From ScienceInsider, the story is here. But caution….this is an authorization bill not an appropriations (that is Congress is creating a empty box to potentially be filled with appropriated dollars), and second this is from the Senate side only. The House bill is not nearly as generous.
Author: jlolds
Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University
UCSD’s neuroscience grad students…they need data (best video since Bad Project)
Who should own the Moon?
From Air and Space Smithsonian, here. Money quote:
Earth’s scientists have studied the returned data and we’ve dreamed of returning to the Moon and to new places where humanity has never set foot. Entrepreneurs and social engineers see a time in the near future when we will make that next step and they each hold somewhat different views — some want to develop and capitalize on their investment, some want to preserve and permit only limited access.
The article raises some very interesting points, ones that will have important implications for the future of space exploration into the future.
James Garland’s take on Miami University of Ohio….
He’s the President-emeritus, in Propublica, here. The article assumes a bit of background knowledge about Ohio higher ed, but the messages are clear: high quality teaching and research are at risk when you invest in climbing walls and the like. The other casualty I think is diversity.
Is NIH moving to restrict RO1 demand?
The story is here. The basic idea as I see it is that NIH plans to save money by trying to eliminate non-competitive grant applications on the front-end. The key statistical finding is that there is apparently no correlation between a university’s number of NIH grant applications and its number of NIH awards.
Retracting a paper in science….
Apparently there is a feed-back retraction penalty in citations, article from Nature Scientific Reports, here. But…if you self-report, there is no penalty. Really interesting study I think.
Tearing down cities….
What Baltimore and Detroit are doing, here. As they lose population, they are taking down whole blocks of blighted housing stocks to create open land.
The importance of Big Data….
Michael White’s excellent piece is here. His view is that it’s different from the Popperian hypothesis-based science we are all used to and I tend to agree. I also worry that the term ‘Big Data’ is in serious danger of being over-sold. That happened once upon a time to another hot new discipline: Artificial Intelligence… and the results were not pretty.
Tyler Cowen on Peak Driving…
I guess analogous to Peak Oil, here. I am more of the Elon Musk school myself. I think transportation systems will be qualitatively different. Perhaps we’ll go regularly go to work at L5.
Mason’s Center for Social Complexity…
I don’t often brag about our own centers on Advanced Studies, but can’t resist a pointer to the new web site of our Center for Social Complexity, here. And while I’m going there, I might as well jump the shark and offer a pointer to our Department of Computational Social science, here. The faculty of the center and the department overlap to a large extent and represent the Institute’s scientific program in the area of social cognition. Over the years, the Institute’s existing strength in neuroscience has led perhaps to the wrong notion that Krasnow is a pure brain research institute. In fact, we are very much an institute for advanced study and the waterfront of Krasnow research stretches from theoretical physics to poppy farming in Afghanistan…
Discoverers and Discoveries 