Neuroscience PhD trends swamp out other life sciences disciplines….

These data were just released by NIH. This is not surprising to me, you can’t be in the field and not take notice of what’s happening around you. The size of the trend however is what’s really interesting. One thought I had is that a neuroscience doctorate really provides potentially two hot career directions: one in brain diseases, the other in brain applications (which range from brain machine interfaces to neural-inspired computing). So graduate students in the neurosciences may be choosing the field because of a relative abundance of job possibilities.

Big Silicon Valley companies begin to shift course….

Bruce Schneier’s always excellent analysis is here. Bottom-line? Snowden’s leaks will substantively affect the future of Internet security for all of us.

Energy research funding about to get a boost?

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.

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.