An ethical committee approval is needed to work with 1.5 millimetre-long squids in the UK, says the Home Office officer who just came back from a trip to the Mediterranean that included many a meal with 25 cm-long grilled squids.

Oh, you are working with late embryos prior to hatching? Then no ethical permits are required. The honorary primate status, i.e., "sentient beings", is only for hatched, free-living cephalopods.

So prior to hatching, cephalopods aren't sentient beings?

In any case, bear in mind these 1.5-mm squids have ~30,000 neurons, about 1/5th of those in the brain of a fruit fly that the same officer doesn't hesitate to squash with an adroit flick of the hand. And for which no permits are required, whatsoever.

And a honeybee, with 600,000 neurons in its brain, is not a sentient being?

None of this will ever make any sense to me. It is not science. Perhaps not even politics. I don't know what it is.

#academia #cephalopods #UK #neuroscience

Update. The University of Kansas provost says that #UKansas will not sign the Trump compact.
https://www.kansan.com/news/ku-won-t-sign-trump-s-higher-education-compact-was-never-invited-to-provost-says/article_aaea8512-a72a-4c9f-b45e-44f38dd835d4.html

#Academia #AcademicFreedom #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

I'm officially launching my job search journey outside of #academia and into the unknown waters of #industry .

I have a PhD in Mathematics, specifically logic and set-theory. I have basic understanding of programming, and beginning to learn #Python.
I'm mostly interested in #privacy, #cybersecurity, #sustainability and #opensource , but I keep an open mind.

Located in #Finland, can work #remote.
Suggestions, boosts and LinkedIn connections are welcome!
www.linkedin.com/in/ur-yaar

#FediHire

Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending' / PBS

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yLvO070E_dI

#science #research #academia

"75% of scientific researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country" - must-watch if you haven't fully grasped yet the attack of Trump on US science.. It's somehow more impactful to see actual testimonies instead of facts and numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLvO070E_dI

The whole #Trump thing is sad but the long-term damage of what he is doing against research and science, not just in the US but worldwide, is horrible. Just like the damage on the planet, it is not too late to resist of and fix it though! Universities should stick together, people should come out in support of scientists, PIs should come out of their silence - as in this video - to alert the public on the ongoing destruction.

Quoting @Nonya_Bidniss:
https://infosec.exchange/@Nonya_Bidniss/115464536239675362

#Science #Academia #AcademicChatter

An ethical committee approval is needed to work with 1.5 millimetre-long squids in the UK, says the Home Office officer who just came back from a trip to the Mediterranean that included many a meal with 25 cm-long grilled squids.

Oh, you are working with late embryos prior to hatching? Then no ethical permits are required. The honorary primate status, i.e., "sentient beings", is only for hatched, free-living cephalopods.

So prior to hatching, cephalopods aren't sentient beings?

In any case, bear in mind these 1.5-mm squids have ~30,000 neurons, about 1/5th of those in the brain of a fruit fly that the same officer doesn't hesitate to squash with an adroit flick of the hand. And for which no permits are required, whatsoever.

And a honeybee, with 600,000 neurons in its brain, is not a sentient being?

None of this will ever make any sense to me. It is not science. Perhaps not even politics. I don't know what it is.

#academia #cephalopods #UK #neuroscience

"75% of scientific researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country" - must-watch if you haven't fully grasped yet the attack of Trump on US science.. It's somehow more impactful to see actual testimonies instead of facts and numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLvO070E_dI

The whole #Trump thing is sad but the long-term damage of what he is doing against research and science, not just in the US but worldwide, is horrible. Just like the damage on the planet, it is not too late to resist of and fix it though! Universities should stick together, people should come out in support of scientists, PIs should come out of their silence - as in this video - to alert the public on the ongoing destruction.

Quoting @Nonya_Bidniss:
https://infosec.exchange/@Nonya_Bidniss/115464536239675362

#Science #Academia #AcademicChatter

@hildabast @PLOS

I'd like to credit @richardsever and the bioRxiv bots for keeping me in Mastodon – because to me that's one of the best uses of a social network: keeping up with the literature in my field, while also seeing boosts of literature beyond my field, alongside science outreach pieces.

And also @jocelyn_etienne for @flypapers , and @giorgiogilestro for setting up drosophila.social – all of these mattered a lot to me and continue to do so. My hosts too, at mathstodon.xyz – thanks for the T-shirts!

Finally, being able to follow tags is just wonderful. What would we do without the sense of wonder brought about by Bloomscrolling, SilentSunday, iNaturalist, entomology, and so many more.

#academia

Thanks @olivia for sharing this article: https://apache.be/2025/10/24/belgian-ai-scientists-resist-use-ai-academia
#AI #Education #Academia

She and others take position on the toxicity of #AI in academia

I told my undergrads yesterday about the faculty salary freeze at my university. They were totally shocked, which is fair considering how much they pay for tuition.

Only now after 20 years as an educator am I realizing that teaching the political economies of our own institutions is a vital lesson.

#academia #academicchatter

I told my undergrads yesterday about the faculty salary freeze at my university. They were totally shocked, which is fair considering how much they pay for tuition.

Only now after 20 years as an educator am I realizing that teaching the political economies of our own institutions is a vital lesson.

#academia #academicchatter

Update. " #NewCollege of #Florida Is Ready To Be The First To Sign President Trump’s Higher Education Compact."
https://www.einpresswire.com/article/861953402/new-college-of-florida-is-ready-to-be-the-first-to-sign-president-trump-s-higher-education-compact

#Academia #AcademicFreedom #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

Good morning from Elsevier. When I open my inbox to be greeted by this, I know the time has come to leave academia. It is rotten to the core, and totally lost sight of its *telos*. Read the article if you like. It is a lost delusion. States "AI is a tool" multiple times. It's not. Its a pattern matching text generator. (Jon Dron wrote a great piece on this recently.)

#academia #academicchatter #ai #genai
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/rethinking-peer-review-in-the-ai-era-with-responsibility-and-transparency

@jonny Often it's also battling against the preconceptions of junior academics, reinforced by countless first-hand stories of their colleagues landing into the shortlist for an academic job on the basis of a preprint, but only receiving the offer for the job after submitting the acceptance letter for the manuscript in a glamour journal – and the senior academics clamouring that the latter is the essential part, when it is exactly NOT.

If at all, here is the call: you all, try to at least redirect juniors towards society glamour journals and away from Elsevier and Springer-Nature, both of which are for profit and very much not have your interests in their hearts.

#ScientificPublishing #academia

@jonny I'd explain the choices of academics from them being busy and not willing to read hundreds of papers by as many applicants to grants/positions/promotions, rather than cowards. The comfort, the ease, the simplicity, and for some, the beauty, of relying on journal prestige for evaluation instead of doing the actual work of reading the proposals and the scientific papers, and caring about the methods and the discoveries, not the pedigree, or the number of publications, or the journals they are published in. Takes work, also skill. And impartiality, integrity, and a certain detachment. All tall orders.

The day a scientist publishes great work in a blog post – or a preprint, is almost the same – and gets a job or a grant from it is when we'll know the future has arrived, and it's a matter of kindling it so as to extend to everyone else.

#academia #ScientificPublishing