Front cover of the Strategic Examination of Research & Development review report. Purple background with pink title text "Ambitious Australia". The graphics below the text are some curvy, bubble-like shapes with what seems to be a sunset viewed through some drops of liquid. That is, a distorted view of the horizon … a metaphor?

The Government released the final report of the Strategic Examination of R&D yesterday. It's called "Ambitious Australia"🙃

Haven't read much, yet, but it says we should fund the ARC more. Like every single previous review.

Can we got on with it & do that, now?

www.industry.gov.au/publications...

Good to see the FT26 comments/rejoinder period stuck to the schedule and went out today, despite the projected delayed outcomes…

"Today in Chemistry History" infographic marking Dmitri Mendeleev's birthday (8 Feb 1834). The graphic highlights the date of publication of Mendeleev's first periodic table (1869) and shows the elements that were known at that time and included in the table. It also shows the elements which had yet to be discovered which Mendeleev used his table to predict the properties of.

Dmitri Mendeleev was born #OTD (8 Feb) in 1834. He's known for recognising periodic patterns in the properties of elements, using these to predict the properties of undiscovered elements. And, of course, the periodic table! wp.me/p4aPLT-8UU

#ChemSky 🧪

Black text on white background. Screenshot from ARC’s webpage announcing new rounds of Laureate Fellowships and Discovery Indigenous projects.

The ARC have announced they’ll be running another round of Laureate Fellowships and Discovery Indigenous projects next year.

These schemes were “paused” pending the review of the ARC grants system. Seems that is taking longer than expected … whoda thunk it?

From www.arc.gov.au/news-publica...

Suggestion for new Bluesky age verification method:

They just check how much you whinge on Bluesky about rejected ARC grants.

Monash Science researchers have directly shown the orbit of a companion star around ageing giant π1 Gruis. @monashastro.bsky.social PhD candidate Yoshiya Mori helped unlock the finding using our stellar evolution models. www.monash.edu/science/news... @stellaralchemist.bsky.social

Doesn’t NZ have access to ERC funding now?

Black text on white background. Screenshot from ARC’s Grants Calendar webpage showing which schemes will go ahead next year (upper bullet points), and which will be “paused” pending the outcomes of the review of the National Competitive Grants Program (lower bullet points). Source: https://www.arc.gov.au/funding-research/ARC_grants-calendar

ARC has “paused” future rounds of grant schemes pending outcomes of its NCGP Policy Review.

All schemes previously scheduled to open before 1 July this year will go ahead.

But next year’s Laureates, Industry Fellowships & Discovery Indigenous won’t.

See table👇 & www.arc.gov.au/funding-rese...

Excerpt from the article. Black text on white background with a few links in blue text. Excerpt as follows: “Under the ARC board’s proposals, most stand-alone fellowships would be replaced by “embedded fellowships” funded through other grant schemes and capped at two years. “Traditional four-year fellowships concentrate a significant amount of funds on a small number of individual researchers,” a discussion paper explains. Observers fear this could inadvertently deny many ECRs a toehold in academia because current fellowship schemes such as the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (Decra) and the mid-career Future Fellowships are available to researchers without positions at universities. This could change under the proposals. The discussion paper implies that recipients of embedded fellowships must already be in “the university workforce” – suggesting that ECRs must obtain employment in the sector before gaining eligibility for ARC grants. That is an “unrealistic” expectation, according to Sharath Sriram, president of Science and Technology Australia. “The assumption is all those who apply are already…in academic roles. That might have been true in the 1990s. It’s not the case anymore. “There’s no stability of employment for people until they are six, seven years out of their PhDs. Universities often use success in grants and fellowships to determine who to employ.” A researcher who monitors grant schemes, using the social media handle “ARC Tracker”, was unconvinced that the proposals would improve opportunities for ECRs. They said changes to fellowship schemes needed to avoid closing “pathways” for young researchers and leaving them “overshadowed by the established group leaders”. ARC Board chair Peter Shergold acknowledged the fellowship changes as one of the “stings in the tail” of his proposals, but said a primary goal of his reforms was “contributing to the development of the next generation of researchers”.

Here’s a report by John Ross in @timeshighered.bsky.social on ARC Board’s proposal to change grant schemes ▶️

www.timeshighereducation.com/news/arc-gra...
[Free login required]

Both @scienceau.bsky.social's & I am worried about opportunities & unintended consequences for early-career researchers👇

No one I’ve spoken to knows for certain. The ARC did say “from 2026” so FT26 being late in the year (after overhaul decisions are made) and for commencement in the second half of 2026 is what makes it uncertain. I initially assumed it was safe, but others assumed the opposite. 🤷‍♀️

From what I’ve heard, it’s currently unclear whether FT26 will even run.

Is It Dangerous to Keep Getting COVID-19? Common as they are, reinfections may have lasting impacts.

“People who had gotten COVID-19 at least twice experienced higher rates of short and long-term health effects, including heart & brain issues, compared to those only infected once.”

Rather than “building immunity”, repeat Covid infections are slowly killing us.

#LongCovid

time.com/6553340/covi...

Some limitations - always wave THOSE around, marketing tells me:

Sharing research via shortlinks (like bitly) is NOT tracked on Bluesky atm. For this to happen the service has to make a change first (we're chatting with them so don't all @ them about it.) Use the DOI or direct link and you're good.

