The findings confirm research that I conducted more than 20 years ago. Under the guise of the Comedy Research Project, Timandra Harkness and I performed a randomised clinical trial to assess whether or not science can be funny.
Modern scientific societies are increasingly vulnerable due to their dependence on membership fees and journal subscriptions, which are being challenged by the rise of virtual networking and open-access publishing.
Citizen Science Month is built around a goal of 2.5 million 'Acts of Science,' tying the annual event to America's 250th birthday through a simple but powerful idea: lots of small contributions can add up to something really meaningful.
Computer programs that check mathematical arguments have existed for decades, but translating a human-written proof into the strict programming language of a computer is extremely time-consuming, often taking months or even years.
CIRC posts come with excellent resources and generous salaries. But the current round is being filled on an extraordinarily tight timeline. We assume that this is to take advantage of some US scholars' urgency to leave, and to keep pace with other countries hoping to achieve similar results (such as France, which is running a high-profile campaign to lure US scholars).
Covering Climate Now was formed in 2019 in response to the climate silence that then prevailed in much of the press, especially in the United States. Over the years that followed, hundreds of newsrooms joined our effort, and press coverage of the story began to reflect the scale of the crisis. Newsrooms beefed up their climate reporting teams; they confronted misinformation that sought to play down the problem; they thought creatively about how to find the climate connection on every beat.
A NIST employee tells WIRED that some plans to bring on foreign workers through the agency's Professional Research and Experience Program have recently been canceled because of uncertainty about whether they would make it through the new security protocols. The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, says the agency has yet to widely communicate what the new hurdles will be or why it believes they are justified.
In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,
The fewer solicitations you have, the less time grant applicants have to figure out which of our pigeonholes they fit into. In the past, a solicitation might have been for an individual program, which means it's attached to an individual program officer and a specific dollar amount. Now, instead of going to one program officer's area, the NSF will use technology to better route applications to wherever within the agency they can best be reviewed.
If you've worked in a technical role in news for long enough, you likely remember when the "show your work" spirit was everywhere. Newsroom nerds shared code on GitHub, swapped tips on social media and unfurled long blogs guiding others on how to get things done. You might also have a vague sense that - like reaction GIFs, demotivational posters, and that guy who sang "Chocolate Rain" - you're seeing less of it these days.
I was actually at a breast-cancer retreat. And during the coffee break, I looked at my emails to see, you know, if there's anything that I had to deal with. And I got this email from the university, and it was a real gut punch. My knees basically buckled, and I had to sit down. I never imagined that it would be possible that funding for lifesaving research would be
His message is clear: our world is built on abundant energy, around 80% of which has come from fossil fuels over the past 50 years. Because supplies are limited, energy consumption will peak in decades - sooner if humans attempt to limit climate change. To keep global warming below 1.5 °C by 2100, the use of fossil fuels must fall by 5-8% each year - a pace that is too fast for low-carbon energy to keep up with.
In 2023, Australia abandoned its expensive and bureaucratic scholar-led research-assessment programme. New Zealand followed suit soon after. The hope, according to a transition plan unveiled by the Australian federal government's Department of Education and the research sector, was to find a "more modern, data-driven approach". In the United Kingdom, where financial pressures on universities are especially acute, there are similar calls to reform the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the country's performance-based research-funding system.
For nearly 100 years, the United States has been the world's leader in a wide variety of scientific fields. No other country has: invested as much in fundamental scientific research, has made more scientific breakthroughs and scientific advances, has attracted more scientific researchers to move there to conduct their research, or has conducted more projects and been home to more scientists that have won Nobel Prizes.
