A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science

Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

Cripes, this is just terrible:

Under an MYF scheme, funding paylines—which determine the percentile (or rank) score needed for a study to receive funding—will plummet regardless of field of study or national funding priorities. For example, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) projects its payline for FY25 will drop from the 12th percentile to somewhere between the 5th and 9th percentile. This drop in payline means 25 to 60 percent fewer funded studies. For the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the payline plunge is worse: dropping from the 10th percentile in FY24 to an estimated 4th percentile this year. Internal estimates from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) look similarly dismal, with the number of fundable grants projected to fall by a factor of 3 or 4 compared to last year.

Paylines dropping to the 5th percentile means that out of 100 grants submitted, FIVE get funded. This will just...I mean, devastate is not too strong a word. Who would want to go into a profession where you have a FIVE PERCENT chance of success?

Also, I know no citation is given for those numbers, but I can guess where they came from, and I'll just say: not all heroes wear capes. They also sound about right. Do a search for "NIH paylines" and you'll find Institute numbers that have already been reported. Then game out in your head how those numbers will change with this new funding system. Yeah. Dire.

minoanmiss posting in

agonyaunt

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Current Mood: amused

mallorys_camera

Punishingly hot yesterday.

The little Prius's AC is on the fritz, so I drive with the windows down. Yesterday's drive to the gym was Not Fun.

AC repairs are expensive! I'm still paying off the suspension system repairs. (In Ulster County, we don’t have roads, we have an elaborate series of interconnected potholes.) Plus, hybrids apparently have very complicated AC systems, so I'd have to get the repair done at the Toyota dealer in Kingston.

In other words, AC repairs are on the wishlist but not what you'd call a priority.

###

500,000 people are starving to death in Gaza, and I can't stop thinking about them.

It avails me naught to think about them because there's absolutely nothing I can do for them, especially since media reports insinuate it's not a supply issue but a supply chain issue: The U.S. & Israel have such disdain for Palestinians that they didn't even bother to plan logistics for the aid giveaway.

Detach, detach, detach, I tell myself. All life is suffering & pain, mediated by brief bursts of oxytocin-brokered contentment. That's Just the Way It Is, & somehow one must make peace with it.

But I can't stop thinking about those 500,000 people starving to death while the full intensity of the world's spotlights focuses upon them.

###

Also, I can't stop thinking about the 17 starving cats a local animal crusader just rescued from a derelict, boarded-up house down by the river.

Some asshole thought it was a big joke to lock them up there.

All the animal shelters in these parts are filled to overflowing, so the animal crusader is struggling with food, traps, vet bills, and finding foster situations &/or eventual rehoming on her own.

That I can do something about: I can throw her money!!!

Which I did, thereby pushing Prius AC repairs at least one week into the future.

All you can do is be the change you want to see in whatever small ways you can.

james_davis_nicoll

Two orphans try to make a living in an unforgiving universe.

Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams

osprey_archer

Daphne du Maurier’s Enchanted Cornwall: Her Pictorial Memoir is a little bit a memoir about du Maurier’s life, but mostly about her lifelong love affair with Cornwall and the many books that she set there. The book was published near the end of her life (perhaps posthumously?) and is thus padded out with long excerpts from those books, most of which I skipped because either (a) I had read the book and therefore didn’t need to reread the excerpt, or (b) I hadn’t read the book and didn’t want to be spoiled, but nonetheless a good read because it’s full of interesting tidbits. For instance:

J. M. Barrie was du Maurier’s uncle and her older sister Alice played Wendy in one production of Peter Pan.

(There are some other connections that I can’t remember off the top of my head, but it certainly confirmed my feeling that the entirety of the early 20th century British art world - art encompassing theater, painting, writing, etc - was in fact one extended social network where everyone knew everyone and half of them were related by marriage.)

During the filming of Rebecca, Alfred Hitchcock referred to the (nameless) main character as Daphne de Winter, an identification which du Maurier cheerfully accepts.

Although the grounds of Manderley were based on the grounds of du Maurier’s beloved Menabilly, the house itself was based on a different country house, Milton.

Although du Maurier recounts her courtship with her husband (which seems to have loosely inspired Frenchman’s Creek), the real love story of this book is with Menabilly. Du Maurier devotes an entire chapter to wooing and winning the house. The distant glimpses from sea and land. The first visit, cut short when an early darkness descends while du Maurier and her sister approach the house on the winding forested front drive. The second visit, when du Maurier rose before dawn to approach by the sea. Repeated visits to explore the grounds, culminating at last in a visit where du Maurier found a window open, and climbed in to explore the crumbling abandoned house…

All this culminated in du Maurier securing the house for a twenty-five year rental, begun during World War II. Everyone told her that she’d never be able to repair the roof, get electricity installed, or otherwise render the place habitable, and she proved all of them wrong.

