That artificial intelligence could destroy humanity is a story imposed by the AI industry itself. It’s time to challenge it

Der geplante KIDS Act der EU stellt das Fediverse vor technische und organisatorische Probleme. Es dürfte aber nicht das Ende sein, wie manche Kritiker warnen.

Have you ever wanted a simple website to publish your details and showcase your research? Good news! Z-Profile is a new tool aimed at helping researchers create their own sites, manage their online identity, and share their publications. View the Z-Profile demo site Z-Profile gets data from a specially-prepared Zotero collection, does of bit of processing, then generates a static website using Zola. The site includes biographical details and a list of your publications. Once your site is built, you can publish it using any web host, or for free through GitHub Pages. There’s a documentation site with full details, but creating your own Z-Profile site can be as simple as: 1. create a Zotero collection containing your publications and biographical details 2. go to the Z-Profile Site Builder and log on with Zotero – your site will be automatically built and packaged in a zip file 3. upload the contents of the zip file to the web host of your choice ## Why did I create Z-Profile? I was thinking about updating the guide to open access publishing for Australian historians that I created several years ago, and got a bit sidetracked… The problem was explaining the green open access (sometimes called self-archiving) provisions in publisher agreements that enable you to share certain versions of your publications. It’s fairly common for publishers to allow you to share the author accepted manuscript version (AAM) of your publication _immediately_ (ie without any embargo) on your ‘personal website’. Obviously I wanted to say – ‘just do it’. Put your AAM on the web and tell everyone where to find it. But it’s never that simple. The definition of a ‘personal website’ is fuzzy, perhaps intentionally, adding to the uncertainty around what’s permitted. And anyway, how many humanities researchers have the time, energy, and knowledge to create and maintain their own website? If I was going to encourage people to take advantage of this opportunity, I felt like I also needed to provide them with tools to make it easier. I also think it’s important for researchers to have online profiles that are not wholly dependent on their employer or a company that wants to exploit their data – to have ‘a domain of their own’ (in the words of the excellent folks at Reclaim Hosting). Of course, there are some other great options for building a research profile – in particular, I’d strongly suggest you set yourself up on Knowledge Commons. But having your own site, under your own domain, gives you extra control and flexibility. And so… Z-Profile. ## What is Z-Profile good for? Z-Profile is deliberately minimalist in design and function. It’s intended for people who want to share their research, but aren’t really interested in building websites. If you want more features, or more control, there are plenty of other tools around that could do the job. The Z-Profile home page displays your biographical details. You can include: * a portrait photo * a downloadable CV * a brief biographical note (that can include links to other sites) * a list of social media accounts or website links * a list of selected publications All the publications in your Zotero collection are automatically listed on a publications page. This is linked to an individual page for each publication, providing additional details, and links to alternative versions. Example of a publication page with the embedded PDF of an AAM version For example, perhaps you’ve just published an exhibition review in _Australian Historical Studies_ and want to share it online. Reviews aren’t covered by the ‘transformative agreements’ negotiated between Australian universities and Taylor & Francis (the journal’s publisher) that support open access publishing. However, under the publisher’s ‘self-archiving’ policy ‘you can post your Accepted Manuscript (AM) on your personal website at any point after publication of your article’. To share your review using Z-Profile, you’d just: * use Zotero to capture the publication details from the journal website * attach a PDF of your AAM to the item record in Zotero * tag the PDF with ‘aam’ to tell Z-Profile what it is Then, when you build your site with Z-Profile, it’ll create a page with the review, and embed the PDF for easy reading and download. ## What Z-Profile is not Z-Profile is not a repository. Even if you use it to share your publications, you should also upload your AAMs and preprints to an appropriate repository where they’ll be preserved and made available after any publisher-imposed embargoes. If you’re in a university, talk to the local librarians about your institutional repository. Otherwise there are general-purpose repositories like Knowledge Commons Works and Zenodo. You don’t have to limit yourself to a single option – remember LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)! ## Some technical details Z-Profile is really just some templates and a bit of data plumbing. Here are the main components: * a Python script to get the data from Zotero and prepare the contents of your site for processing by Zola * some basic templates for Zola to convert the data to HTML * a Python Flask app that uses OAuth to request an API key from Zotero, then runs the Python script and the Zola build process * a GitHub template repository that contains the Python script, the Zola templates, and a workflow to run the build process in a GitHub Action * there’s also a discussion board in GitHub where you can ask questions or suggest improvements ## Please share! Obviously I think Z-Profile could be useful, otherwise I wouldn’t have been obsessing about it for the last few weeks. But I don’t really know until it’s out there in the world. So please let me know if you make use of it. I’m also aware that the sort of people who follow my stuff are likely to have the skills and confidence to build their own websites from scratch, without the need for something like Z-Profile. As ever, it’s hard to get information to the people who would benefit most. So please share Z-Profile with your less technically minded colleagues.

