Inhaltswarnung: How long does it take to become a Canberran? We asked the city's top thinkers Zum Öffnen/Schließen klicken

Update. "The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation"
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-national-science-foundation
(#paywalled)

"The #Trump administration’s assault on the #NSF represents precisely the kind of political interference [#VannevarBush] sought to prevent — one that threatens not only scientific progress but also the very foundation of academic freedom."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics

OMG, imagine looking at Albanese and Dutton, and concluding Albanese is the one who lacks detail? 😱
#paywalled
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/albanese-all-at-sea-when-it-comes-to-fine-details-20250227-p5lfmj

Update. "The mad dash to protect environmental data from Donald Trump"
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/18/24346025/data-donald-trump-climate-environment-epa
(#paywalled)

"Information about climate change vanished from federal websites under Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change “a hoax.” Now, federal agencies could face deep staff and budget cuts overseen by Trump cronies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The proposed cuts not only threaten what kind of data the government shares but also whether it can collect and organize it at all....

One key resource that could languish under the Trump administration is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, #EJScreen.…Even if it stays online, the tool is not as useful without constant upkeep....

Much of the environmental data included in EJScreen is collected by the #EPA itself. The EPA isn’t likely to abandon its air quality monitors anytime soon, but #Project2025…proposes eliminating the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights that manages the tool...."

#Climate #ClimateChange #Environment #Takedowns

Yeah, wow! Wonder if this will get MSM coverage? Dutton calling for struggling working class families to get no relief?

#paywalled #auspol

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/dutton-urges-rba-to-resist-pressure-to-cut-rates-20250211-p5lbaa

Links to lot of paywalled articles are trending in the #fediverse recently.

I would be nice to be able either to start using some hashtags, when linking to paywalled #media, like:

#paywall or #paywalled

or maybe to have chance to store database of paywalled URLs on each instance and give users chance to display some warning or even slightly hide the paywalled links.

Obviously, no one of us will ever have accounts on ALL paywalled media, home or foreign, and I also don't really remember which huge media sites are paywalled and which not. So adding some automation and integrating database of paywalled sites into Mastodon would save me quite some time...

Update. #AI researchers are among those pissed when #PeerReview of their work is outsourced to AI.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/ai-scientists-have-a-problem-ai-bots-are-reviewing-their-work
(#paywalled)

One complained, “If I wanted to know what #ChatGPT thought of our paper, I could have asked myself.”

Update. The US #NIH and Australian Research Council (#ARC) have banned the use of #AI tools for the #PeerReview of grant proposals. The #NSF is studying the question.
https://www.science.org/content/article/science-funding-agencies-say-no-using-ai-peer-review
(#paywalled)

Apart from #quality, one concern is #confidentiality. If grant proposals become part of a tool's training data, there's no telling (in the NIH's words) “where data are being sent, saved, viewed, or used in the future.”

#Funders

Update. Can #AI solve the problem of #language #discrimination (good research by non-native speakers rejected from English-language journals on the ground of weak English)?
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/ai-writing-tools-will-not-fix-academias-language-discrimination-problem
(#paywalled)

Natalia Kucirkova argues no. The best bots may be good enough. But they are not accessible to all who need them, and "non-native researchers still have to invest extra time & more dollars to fix their papers than their native colleagues."

#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch

Update. The Journal of Electronic Publishing (@JEPub) just issued a call for papers to appear in a special issue on #Multilingual publishing.
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/news/71/
(#paywalled)

The special issue will accept papers in accept papers in English, Spanish, or French.

#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch #CFP