Du Maurier considered Frenchman’s Creek her only really romantic book. So if you’ve ever read her other books and wondered “Am I supposed to consider this horror show of a couple romantic?”, the answer is apparently no!

spikedluv

I hit Walmart while I was downtown and got in a walk around the park. I stopped at Stewart’s for gas and milk on the way home. (One of the things I had to pick up was wasp/hornet spray because Pip discovered - by getting stung three times - a wasp nest in the roof area of the front porch, where Midnight spends a lot of time. (TBF, Pip never completely closed up that roof area, so it's really his own fault. o_O))

I got two loads of laundry washed, dried AND folded!!, hand-washed dishes, emptied the dishwasher, baked chicken for the dogs’ meals, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and scooped kitty litter.

I posted my SFFest fic, finished the Clare Fergusson book, and talked to mom on the phone. We went to Texas Roadhouse for supper with friends!!!

Temps started out at 68.2(F) (and sticky) and reached 91.0.

Mom Update:

Mom had her first chemo treatment today (Monday). ( more back here )

purplecat

Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.

( Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

phoebeandherunicorn_feed

https://www.gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn/2025/07/29

Comic strip for 2025/07/29

https://www.gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn/2025/07/29

poliphilo

I have a bruise in the crook of my left arm where Marcia failed to insert a canula but none in the crook of my right arm where her jovial senior colleague succeeded. I'm proud of myself that I got on top of my needle phobia and submitted to this carry-on with cheerfulness.

On our way home from the hospital we stopped at Siyvers Antiques Centre (which is housed in an Edwardian railway station) because they serve home-made cake in their refreshment room. I nearly bought a matryushka doll of President Clinton with a doll of Ken Starr inside him and a doll of Monica Lewinsky inside Starr. "Little bit of history" I thought- but it was an ugly thing and I don't need to be filling the house with bits and bobs for no better reason that they're quirky so I bought a nice model of a GWR railway engine instead because it was cheaper and I like steam trains a whole lot better than I like Bill Clinton.

Clinton Matryushka dolls aren't rare. Look on Etsy for examples of the sort of thing I nearly bought.

And here's a picture of the thing I did buy. Not bad for a fiver. GWR stands, of course, for God's Wonderful Railway

oursin

Happy birthday,

opusculasedfera!

tamaranth

2025/116: The Friend — Dorothy Koomson

Yvonne began to laugh. ‘You’re all so funny!’ she screeched. ‘You all act like you’re best mates, but really? You’re all so fucking pathetic with your stupid secrets and lies. I bet none of you know what I know about all of you.’ [loc. 5920]

Read for book club. Cece Solarin has just given up her job and moved to Brighton with her huband Sol and their three children: Sol's been promoted, and is seldom around. On her boys' first day at school Cece discovers that a popular parent, Yvonne, is in a coma after being attacked one night in the school playground. The brittle, fearful, suspicious atmosphere makes it even harder than she expected to make friends and connections, but she becomes friendly with three other young mothers -- Maxie, Hazel and Anaya, each of whom was friends with Yvonne, and each of whom has a Big Secret in her past.

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Current Mood: disappointed

mekare

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apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Our Sun frequently erupts in loops.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250728.html

Why was this collision so strange?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250728.html

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story
Author: Gulbahar Haitiwaji with Rozenn Morgat
Genre: Nonfiction, memoir

Some books you read not for the experience of reading them, but for the information within. Such is the case with Gulbahar Haitiwaji's memoir, How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story. As the title suggests, this is a first-person account of Haitiwaji's experience in Xinjiang, where she was subjected to "reeducation" on suspicion of terroristic activity. This book was written with the help of Rozenn Morgat and Haitiwaji's daughter Gulhumar, and translated from French by Edward Gauvin.

To quickly summarize for anyone unaware, the Uyghurs (also spelled "Uighur") are an ethnic minority in China, inhabiting the northwestern region of Xinjiang, which is quite large. They are predominantly Muslim; speak Uyghur, a Turkic language; and frequently have more culturally in common with neighboring Kazakhstan and Tajikistan than with the Han in eastern China. For many decades, the Chinese government has viewed Uyghurs with suspicion and since the 1950s has continually ramped up levels of surveillance against Xinjiang. I wrote a paper on this situation in graduate school several years ago concluding that China is enacting a slow genocide against Uyghurs, with the intent of fully wiping out their culture.