Blueksy Mentions are now in Altmetric. It's been 84 years meme #AcademicSky #HigherEd #MedSky #HMSky #Altmetrics #Medlibs #Metascience

BLUESKY MEGA-THREAD

Altmetric is thrilled and also LITERALLY RELIEVED to officially announce:

We are now tracking research attention as it happens on Bluesky!

We have been picking up posts on the site since late Oct.

Our team is on Bluesky all day answering questions.

Let's get into it!

Got some fun science coming out this week that I spent the weekend writing about, in particular from the #RadioAstronomy folks, so I reckon you should all go follow some radio astronomers.

@taramurphy.bsky.social has a starter pack going where you can find us + pass it on!

go.bsky.app/KGBAs4D

Shades of brown and red colored in on top of strips of paper on a bulletin board. It's a fairly large board, though you can't really tell that from the photo! The lower right is dark and the upper left is brighter.

🔭🧪 Things that make me happy: This is the first image from Mars, taken July 1965. Why does it look like this? Because computers were slow and it was going to be hours before the computer processed it enough to make an image. The scientists and engineers were impatient. 1/5

An infrared photo of a rainbow: a strange, ghostly-looking rainbow in a mostly black and white photo, with a faintly red outer edge and a cyan inner edge, and what look like a few even fainter ‘echo’ bows inside

A regular visible-light pic of a rainbow

An ultraviolet picture of a rainbow: a dark, foreboding landscape with a deep purple stripe emanating from it, and a grey stripe inside

A composite of the three preceding photos, showing that the infrared bow is ‘outside’ the visible light rainbow, and the ultraviolet bow ‘inside’

There’s more to rainbows than the human eye can see: here’s how a rainbow extends into the infrared and ultraviolet.

Photos:
1. Infrared
2. Visible (obviously)
3. Ultraviolet, and
4. A composite showing how UV is beyond the violet in a rainbow, and IR beyond the red end.

🧪 #photography

An infographic with a bar chart that looks like towers showing the growth in the population of folks with a qualification in physics and astronomy in Australia.

Well ain’t this just… WICKED! 💚🩷

It’s amazing to see the growth in the number of folks with qualifications #physics and #astronomy in Oz 🇦🇺✨

Folks! I’ve updated the Aussie/NZ Space Communities starter pack with lots of new faces joining in the last few weeks.

So many (100+) awesome astronomers, researchers, artists, students, photographers, and more to enrich your timeline.

These folks are my Friday recommendation!

Pass it on!

🔭📡🧪

ESOblog: Navigating the stars: the stories behind the Southern Cross Navigating the stars: the stories behind the Southern Cross

Nice blog post from ESO about the constellation Crux (the Southern Cross) that's always in our skies down here.

It lives on many flags, but more importantly, it has played a role in many Southern Hemisphere Indigenous Astronomy songlines, lore, and stories.

It's got some good stars / objects!

🔭

It's Friday!

So it's time to share this list of awesome Aussie and NZ folks from our region's space communities (astronomy, space exploration, humanities, artists, astrophotographers, etc.).

Recommend giving these folks a follow!

🔭🧪

go.bsky.app/QPStoRT

Watch a star get destroyed by a supermassive black hole in the first simulation of its kind If a star gets too close to a black hole, it gets shredded and produces a complex ball of light. These videos are the first time this dramatic event has been simulated in detail.

Watch a star get destroyed by a supermassive black hole in the first simulation of its kind theconversation.com/watch-a-star... @danastro.bsky.social

Friends, the #RaiseTheStipend petition closes tonight ▶️ www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...

Please, if you are yet to sign, consider doing it now.

Most importantly, even if you’ve signed, send it to family & friends now – ask them to help.

Thanks to everyone who has supported this!

Name a Quasi-Moon Contest! Radiolab is partnering with the International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons! Submit one of your own (now through September). It’s your chance to m...

The IAU x RadioLab are running a competition to name Earth’s quasi moon. See the link below to enter and/or find out what a quasi moon is. woobox.com/wc2qxd

A pride flag with every color band represented by a NASA image. White is Earth clouds, pink is aurora, blue is the Sun in a specific wavelength, brown is Jupiter clouds, black is the Hubble deep field, red is the top of sprites, orange is a Mars crater, yellow is the surface of Io, green is a lake with algae, blue is Neptune, and purple is the Crab Nebula in a specific wavelength.

I made this Pride flag using only NASA images and our team thought it would be cool to share on social (I work on the NASA heliophysics communications team), but it's getting all sorts of hate on the bird app and Fbook. Thought y'all might be more appreciative of it here. ☺️🏳️‍🌈💖

A hellishly confusing plot that combines the mass-radius ratio, surface flux, composition, and surface temperature of exoplanets, plus a couple of other things I can't even identify, all crammed on top of each other in a single space.

Today I was introduced to what was described as the Worst Plot In Exoplanet Science, and frankly, it is a work of art

My colleague and I will be speaking at an upcoming Monash alumni event: Learn how new discoveries in Physics help us in treating lung diseases and uncovering the secrets of Dying Stars.

Register now! www.eventbrite.com.au/e/from-savin...

ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of its users, Ars reader says Names of unpublished research papers, presentations, and PHP scripts also leaked.

Reasons to never type or upload anything private or proprietary to an unsecured and unregulated LLM arstechnica.com/security/202...

The familiar part of proposal procrastination/writing where you have 10 stack exchange tabs open with variations on latex questions…

For those curious about what goes into writing a paper, I have written a "Behind the Paper" blog post to accompany my latest publication. You can read it here: communities.springernature.com/posts/using-...