Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Paweł Ausir Dembowski @ausir.bsky.social · 14h

PSL political compass

political compass meme
top left: Party for Socialism and Liberation (USA)
top right: Polish People's Party / Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Poland)
lower left: pumpkin spice latte
lower right: Social Liberal Party / Parti Social Liberal (Tunisia)

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Animal Behavior Society @animbehsociety.bsky.social · 8d

Hey grad students studying animal behavior! Need a little extra research $$? (Don't we all?)

Apply for an ABS Student Research Grant! We award grants up to $2,000 to grad students & give feedback on the proposals. Deadline Dec 15.

More info here: www.animalbehaviorsociety.org/web/awards-s...

ABS Student Research and Developing Nations Grants! ABS offers the following grants to support graduate student research: Student Research Grants, ABS Conservation Award and Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Awards. The ABS also offers an Early Career Grant in Conservation Behavior and Developing Nations Grant to support students and other researchers from developing nations.

Applicants for student grants must be enrolled in a graduate program and must be active members of ABS (student membership fees cost $17-$34). Research grants range from $500-$2,000 USD, depending on the category of the grant and evaluations. Individuals may receive only one ABS research grant during their lifetime. More details on how the grants and how to apply in the link in the post.

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megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 4d

📣 BIG NEWS EVERYONE. I am so excited to announce…

🎉 I’m moving to University College London @ucl.ac.uk to join the Experimental Psychology department in @uclpals.bsky.social! 🎉

The big move happens in spring/summer. So I’m already exploring recruiting staff & students at UCL for fall 2026!

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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 4d

This just happened again and it really drives home the extent to which scholarly orgs could build great bridges with museums/historical sites by figuring out how to help them get access to scholarly materials. Those places might, in turn, help support those orgs with people and money.

Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 11d

Working at a museum without access to a university library means spending 6 years thinking about/reading Mark Twain & his reception and then every time I think I had an original thought it turns out @mattseybold.bsky.social tweeted it out in the form of a peer-reviewed article a decade ago.

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Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 6d

Interesting scheme. It would be good to see more philosophers advising on environmental ethics and policy, and correspondingly a greater role for environmental ethics within philosophy

Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 11d

The clinical ethicist brings bioethics to the medical care context. That model could be employed in other domains for other kinds of philosophy. Here's how a pair of philosophers are developing it for work on environmental justice...

Expanding the Range of Professional Philosophical Opportunities via Environmental Ethics - Daily Nous

"One of the most visible and impactful ways that philosophers demonstrate their practical value," says Matthew Kisner, professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, is by having ethicis...

dailynous.com

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Ned Block @neddo.bsky.social · 9d

Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...

authors.elsevier.com

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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 10d

4000 people have signed up to sue poultry producers.

River Wye pollution prompts UK's largest environmental lawsuit

Livestock and water companies are accused of “extensive” pollution in the Wye, Lugg and Usk rivers.

www.bbc.com

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Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar.bsky.social · 10d

Bureaucratic delays and chronic underfunding are hallmarks of doing science in Global South countries. And we hear about such challenges often. New report documenting how scientists in countries like Kenya and India navigate such challenges. Lots of tips here and a vision for a collaborative future

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Forrest Fleischman @forrestf.bsky.social · 14d

A team I am a part of is hiring an India-based part time research assistant to help us with textual analysis of government forestry documents related to forest restoration and pastoral livelihoods in Himachal Pradesh. Information and application instructions here: forms.gle/4D6aVqtDU7FY...

forms.gle

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Friderike Spang @friderikespang.bsky.social · 12d

Will have my first podcast interview tomorrow 🫣
Any advice?

#academic #podcast

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John Sanbonmatsu @jsanbonmatsu.bsky.social · 16d

Jane Goodall died today at 91. Her death is a blow to all life on Earth, particularly at a time of ecological collapse and authoritarism. Nonetheless, we can and must celebrate her courage, her originality, and her accomplishments on behalf of nonhuman animals.

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Jorge Morales @jorge-morales.bsky.social · 17d

Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵

Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models

This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

arxiv.org

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Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 17d

Having spent the day writing law school recommendations for former students, my official ranking of JDs now goes:

J Dilla
JD Sports
Jack Daniel's
JD Wetherspoons
JD from Scrubs
Juris Doctor degrees
VP Vance

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Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D. @ertrunnell.bsky.social · 19d

ICYMI 💡 Late last week, #NIH made a second meaningful move for animals in labs: grant funds can now be used for their retirement or rehoming.

This change goes beyond the obvious—check out the graphic to see why it matters so much.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

#AnimalResearch #SciPol

A graphic with different colored silhouettes of a monkey, a beagle, a rabbit, and a rat. The text reads: “NIH allowable costs policy update. NIH will now subsidize animal retirement and rehoming. Previously, NIH grant funds could only be used for the acquisition, “care,” and use of animals in experimentation. This change allows grant recipients to apply federal funds toward retiring or rehoming animals, rather than killing them, at the end of experiments. The new policy also applies to animal resource facilities and has the potential to alter their entire remit. Now that NIH is prioritizing its transition to human-relevant research, it's critical that they provide support for those animals that have already been bred into and used for experimentation but no longer have a “purpose.” To be clear, animals should never be used in experiments in the first place, but this positive change recognizes that their ending can mean peace and dignity instead of death.”

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Björn Jóhann @bjornjohann.bsky.social · 19d

This is extremely poor framing. It is not a "taste for soya" destroying the Amazon, it's a taste for meat. The VAST majority of soy grown in Brazil is due to animal agriculture, but your article never mentions this fact.

