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We are less than one month away from the end of the federal fiscal year, and traditionally there are internal deadlines for agencies to allocate their final spending by around September 9. Right now, the NSF is on track to issue about 4000 fewer (!!) awards in FY26 than it did annually back in FY21-FY24, and 2000 fewer than it did in the incredibly tumultuous FY25 (with its government shutdowns and mass cutbacks in agency personnel). This is dire, if like me you are a supporter of the agency and its vital role in the US research ecosystem. Perhaps even more distressing, the NSF is on track to underspend its FY26 budget appropriation (congressionally approved, presidentially signed) by between $1.25-1.5B, or 15-18%. This is essentially unprecedented - in the past, the NSF has always spent ~ 99% of its appropriation in a given fiscal year. Some large portion of this is from the mid-FY clawbacks that were reported in Science and Nature, supposedly squirreled away to support an as-yet unannounced OSTP "grand challenges" program. While technically the funds don't go away at the end of September, this kind of underspending raises the possibility of a pocket rescission. OMB and the executive branch have been pushing for massive cuts to the agency; Congress has disagreed. It sure looks like all the "see, don't worry, Congress didn't allow big cuts to the NSF" palliative statements don't hold up very well to scrutiny, if the majority party is content to just give up Article I power to the executive branch. In this period of complete flood-the-zone craziness, the mainstream news media seemingly doesn't have the bandwidth or interest to report on this; they seem to have judged that it's too obscure, it doesn't play in Peoria, the public doesn't really care. This kind of disruption will have ripple effects that last for many years and affect US scientific and economic competitiveness, and it's happening without much notice. This week's news about an agreement between NIH and DOD to funnel NIH funds for infectious disease to DOD (or, in the official statement, to work together on projects of mutual interest), is at least getting some public attention. Agencies agreeing to pass around at minimum hundreds of millions of dollars outside congressional oversight or what the appropriations acts say is another example of an Article I crisis, when the majority party basically hands over what are supposed to be congressional powers to executive branch. (An additional sciencey blog post coming soon!)
Yesterday I attended the 40th annual summer research colloquium of the Smalley-Curl Institute at Rice, a fun internal conference that provides a great opportunity for undergrads (including visitors), graduate students, and a few postdocs to present their work. The keynote speaker was our EVPR, Prof. David Sholl, who gave a very informative talk about reproducibility in the chemical engineering/materials literature. We hear a lot these days about crises of reproducibility in scientific research, and Prof. Sholl rightly points out that in some fields the expectation of reproducible results is high - no one would spend $1B on a chemical engineering plant if they weren't very sure that the catalytic processes were going to work as expected at scale. Keys to reproducibility include, unsurprisingly, repeated results and independent replication. One metaresult that was interesting is this paper, looking at the literature on metal-organic frameworks and how often there are published replications of syntheses; not as often as you would think or want! A truly surprising (to me, anyway) result is this one. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) (yes, that Teller) method is a long-established technique that uses gas adsorption measurements to infer the surface area of porous materials. Many research groups were given identical raw adsorption isotherms and asked to calculate the specific surface areas, resulting in a surprisingly large spread of results (Fig 1 of the paper). Clearly not everyone had the same analysis procedures even for a technique developed in the 1930s! Some take-away lessons from this are encapsulated here, in an article titled "Five easy ways to make your research more reproducible". Good stuff. The talk raised a number of questions relevant to our present era of huge enthusiasm about AI-based materials research and "self-driving" labs. If