Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Kali Hale

Nature

@nature.com

Jane Goodall, known for her pioneering work with chimpanzees, has passed away aged 91

go.nature.com/46QHIZk

Jane Goodall’s legacy: three ways she changed science

Nature - The primatologist challenged what it meant to be a scientist.

go.nature.com

October 4, 2025 at 1:19 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Mark Peifer (He, him)

@peiferlabunc.bsky.social

Here's my comment--join me. This would effectively remove foreign PhD students and postdocs from our labs. please share

September 27, 2025 at 2:29 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Nature

@nature.com

A one-time gene therapy can markedly slow the progression of Huntington’s disease, potentially paving the way for the first ever treatment to alter the course of this rare, inherited brain disorder.

go.nature.com/4gLO6Wz

Huntington’s disease treated for first time using gene therapy

Nature - Preliminary results from a small trial offer the clearest evidence yet that the brain disease’s progression can be slowed.

go.nature.com

September 27, 2025 at 3:23 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Ruth EJ Booth (she/they)

@ruthejbooth.bsky.social

"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details:

LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...

(This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

August 14, 2025 at 5:30 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Science Friday

@scifri.bsky.social

A new breakthrough suggests that lithium could play a role in both causing and treating Alzheimer’s disease. However, this research is among the thousands of projects that lost funding due to President Trump’s cuts to the NIH.

Lithium May Have A Role In Causing—And Treating—Alzheimer’s

This important breakthrough and other research projects have lost funding because of Trump’s cuts to the NIH.

buff.ly

August 8, 2025 at 5:57 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

University of California

@uofcalifornia.bsky.social

From the world's first email to saving millions of premature newborns to CRISPR gene editing, history-making innovation is happening across the UC system every day. www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/7-world...

7 world-changing UC innovations that emerged from federal research funding

From the internet to the ozone layer, AI to the human genome, UC scientists have turned federal research funding into history-making, economy-boosting solutions.

www.universityofcalifornia.edu

August 8, 2025 at 6:14 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

UC Santa Barbara

@ucsantabarbara.bsky.social

“You seem happier.”

Thanks, I’ve been going on sunset walks instead of doomscrolling.

July 1, 2025 at 4:16 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Nature

@nature.com

An analysis of animal manure from 26 countries has identified global hotspots for antibiotic-resistance genes in livestock poo

https://go.nature.com/4eDLN6S

Poo of farm animals teems with drug-resistance genes

A global map reveals the prevalence of thousands of genes that arm pathogens against antibiotics.

go.nature.com

July 4, 2025 at 11:54 AM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Catherine Prendergast🇺🇦🪬

@badtoss.bsky.social

Ok I got famous a few years back for taking apart research that claimed that students learned less from key-stroking than through handwriting, so let's do this thing. What exactly are the studies that show "reduced critical-thinking effort." How was that effort defined? Send me the study. Whoever.

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · May 7

Bleak.

nymag.com/intelligence...

Text from article:

It’ll be years before we can fully account for what all of this is doing to students’ brains. Some early research shows that when students off-load cognitive duties onto chatbots, their capacity for memory, problem-solving, and creativity could suffer. Multiple studies published within the past year have linked AI usage with a deterioration in critical-thinking skills; one found the effect to be more pronounced in younger participants. In February, Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University published a study that found a person’s confidence in generative AI correlates with reduced critical-thinking effort. The net effect seems, if not quite Wall-E, at least a dramatic reorganization of a person’s efforts and abilities, away from high-effort inquiry and fact-gathering and toward integration and verification. This is all especially unnerving if you add in the reality that AI is imperfect — it might rely on something that is factually inaccurate or just make something up entirely — with the ruinous effect social media has had on Gen Z’s ability to tell fact from fiction. The problem may be much larger than generative AI. The so-called Flynn effect refers to the consistent rise in IQ scores from generation to generation going back to at least the 1930s. That rise started to slow, and in some cases reverse, around 2006. “The greatest worry in these times of generative AI is not that it may compromise human creativity or intelligence,” Robert Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell University, told The Guardian, “but that it already has.”

(Katie's added note: the sentences about reorganization of abilities and telling fact from fiction have been highlighted.)

May 7, 2025 at 3:48 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Michael Hobbes

@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

This might indeed be happening, but we should also keep in mind that “technology is ruining the children!” is a perpetual moral panic. The effect of AI on kids is way too early and amorphous to say anything definitive yet.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · May 7

“Massive #s of students are going to emerge... who are essentially illiterate. Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate + having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

This isn't the only reason AI is bad, but it's why it is bad for students.

It isn’t as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, “the ceiling has been blown off.” Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences? After spending the better part of the past two years grading AI-generated papers, Troy Jollimore, a poet, philosopher, and Cal State Chico ethics professor, has concerns. “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate,” he said. “Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.” That future may arrive sooner than expected when you consider what a short window college really is. Already, roughly half of all undergrads have never experienced college without easy access to generative AI. “We’re talking about an entire generation of learning perhaps significantly undermined here,” said Green, the Santa Clara tech ethicist. “It’s short-circuiting the learning process, and it’s happening fast.”

May 7, 2025 at 4:55 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

University of California

@uofcalifornia.bsky.social

For decades, @ucdavis.bsky.social stood tall among the world's giants in agricultural research. That progress is now at risk amid threats to federal research funding (via @reuters.com) www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Insight: Trump funding freeze upends agricultural research at US universities

From its earliest days in 1906, when the University of California secured a small stretch of fertile soil in the state's Central Valley, a quiet promise took root - that this place, originally called University Farm, would someday grow mighty.

www.reuters.com

April 18, 2025 at 6:42 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

Every time you see what sounds like a wild claim about woke research, you can assume a) it will fall apart under the most basic of inspection, b) the person making the claim will never be held accountable for lying, and c) it is a cover to gut useful research that we benefit from.

Batman or halo @milesklee.bsky.social · Mar 5

Trump claimed the Biden administration spent $8 million "making mice transgender." The White House tried to back up this number with records of funding for research into cancer, asthma, and HIV, some of which used *transgenic* (genetically modified) mice.

Trump Decried Millions Spent 'Making Mice Transgender.' It Was Cancer and Asthma Research

President Trump falsely claimed that Biden spent $8 million on 'making mice transgender,' but the real research was for human health.

www.rollingstone.com

March 5, 2025 at 11:57 PM

Reposted by Kali Hale

Kindra Crick 🧩

@kindracrick.com

Rally sign updated for Friday!

Given that nearly *all* our major medical breakthroughs for the past several decades have been publicly funded by the NIH, you can’t have progress without funding fundamental scientific research.

Which includes transgenic mice 🙄

#StandupforScience #scicomm 👩‍🔬🧫🔬