type of compassionate use..is..intended for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions who do not have any viable or available treatment options..." investor.regeneron.com/static-files/f…
The only published evidence on effectiveness of REGN-COV2 so far is a preprint that showed "REGN-COV2 reduced the amount of virus and associated damage in the lungs of non-human primates." It was tested in rhsesus macaques and hamsters. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
A recent descriptive analysis of the ongoing trial shows "..a 0.51 log10 copies/mL greater reduction (p=0.0049) in patients treated with high dose, & a 0.23 log10 copies/mL greater reduction (p= 0.20) in patients treated with low dose, compared to placebo" investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/…
In response to criticism of the lack of any women on the recent @numpy_team paper, the authors have floated a narrative that this is the result of "societal constraints", and meager origins of the project. The truth does not abide.
Let's start with a bit of history. NumPy has its origins in code developed in the 1990s, with the first official version released by Travis Oliphant (@teoliphant) in 2006. Kudos to him for an important effort; NumPy has had a huge impact on scientific software. 2/
However the idea that all the developers were men because of "societal constraints", that there just weren’t any interested women, and that they’ve always wanted to work with women but just couldn’t because they were not funded... that's just baloney. 3/
Does diversity matter? It sure does. Just one consequence: by shutting out women, the SciPy team arguably bears considerable responsibility for driving women to R. 3/ reshamas.github.io/why-women-are-…