Your readers are walking away with a poor understanding of this issue.

Guardian Environment @environment.theguardian.com · 19d

How the world’s taste for soya is eating Brazil’s Amazon

Cultivation of the crop has made a few wealthy but at a huge cost to untouched forest as it spreads across vast areas of former wilderness

www.theguardian.com

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Cat Hobaiter @nakedprimate.bsky.social · Jul 2

📣 Join the K/Creative Ape Team 🤓 2 PhDs on Creativity in Wild Chimpanzees & Bonobos; w myself & the v awesome @kathelijnekoops.bsky.social

@snf-fns.ch Uni Zurich @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @efp2026.bsky.social @ips-primatenews.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social @primbehavecol.bsky.social 🐵🧪

two 4-year PhD positions in the Ape Behaviour & Ecology Group of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Zurich, and the Wild Minds Lab of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, to study wild chimpanzees and bonobos.
The PhD candidates will work within the Creative Ape Project. The overall goal of the project is to enhance our understanding of the evolution of creativity, and to shed light on whether humans are a uniquely 'creative ape'. To do so we will apply a comparative approach, quantifying the creative capacities of wild non-human apes to investigate the underlying drivers that shape creative expression across species. The project explores four interconnected topics: i) Making mavericks, ii) Funny guys and arty-types, iii) Lone ape geniuses, and iv) Creative ape economies. We employ a comprehensive approach that leverages long-term datasets, new field data, detailed manual video-coding, bespoke automated deep-learning models, and advanced modelling, to extract rich information on the ways in which apes solve problems in their daily lives.

Excellent collaborative, independent working and time management skills are essential. Previous field experience (incl. behavioural data collection) is required, and experience working in remote places under difficult living conditions is highly recommended. The project will require strong data management and data analysis skills, and 12-18 months of field work split into 2-3 periods.

Please submit your application in a single PDF to kathelijne.koops@iea.uzh.ch and clh42@st-andrews.ac.uk – by 4th of August 2025. Feel free to get in touch if you have any inquiries about the positions. Applications should include: 1) cover letter stating your motivation and how your expertise fits the project (max. 1 page), 2) Curriculum Vitae, 3) copy of the highest degree obtained, 4) names and contact details of two referees, and 5) reprints of 1-2 selected publications

A tiny chimpfant looks at the camera with surprise

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Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 26d

This on top of the 'grue-jays' news makes me worried epistemologists have been given power to secretly carry out their schemes. Expect an uptick in stopped clocks, fake barns, brains in vats etc.

Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 26d

#IgNoble prize winner:
Painting cows with zebra-like striping reduces biting fly attacks.

💡Painting black-and-white stripes can increase cattle welfare without the use of pesticides, proposing a solution for the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment.

🧪🌍🪰🦓🐮
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

A cow painted in zebra stripes; diagram shows the area of legs and body used to count biting flies on cows in the study. Source: Kojima et al., 2019

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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 26d

#IgNoble prize winner:
Painting cows with zebra-like striping reduces biting fly attacks.

💡Painting black-and-white stripes can increase cattle welfare without the use of pesticides, proposing a solution for the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment.

🧪🌍🪰🦓🐮
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

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Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D. @ertrunnell.bsky.social · 26d

While the new NOFO doesn't exclude animal experiments, it doesn't foreground them.

Instead, it elevates human-relevant and computational approaches through its data and modeling requirements.

The shift in tone and framing is subtle, but the priorities are noticeably shifting.

#scipol #NAMs

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Akshat Rathi @akshatrathi.bsky.social · 29d

Don't sleep on the good news, folks. It's rare these days. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-ind...

Analysis: India’s power-sector CO2 falls for only second time in half a century - Carbon Brief

India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its power sector fell by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 and by 2% over the past 12 months

www.carbonbrief.org

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Millie Johnston @milliejohnston.bsky.social · Sep 11

I'm delighted to share that, together with @crowbrain.bsky.social our paper on time estimation in crows is now published in @natcomms.nature.com

We found that crows not only keep track of time, but individual neurons prefer different time durations 🐦⏱️🧠

Check it out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A neuronal correlate for time interval estimation in the crow’s telencephalon - Nature Communications

It is unknown how birds estimate time using brains organized differently from mammals. Here, the authors show that neurons in the crow NCL encode duration categories, supporting abstract, cue-independ...

www.nature.com

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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · Sep 10

Sign of the times: A Columbia grad student handcuffed on the street by people claiming to be federal agents, later released, and it's still unclear whether they were feds or not

Official university statement: president.columbia.edu/news/reminde...

Graduate student temporarily detained by individuals claiming to be federal agents near Manhattanville campus

A graduate student was temporarily detained near the Manhattanville campus by individuals claiming to be federal agents, according to a Tuesday Universitywide email sent by acting University President...

www.columbiaspectator.com

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · Sep 8

My new Centre for Animal Sentience will launch on 30 Sept with a public event on "How AI is helping - and harming - animals" and you can register for a free ticket now. Please join us! www.lse.ac.uk/events/how-a...

AI and animals | Balancing risks and opportunities

6.30pm Tues 30 Sept | Kristin Andrews, Jonathan Birch, Leonie Bossert Jane Lawton, Jeff Sebo | Ticket Required | Free public event at LSE

www.lse.ac.uk

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Katy Willcox @katywillcox.bsky.social · Sep 8

Long overdue egg update 🐥

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Rui Zhe Goh @ruizhegoh.bsky.social · Sep 4

Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

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