A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)
Directorates to follow
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got a phone call from my father tonight, first asking how we were doing here in portland, and second, ranting about how he saw people killed at kent state, and third he and his extremely religious wife talking about renee good as a martyr, these people are late 70s oklahomans
The number of Gestapo in Germany was 32,000. The population was 70 million. That's one Gestapo for every 2200 citizens.
The number of ICE agents is 20,000. The population of the US is 348 million. That's one ICE agent for every 17,000 citizens.
There are more of us.
Want to study the genomics of repeated adaptation with data from hundreds of species? New funding for non-Canadians @ grad or postdoc level. Internal competition at UCalgary with very short deadline so please get in touch ASAP!!
sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...
Hi!! Does someone know a super responsive technology specialist at MacMillan Publishers who can help my university’s Instructional Design team connect Achieve to our LMS? This has not yet happened and we’re currently stuck in support limbo. I want to move this forward ASAP.
Take it from some who teaches about drone strikes, “I shed no tear for that guy” and “this is bad, it shouldn’t have happened” can be normal reactions to have simultaneously.
Opposition to political violence isn’t about personal sympathy for an individual target per se, it’s about society.
Excellent response from Hasan Piker, who was scheduled to debate Charlie Kirk in two weeks. On his stream he said: “The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome.” Also talked about his own vulnerability
Critically, we argue that the very framing of certain AI applications around themes of productivity, efficiency, speed, convenience, and ease can conflict with their thoughtful and rigorous situated consideration — itself a somewhat laborious exercise. Precisely because convenience is the key appeal of some AI tools, researchers who adopt these methods have little incentive to question them and investigate in detail the epistemic implications of adopting them – or privileging them over other approaches. Convenience AI can be dangerous because, motivated by speed and ease, it can instil complacency into the use of given tools and lower the depth and frequency of critical scrutiny
7. The paper looks at how researchers might hand off boring "drudge work" such as data collection and cleaning to AI agents, and what could (and IMO will) go wrong as they do so.
Here's a key passage.
What frightens me is when they say "X could be replaced by AI" they don't mean "AI could do the work of X" they mean "we could replace the work of X with incorrect, randomly generated filler, and no one would stop us". What would the side effects be? They don't care, they already cashed the check.
Models as Prediction Machines: How to Convert Confusing Coefficients into Clear Quantities Abstract Psychological researchers usually make sense of regression models by interpreting coefficient estimates directly. This works well enough for simple linear models, but is more challenging for more complex models with, for example, categorical variables, interactions, non-linearities, and hierarchical structures. Here, we introduce an alternative approach to making sense of statistical models. The central idea is to abstract away from the mechanics of estimation, and to treat models as “counterfactual prediction machines,” which are subsequently queried to estimate quantities and conduct tests that matter substantively. This workflow is model-agnostic; it can be applied in a consistent fashion to draw causal or descriptive inference from a wide range of models. We illustrate how to implement this workflow with the marginaleffects package, which supports over 100 different classes of models in R and Python, and present two worked examples. These examples show how the workflow can be applied across designs (e.g., observational study, randomized experiment) to answer different research questions (e.g., associations, causal effects, effect heterogeneity) while facing various challenges (e.g., controlling for confounders in a flexible manner, modelling ordinal outcomes, and interpreting non-linear models).
Figure illustrating model predictions. On the X-axis the predictor, annual gross income in Euro. On the Y-axis the outcome, predicted life satisfaction. A solid line marks the curve of predictions on which individual data points are marked as model-implied outcomes at incomes of interest. Comparing two such predictions gives us a comparison. We can also fit a tangent to the line of predictions, which illustrates the slope at any given point of the curve.
A figure illustrating various ways to include age as a predictor in a model. On the x-axis age (predictor), on the y-axis the outcome (model-implied importance of friends, including confidence intervals). Illustrated are 1. age as a categorical predictor, resultings in the predictions bouncing around a lot with wide confidence intervals 2. age as a linear predictor, which forces a straight line through the data points that has a very tight confidence band and 3. age splines, which lies somewhere in between as it smoothly follows the data but has more uncertainty than the straight line.
Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life?
Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social)
Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...
Submit to Microbiology Resource Announcements' newest collection: "Microbial Databases, Software Tools and Web Services"
💡 Got a microbiology software tool, database or web service the community should know about? Submit to #MRAJournal’s “Microbial Databases, Software Tools and Web Services” series 💻 and help advance open science in microbiology: asm.social/2yg #ASMJournals
Slide from IU VPFAA saying "faculty must be able to defend their content selections through articulation of how the content aligns with discipline requirements/expectations."
Rather than defend faculty against the new law's intrusions on academic freedom, IU is telling faculty that they have to be ready to defend their own pedagogical choices. Including choices about what content to cover or not cover in class.
vpfaa.indiana.edu/doc/SEA-202-...
If you’re at #ESA2025 and you wanna grab tea and talk about plants, soil microbes, coastal ecology or PUI life, feel free to reach out!
(I also can offer some recommendations for where to eat and go in Baltimore but my recommendations are well over 10 years out of date 💀)
baby’s first invitation to submit a full proposal! Let’s go!
(I’m happy)
(I’m panicking)
(I’m happy)
(I’m puking)
#earlycareer
Turkey foot-shaped purplish seed heads in an expansive prairie that also includes yellow rudbeckia flowers. The purple color is visible as the plants blur together in the background
Wildflowers get all the love, but let's give it up for Andropogon Gerardii, aka Big Bluestem. Bedrock of tallgrass prairies, beautiful late summer color, host to many butterflies and other insects. Truly a top tier American plant
📢 Call for Speakers:
🌿 Low-Cost, High-Impact Ecology! 🌿
Are you doing impactful research with limited resources? Share your innovative solutions at our #ESA2025 Inspire Session!
💡 Let’s celebrate creativity in ecology and promote #EcologyEverywhere! 🌍🧪
I co-sign this! AVAM is a great, funky, thought-provoking museum.
Hey, #ESA2025, are there any developing plans for any actions to support science, evidence-based policy, and our federal agencies? Either in Baltimore, or with a crew going to DC?
They did that “person collided with car and died” thing, but in the ocean.
No, the whale didn’t collide with a boat. A person driving a boat hit a whale and killed it.
"7 in 10 ICE detainees at Butler County Jail have no criminal convictions." www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2...
I gotta say, as a Jew, it’s incredibly fucked up and sad that Elon Musk and Grok being Nazi sympathizers hasn’t caused a mass exodus (or coordinated boycott) from X.
I don’t like to shame people for what is clearly a failure of collective action, but honestly, what the fuck?
I think that I’ve decided to give up entirely on statistical ecology. My new method of inference is going to be putting my hand on a tree and intuiting the parameter values.
🧬 Interested in aquatic micro, nutrient cycling, river-ocean interfaces
I’m seeking a postdoc candidate to apply with me for the 2026 Walder Biota Fellowship ($70k+/yr for 2 yrs, $20k/yr research).
Details: www.biotaawards.org/2026-applica...
#ecosky #biogeochemistry #BiotaFellowship #microsky
This is good advice about any science news that you read.
We are hiring a NTT Assistant Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology! Please share with anyone who might be interested in a teaching focused position (primarily anatomy and physiology), and I’m happy to answer questions about the position!
jobs.hr.uconn.edu/en-us/job/49...
Anyone have a successful NSF Emerging Mathematics in Biology proposal that they would be willing to share? Many thanks in advance! 🧪🌾🌍
Jewish orgs Keshet and the Hebrew Free Loan Association are giving out interest-free loans to LGBTQ+ folks who need to re-locate but can’t afford it. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE JEWISH.
“The idea that people were having to pick up and flee their homes was something that resonated Jewishly.”
I’m going to be so fr right now, I have no idea how post-grad early-career* researchers are supposed to survive / navigate this new funding landscape.
We’re going to lose my generation and the generation I’m supposed to be training.
*defended my PhD in Dec 2021, am I still ECR? I feel ECR.
First cut the NSF budget, then make NSF homeless. Exaclty how is this attack on American science going to make America great?🧪
www.alxnow.com/2025/06/24/r...
This explains a lot.