the AI models are all trained on the literature, and the literature is not representative of complete and reproducible procedures, that's a problem. One personal anecdote about reproducibility and its challenges in materials synthesis. Twenty years ago (!), I was working with a colleague who had a postdoc who was synthesizing Fe3O4 (magnetite) nanoparticles via wet chemistry methods (see here). We did some fun electronic transport experiments bridging very closely spaced electrodes with such nanoparticles, and we saw some very dramatic hysteretic response kick in as \(T\) was reduced below about 120 K. That's the temperature of the Verwey transition in magnetite, where the material enters a more insulating low temperature phase. Basically all of the devices we made with that batch of nanoparticles showed this phenomenon. Then the postdoc took up a faculty position and a senior grad student came in and took over the synthesis, and for several months, subsequent batches of nanoparticles just didn't seem to show the effect. The key issue is oxygen stoichiometry. Get a little oxygen rich, and you form nanoparticles that include some \(\gamma\)-Fe2O3, which doesn't have the Verwey physics and in nanoparticle form looks really similar in x-ray diffraction to the desired magnetite. Anyway, we started working with a collaborator who could grow epitaxial Fe3O4 films, and in those devices the electronic effect was there all the time. All this led to this publication and subsequent papers, and I still think it's a cool set of result about a nonequilibrium transition in a correlated material. In the end, after several months the chemistry grad student did get back to making nanoparticle batches that showed the transition. It turns out that at some point he had changed the length of a piece of tubing in the gas manifold, and unexpectedly that had altered the reaction kinetics just a little. Changing it back got the synthesis to be reliable again. This is an example of how finicky materials synthesis can be!
For non-US folks, feel free to skip. For US folks: The Office of Management and Budget, which for much of its history has been a comparatively uncontroversial element of the executive branch, has set rules and guidelines for how many executive-branch agencies conduct business and interact with, e.g., universities. For the purposes of how the research ecosystem operates, the most relevant is OMB's "Uniform Guidance" about how grants and contracts work. Periodically these rules are updated for various reasons, including the goals and policies of the presidential administration. The standard way this works is that the proposed changes are published in the Federal Register; there is a public comment period; OMB makes revisions and then publishes the new rules. In principle, Congress can act to override or prevent rule changes, but without the agreement of the President, this is an extremely challenging path. OMB has proposed sweeping changes to the Uniform Guidance, summarized here. These proposed rule changes are huge deviations from previous practice. For example, they would have all final grant decisions made by political appointees or hires of the executive branch (rather than, e.g., agency subject matter experts); grants could be cancelled at any time for essentially any reason (completely undefined insufficient support of the president's priorities), with no appeal process; international collaborations would be severely curtailed. That's just three for starters. Note that this would also go beyond just the public research enterprise - it would allow the executive branch to cancel funding for things like bridges, roads, schools, agriculture, etc. for undefined political reasons. It would be a huge transfer of power from Congress to the presidency. Here is another summary by the AAU. Here is an editorial essay from ars technica. The public comment period on this runs until July 13. Here is a link where you can make a comment. Here is a guide for how to be effective at this from Stand Up for Science. The APS has a tool for helping people to comment about specific aspects of the rule changes. It is also a good idea to contact congressional delegations (representatives, senators). It's important to have a clear public record about the proposed changes. They may try to implement these regardless, but if so, there will be a continued fight over this in Congress and through the courts.
