Photo: Takver, CC BY 2.0
Trump’s Budget
Trump released his budget proposal this week, and it wasn’t exactly kind to science. With headlines like “Trump’s budget calls for seismic disruption in medical and science research” and “scientists brace for a lost generation in American research” you can pretty much guess how it went over in the scientific community. The Department of Energy—the one that runs the national laboratories like Los Alamos—gets a 17.9% budget cut, with ARPA-E, which invests in high-risk, high-reward energy projects (like the development of new batteries) on the chopping block. It proposes slashing $6 billion from the National Institutes of Health budget, which is something like one fifth of its funding. And of course the administration’s favourite whipping boy the EPA is given a 31.5% budget cut, $2.6 billion. The NOAA loses a $250 million research grant program for coastal and marine research, too. Meanwhile NASA makes out better than the rest (but still not great) with its Earth science programs seeing a $102 million dollar cut, and (as expected) the Asteroid Redirect Mission being axed. It’s still just a proposal, and there are a lot of people in Congress (even Republicans) who don’t want to see all of these cuts made, but if even a fraction of the proposed cuts go through, it’s going to be a terrible blow to scientific research in America. You can read about the cuts over at The Atlantic and The Washington Post, with more in-depth information on NASA at Popular Science, Scientific American, and (of course) at The Planetary Society.
Moar JPEG
Google unveiled its latest piece of research this week, an improvement to the algorithm that compresses jpeg images by about 35%. Called Guetzli (Swiss German for “cookie” apparently—it was their Zurich team that came up with it), it appears to have been at least in part designed by Google’s DeepMind AI. The image comparisons (which you can see over at Ars Technica) show the same or better-looking results but with a pretty high reduction in file size when compared with libjpeg. The team has released a preprint of a paper to arXiv.org, and you can even download and run it for yourself if you want to (it’s on their github).
Boaty McBoatface
Hey remember a year ago when the internet once again proved that you can’t just ask it for suggestions on how to name things? Well, if you remember, the National Environment Research Council didn’t like the name Boaty McBoatface much and instead decided to name the research ship after Sir David Attenborough. But, because there’s still a little justice in this world, they did use the name for an autonomous underwater robot that will eventually travel aboard the Attenborough when that ship is completed in 2019. In the meantime, Boaty McBoatface has just this week set off on its maiden voyage aboard the British Antarctic Survey research ship, the James Clark Ross. In 2019, it’ll be used in the North Sea to look for methane emissions from the seabed. You can read more about McBoatface at the Guardian.
ICYMI
In case you missed it, here’s what we got up to this week!
- On Monday, I talked about Bombogenesis
- On Tuesday, Prudence gave you some tips on how to track what your representatives are up to
- On Wednesday, I mused aloud about repopulating the Earth from a single couple (don’t try this)
- On Thursday, Katelyn brought the crazy with a conspiracy theory you have to read to believe, and
- On Friday, Elle talked about Disney princesses and reported back on ideas for new ones
If you didn’t read any of those, now’s your chance!
Best of the Rest
And because there’s never enough time to get to everything, here it is, your weekly linkspam.
- SES 10 is fueled and ready for its flight later this month aboard the first reused Falcon 9!
- Lockheed Martin is handing over an actually real laser weapon to the Us Army for testing
- Anarchists are now fixing potholes in Portland, Oregon
- The NYT published a hit piece on glyphosate, ignoring the science that demonstrates it’s safer than the alternatives
- A whole lot of new minerals is giving more weight to the idea of the Anthropocene as a new geological age, and
- For the Neil Gaiman fans out there, we were treated to a trailer for the TV adaptation of American Gods
That’s all for today; have a great week.
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Richard Ford Burley is a human, writer, and doctoral candidate at Boston College, as well as Deputy Managing Editor at Ledger, the first academic journal devoted to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In his spare time he writes about science, skepticism, feminism, and futurism here at This Week In Tomorrow.