#thesis-help

#thesis-help

GenAI offers visions of a hopeful future, as it is a powerful tool that enables us to more clearly articulate our thoughts to others. However, the necessity of putting thoughts down on paper remains a crucial skill that risks disappearing altogether.

The mystery of the missing scientists began with a Silver Alert. In late February, a retired Air Force major general named Neil McCasland left his house in New Mexico for a walk and never returned.

Wilson theorizes that aggrieved far-right faculty were overrepresented while far-left faculty boycotted the survey. He provides no evidence for either claim and ignores evidence against—such as that only one of 633 respondents identified as 'extremely conservative.'

"We're talking about political leaders who were moved by an enormous sense of responsibility and fear for the world."

The format has ginormous link cards at the bottom of the AI summary, which include a thumbnail of no apparent value, the site name, favicon, description, and title.

Modern scientific societies are increasingly vulnerable due to their dependence on membership fees and journal subscriptions, which are being challenged by the rise of virtual networking and open-access publishing.

Computer programs that check mathematical arguments have existed for decades, but translating a human-written proof into the strict programming language of a computer is extremely time-consuming, often taking months or even years.

Google AI mode has added an 'Ask about this' option above the sources where all URLs are displayed. Clicking on 'Ask about' here automatically pulled a new prompt into the search box.

Grammarly is now offering 'expert review' of your work by living and dead academics. Without anyone's explicit permission it's creating little LLMs based on their scraped work and using their names and reputation.

A few years ago, I put together what I felt was a truly innovative concept, which I presented in a conference poster at an international meeting in my field. After the presentation, I spoke to another early-career scientist about my work and how it might apply to their findings. Two years later, they scooped me by publishing a preprint paper that presented my idea, with many of the same verbal formulations and an identical flow of ideas, without any acknowledgement or attribution to my work.

I'm less interested in topics than in questions, and I'm less interested in publishing than I am in curation. When I've testified before Congress or dealt with an appropriations bill or a budget negotiation, this question, of what is the return on investments when you're doing R&D, comes up quite often. It's been asked by economists in very formal ways since at least the 1950s, but the data and the methods that were available were really not very strong.

Librarians have been actively collaborating and talking about it almost every day, whether it's creating tutorials and digital learning objectives or thinking about the conversations to have with instructors. It can feel like cognitive dissonance to be actively working with AI on a regular basis and also saying we're constantly thinking about the harms and the biases.

From my own graduate work, I know that it's only when you hit an experimental roadblock that you get to refine your hypothesis and hone your technical skills. But my new graduate students feel like they've failed when their first experiments don't work as planned. It takes a special kind of perseverance to be an independent researcher, and I see this lack of confidence in many of my students.

Many colleges and universities have made cuts in these programs, often bolstering STEM programs at their expense. It's a situation that has sparked no small amount of impassioned editorials. The headline of a recent article at The Guardian by Alice Speri referenced an 'existential crisis at U.S. universities,' and Speri's reporting features numerous examples of undergraduate and graduate programs facing cuts or outright elimination.

In 2023, Australia abandoned its expensive and bureaucratic scholar-led research-assessment programme. New Zealand followed suit soon after. The hope, according to a transition plan unveiled by the Australian federal government's Department of Education and the research sector, was to find a "more modern, data-driven approach". In the United Kingdom, where financial pressures on universities are especially acute, there are similar calls to reform the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the country's performance-based research-funding system.

A tweet can travel far, but it cannot spark a spontaneous conversation in the hallway. Conferences offer in-person engagement, but they are infrequent and often exclusive or too busy. Hanging a paper on your office door? That's immediate, local and quietly powerful. It is a symbolic gesture that brings your research into the physical space of the university, something rarely done in today's digital culture.