I watched the webcast of the NAS State of Science address by outgoing NAS president Dr. Marcia McNutt. (I did not watch the panel discussion afterward, so sorry if I missed critical pieces.) A few thoughts on this: The intro music was a very classy baroque string quartet. Hard not to think of this scene from Titanic. The main theme was about ways to revitalize US science, and there were six main points that she wanted to emphasize, each with examples of relevant projects underway, ways to measure success, and the consequences of failure. That's fine, and I'll relay them below with some comments, but first an overall impression: This was largely an exercise in avoiding talking about the elephant in the room, the overt hostility toward and the attempted wanton dismantling of much of the publicly funded US research ecosystem by the executive branch. I'm unfortunately not surprised that this was largely brushed over, given the position of the Academies (see here). As the saying goes, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. The realization that the National Academies leadership do not feel empowered to have a frank discussion about this publicly has been depressing. Dr. McNutt mentioned that in her previous address, she had pointed out the US vulnerability in STEM by being so reliant on international talent, and that now that other countries are heavily investing in research, the US STEM research world needs to do a better job getting US citizens in the workforce. That's all true, but leaving out how the government leadership is explicitly trying to curtain international scholars and international collaboration seems like quite an omission. She mentioned in passing that industrial research in the US in the 1950s was tiny, nothing compared to the fraction of R&D it is today. Is that actually correct? I mean, that was the heyday of Bell Labs, IBM, GE, Westinghouse, and big research labs at companies like Ford and GM. Much has been written about this. The first big point was the need for improved relationships between universities and industry, and some examples of ways to encourage this, including relatively simple policy changes like making it easier for faculty and others to take leaves in industry. Certainly it would be broadly good for the US research ecosystem to have more diverse forms of support, and as I've written before, major industrial sectors with lots of capital rely in the long term on trained people. The second point was the need to realign the academic reward system, so that industrial/entrepreneurial/coalition-building activities are incentivized, rather than rewarding on lone-wolf PIs. That's fine, and honestly I think it's already happening to some large degree at major research universities. The third point was meeting the needs of the STEM workforce, though increased interactions with industry (including, e.g., prospective industrial employers helping to define dissertation topics), co-op efforts, some training in businessy aspects (note: the Sloan Foundation was pushing this 25 years ago.). This is all laudable to try, but I don't see how any of this actually addresses the issue of fewer STEM workforce participation from US citizens, which is quite complicated. The fourth point was the need to reduce regulatory burden. Sure, we all want to reduce bureaucratic BS. I have to say, though, that it was genuinely baffling to me that the most Dr. McNutt had to say about the threatened OMB rule changes (apart from a passing mention early on) is that they would increase bureaucracy. That isn't even in the top 15 problems raised by those changes. Remember, the default position of those pushing those rules is that academics are fundamentally untrustworthy and poor stewards of public resources. Fifth was the need for automated/self-driving labs. I agree completely that advanced degree training should not be driven by the need for cheap labor to do tedious lab tasks (e.g. a zillion cell cultures or chemical syntheses). Overall this was pretty innocuous. Sixth, Dr. McNutt emphasized the need to take on big challenges - researchers need to be bold and not play it safe, and peer review can be inherently biased toward incrementalism. She gave examples of large privately endowed institutes as enabling such work (MBARI, the Allen Institute). Apparently STAC will be proposing new multi-agency science and technology "breakthrough funds". The argument in favor of public investment in science in this section sounded rote rather than heartfelt. If anything, I thought knocking peer review right now at a time when OMB wants to ignore it at their pleasure was a weird position to take. To be clear: I don't think any of the ideas highlighted in the speech are actually bad (necessarily). It just avoided emphasizing that publicly funded research has been incredibly beneficial, and that irreversible harm is being done. The statement that science agencies "have seen a loss of key personnel" is the worst kind of passive voice garbage. A hundred thousand technical personnel leaving agencies is not something that just "happened" like the weather. Being quiet, avoiding confrontation, and only trying to work behind the scenes is not the leadership that is needed now. (See, I can do passive voice, too.) I will try to get back to more science posting....
