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I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS initiative and the Lunar & Planetary Institute — for almost eight years. But the run came to an end in October. Now an archive of the more than 400 columns is easily available at http://www.manyworlds.space. The stories focus … Continue reading "Many Worlds Archive is Available"
In a solar system far, far away, life of some sort is just waiting to be found. Or so the world of astrobiology sure hopes it is. The new player in the astrobiology world, now called the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), is planned to launch in the 2040s if all goes well. While it’s possible … Continue reading "Preparing For The Habitable Worlds Observatory, Our Best Shot at Finding ET Life"
Beware easy answers to the question of whether life exists beyond Earth. Be they “alien” skeletons in Mexico City, interstellar probes that briefly pass through our solar system, UFOs of all sorts and claims to have found “biosignature” chemical byproducts of life around planets where many other factors say that life cannot exist — their … Continue reading "A Real ET Discovery With Promise, Amid Some Other Quite Questionable Claims"
Bits of pebbles and dust from the asteriod Bennu that were collected during the long journey of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft should be landing in the Utah desert later this month. The delivery will be a first for NASA — its first sample return from an asteroid and one of a very small handful of space … Continue reading "After Seven Years Away Exploring an Asteroid, OSIRIS-REx is Landing Soon with Precious Samples"
An Indian spacecraft landed on the moon this month and a pioneering Japanese lunar lander is awaiting an imminent launch. A Russian craft trying to land in the same area — the southern polar region — recently crashed, as did a private effort by a joint Japanese-United Arab Emirates group and one by several Israeli … Continue reading "The Moon Rush Is On. Are We on Earth Ready For That?"
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We insist that large language models repeatedly translate their mathematical processes into words. There may be a better way. The post To Make Language Models Work Better, Researchers Sidestep Language first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Last week I wrote about the de-extinction of the dire wolf by a company, Colossal Biosciences. What they did was pretty amazing – sequence ancient dire wolf DNA and use that as a template to make 20 changes to 14 genes in the gray wolf genome via CRISPR. They focused on the genetic changes they […] The post OK – But Are They Dire Wolves first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
Massive changes in IQ scores over time are much less meaningful than people think
Many things have been happening in and around US science. This is a non-exhaustive list of recent developments and links: There have been very large scale personnel cuts across HHS, FDA, CDC, NIH - see here. This includes groups like the people who monitor lead in drinking water. There is reporting about the upcoming presidential budget requests about NASA and NOAA. The requested cuts are very deep. To quote Eric Berger's article linked above, for the science part of NASA, "Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion." The proposed cuts to NOAA are similarly deep, seeking to end climate study in the agency, as Science puts it. The full presidential budget request, including NSF, DOE, NIST, etc. is still to come. Remember, Congress in the past has often essentially ignored presidential budget requests. It is unclear if the will exists to do so now. Speaking of NSF, the graduate research fellowship program award announcements for this year came out this past week. The agency awarded slightly under half as many of these prestigious 3-year fellowships as in each of the last 15 years. I can only presume that this is because the agency is deeply concerned about its budgets for the next couple of fiscal years. Grants are being frozen at several top private universities - these include Columbia (new cancellations), the University of Pennsylvania (here), Harvard (here), Northwestern and Cornell (here), and Princeton (here). There are various law suits filed about all of these. Princeton and Harvard have been borrowing money (issuing bonds) to partly deal with the disruption as litigation continues. The president of Princeton has been more vocal than many about this. There has been a surge in visa revocations and unannounced student status changes in SEVIS for international students in the US. To say that this is unsettling is an enormous understatement. See here for a limited discussion. There seems to be deep reluctance for universities to speak out about this, presumably from the worry that saying the wrong thing will end up placing their international students and scholars at greater exposure. On Friday evening, the US Department of Energy put out a "policy flash", stating that indirect cost rates on its grants would be cut immediately to 15%. This sounds familiar. Legal challenges are undoubtedly beginning. Added bonus: According to the Washington Post, DOGE (whatever they say they are this week) is now in control of grants.gov, the website that posts funding opportunities. As the article says, "Now the responsibility of posting these grant opportunities is poised to rest with DOGE — and if its employees delay those postings or stop them altogether, 'it could effectively shut down federal-grant making,' said one federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal operations." None of this is good news for the future of science and engineering research in the US. If you are a US voter and you think that university-based research is important, I encourage you to contact your legislators and make your opinions heard. (As I have put in my profile, what I write here are my personal opinions; I am not in any way speaking for my employer. That should be obvious, but it never hurts to state it explicitly.)