Uyghurs are subjected to relentless video surveillance, intrusive police home visits, regularly summoned to the police station for interrogation without any suspicion of a real crime, forcibly sterilized, and punished for any excessive displays of religiosity such as wearing a hijab or visiting mosque too frequently. Some years ago, "reeducation schools" entered the picture.

( Read more... )

sholio

I FOUND OUT WHAT HAS BEEN EATING MY GARDEN

I became even more convinced it was a moose after discovering this morning that some of the remaining pea vines were decimated in the night, evidently from the tops. So I was out there this evening picking the rest of the broccoli (so far untouched) ...

And all of a sudden, with no warning, a GROUNDHOG exploded out of the broccoli plants at my feet. (Definitely a groundhog/woodchuck. Not a marmot, not a ground squirrel. A groundhog. We do have them in Alaska, and this isn't even the first one I've seen here, but it's certainly the first one I've caught in the act of SHAMELESS GARDEN BANDITRY.)

They're reddish colored and large, about the size of a big cat. I screamed, because I was not expecting LARGE MOVING THING IN THE BROCCOLI. I'd had no idea it was there. It spend past my feet and under one of the cars and vanished.

So the culprit has been identified, and it's definitely coming back every day now. They can dig and they can also climb (jerks), so building a groundhog-proof fence would be a heck of a job. I asked Orion for ideas. He asked me if I mind if he pepper-sprays my garden, because he has some expiring bear spray and he wants to find out what using it is like just in case he ever has to use it for real. I'm like, sure, why not. I gave him some guidelines (don't spray anything I plan to eat, lower leaves only, etc) and went into the house to be out of the literal line of fire.

Shortly I heard coughing and sneezing and he came into the house eventually to report that bear spray is highly volatile and prone to floating on the wind. Good to know. A few minutes later, *I* was coughing and sneezing too, because it turns out it also sticks around on clothing and skin. (I didn't get it nearly as bad as he did, just a coughing fit and some running sinuses, but COME ON.)

He has now thoroughly showered.

And that's the story of how we bear-sprayed ourselves while trying to bear-spray the garden.

(He reports that bear spray tastes like very spicy food. Apparently the active ingredient is capsaicin, so it's not toxic. I didn't get enough of it to actually taste it.)

I guess we're about to find out if groundhogs enjoy spicy food.

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: isn't it obvious?

asakiyume

"Holy shit. This guy saved a PNG to a bird," read the beginning of a Bluesky post that linked to a 30-minute Youtube video about birdsong and starlings' capacity for mimicry. A guy drew a picture of a bird in a spectral synthesizer, which then will produce the sounds that the lines indicate.** The guy played those sounds for a starling, and lo and behold, the bird copied it--such that when you look at the spectrogram, you see a picture of a bird that's very close to the picture the guy had drawn.

So it's in that sense that the guy saved an image to a starling.

I'm charmed that this involves translation from a visual medium to a sound medium. "We can save your picture, but only if you sing it." --This concept of translation is familiar to us, of course. Data that's stored digitally is translated into zeros and ones, then translated back into something we can understand--words, images, sounds, formulae.

... If we were going to use starlings to save our data, we'd have to beg not individual starlings but whole murmurations.

Imagine if you had to sing or say all your data to save it. Imagine going out and standing on a hill and taking a deep breath and just singing out, hoping that the murmuration would deign to listen and retain what you were singing. It would be like an incantation or an invocation or a prayer.

**A spectrograph of a bird's call looks like, for example, this:

(Song sparrow spectrograph from this web page)

So the guy drew the bird below and then played the sounds that this set of lines makes...

white line drawing of a bird on a blue background

And the starling sang back this:

pink-purple bird on an a black background

(Images are screenshots from the Youtube video.)

pf_mod posting in

poetry_fiction

From Miss Blues'es Child

If the blues would let me,
Lord knows I would smile.

There's treasure everywhere

What is multi-year funding and how will it affect American science?

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science

Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

Ask a Manager: Has AAM Become More Anti-Corporate?

Be the Change You Want To See

Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams

Book Review: Enchanted Cornwall

The Day in Spikedluv (Monday, July 28)

Costume Bracket: Round 4, Post 8

Interesting Links for 29-07-2025

Phoebe and Her Unicorn - 2025-07-29

GWR

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2025/116: The Friend — Dorothy Koomson

Update

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(no subject)

Book review: "How I Survived a Chinese Reeducation Camp" by Gulbahar Haitiwaji

Trivial life stuff follow-up

Why is this so entertaining?

saving to the murmuration

July Challenge - Day 28

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