More in science
Stephen J Gould (still my favorite science essayist) wrote an excellent article in 1985 (Red Wings in the Sunset, later published in his book, Bully for Brontosaurus) about artist and naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer. Thayer wrote about how animals use coloration as camouflage – what he called “cryptic coloration”. His ideas were solid, but he made a classic mistake that scientists sometimes make, overapplying their key discovery. Thayer argued that all animal coloration is cryptic. For example, he argued that flamingos are pink because it hides them in the setting sun (hence the title of the essay). This is a transparently absurd argument, and it shows how Thayer tried to shoehorn all evidence into his preferred and absolute narrative. It is better to assume that nature is complex, and all explanations are at best partial (unless proven otherwise). Animal coloration, in fact, can serve many different purposes, only one of which is camouflage. Thayer also struggled with the male peacock, for example. Butterflies appear to be another example. Actually, many butterflies are camouflaged on the underside of their wings, so that when they are at rest with their wings up they tend to blend into their surroundings. But the top side of their wings are often very colorful and not camouflaged at all. One assumption is that the brightly colored part of their wings is to attract mates. This may be true, but that does not mean the coloration does not serve another function. Often animals use visual cues when choosing their mates that are markers for health and success. As evidence that butterfly wing color may be serving a survival benefit, if you look at birds that feed on insects during flight, they target dully-colored moths much more than brightly colored butterflies, even though the butterflies should be easier to see. A recent study tests the hypothesis that the brightly colored and patterned top side of butterfly wings may have evolved to produce an optical illusion to confuse predators. The idea of using optical illusions as visual protection in animals is not new. For example, zebra stripes allow zebras to hide in the herd, confusing predators as to where one zebra ends and another begins. Stripes on zebras and snakes may also serve to confuses predators about their direction of motion, but this hypothesis has not been tested previously. The researchers started by filming butterflies taking off using high speed cameras. They found that the wing patterns created a powerful “barber pole” illusion. The stripes on a barber pole look like they are moving up or town even when the pole is just spinning. Similarly, the wing patterns combined with the way butterflies move their wings and their flight dynamics combine to create a similar barber pole illusion, making the butterfly look like it is moving down when it is in fact moving up. They also showed that this strategy is phylogenetically widespread. They then did modeling in silico and showed digital creatures converge on butterfly-like patterns. To understand how effective this strategy can be it’s important to understand how catching a butterfly in midflight works. Butterflies have a very jumpy pattern of flight. In order to grab them in flight, a bird will have to zero in on their exact location with a few hundred millisecond and millimeter precision. If the butterfly suddenly zigs while the bird perceives that they zagged, the birdy will miss. Alternatively they may make only a glancing blow or grab an edge of a wing rather than their body. Either way, the butterfly lives another day and the bird goes hungry. In zebras this effect has been referred to as the “visual dazzle” strategy. Now there is some empiric evidence that this works not just by confusing predators, but by creating a specific optical illusion. Zebras will also zig-zag to evade predators, and misjudging that last second movement can cause a pouncing lioness to miss. There are two specific illusion effects at work – the aperture effect and spatiotemporal aliasing. The aperture effect refers to the brain’s processing of visual information through a limited field of view. The visual system has a hard time processing many moving stripes, and specifically will confuse the direction of movement (this is the barber pole effect). So a predator may miss a zebra’s vertical movement, for example, and perceive all movement as perpendicular to the stripes. They may also misinterpret the angle of movement and only perceive the perpendicular motion. Spatiotemporal aliasing has to do with ratio of the movement with the “refresh” speed of the brain’s visual processing. You have likely seen this with spinning wheels that have spoke-like features. As the wheel slows down, at one point the spinning will appear to stop completely, and then will appear to spin backwards. This is simply an artifact of your brain’s visual processing speed. Now imagine being surrounded by a field of rapidly moving and zig-zagging stripes, and your brain trying to make sense of all this information, while trying to compensate for these powerful optical illusions. Butterflies don’t have a herd to hide in, but they do have the added element of their flapping wings. Not only are they moving in a way to maximize these optical illusions, their wings are also doing this, while alternating top-side and bottom-side. Some butterflies have bright spots on their colorful upper wings, that will flash as they flap their wings, causing another type of dazzling disorientation. I will end by returning to my original point – do not be limited in the types of explanations that you reach for when trying to understand nature. Nature is not so limited. Animals do not just use coloration for camouflage and attracting mates. They can also use their coloring for thermoregulation, for mimicking other animals, for producing a danger-signal to would-be predators, and to communicate with other members of their species. It can communicate mood, danger, or social status. Now we have to add optical illusions to the list. There may be other strategies yet to be discovered or imagined. The post Butterflies Are Masters of Illusion first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
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