Rupert Kirkwood's Wild World of Water. As seen from a Kayak.

TU Berlin - Wir haben die Ideen für die Zukunft. Zum Nutzen der Gesellschaft.

In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat sich das wissenschaftliche Publizieren auch in der Philosophie vom gedruckten Werk hin zu überwiegend digitalen Formaten entwickelt. Warum aber sollte man sich in der Philosophie mit Fragen zur Infrastruktur an Universitäten befassen? Wieso sollte man als Vertreter:in dieses Faches kritisch über Prozesse des elektronischen Publizierens nachdenken? Was haben Philosoph:innen mit Bibliometrie zu tun und wie verändert das die philosophische Arbeit? Die Autor:innen erörtern kritisch die gegenwärtige Praxis des elektronischen Publizierens sowie die darauf aufbauende quantitative Leistungsbeurteilung wissenschaftlicher Expertise. Die Philosophie tritt in diesem Kontext sowohl als Anwendungsdisziplin als auch als Reflexionswissenschaft auf: (1) Als Anwender:innen von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IuK-Technologien) sind Philosoph:innen in ihrem Arbeitsalltag mit Entwicklungen und Problemstellungen in Bezug auf das elektronische Publizieren (z.B. Fragen zur Finanzierung von sogenannten Article Processing Charges APCs, zu Repositorien, zu neuen Formen der Wissenschaftskommunikation mittels sozialer Medien, zu Open Access usw.) sowie dem damit verbundenen Phänomen der bibliometrischen Bewertung wissenschaftlicher Leistung (z.B. Journal Impact Faktor, h-Index etc.) konfrontiert. (2) Als Expert:innen der kritischen Reflexion wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisprozesse, der epistemischen Arbeitsteilung, der Vernetzung von Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft sowie damit einhergehender Schwierigkeiten sind sie diejenigen, die andererseits in kritischen Analysen Fragen nach Expertentum, Vertrauen, Autonomie und wissenschaftlichem Fortschritt nachgehen. In dieser Doppelfunktion suchen Vertreter:innen des Faches in diesem Band den Dialog mit Expert:innen der Informations- und Bibliothekswissenschaften an Universitäten sowie an außeruniversitären Forschungseinrichtungen. Die Beiträge kreisen um Fragestellungen der folgenden Art: Wie kann die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft ihre Autonomie gegenüber einem Oligopol der Informationsanalysten im Kontext des elektronischen Publizierens behaupten? Wie können beunruhigende Fehlentwicklungen wie jene des Wissenschaftlertrackings rückgängig gemacht werden? Welche Kriterien und Maßstäbe sollte die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft an ihre eigene Expertisebeurteilung künftig stellen?

Whilst forms of non-associative learning such as habituation are widely reported in single-celled organisms, whether associative learning is possible in systems without a nervous system is contested. In this study, we implemented a conditioning paradigm in the acellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum through repeated pairings of nutrients with an aversive blue light stimulus. We first established that blue light is aversive under our conditioning protocol, slowing migration and producing broader, less directed growth, confirming its well documented effect on behaviour. Subjects were then trained in up to four training sessions by placing an oat stimulus inside a region with blue light before testing with the light presented alone. Trained subjects were more likely to reach the blue light region compared to untrained controls, with shorter latency, suggesting that Physarum weakens its avoidance of blue light after the region has repeatedly coincided with a nutrient. However, engagement did not strengthen with additional pairings, a pattern that admits multiple competing explanations in which associative and non-associative processes plausibly contribute to more transient associative-like effects. We conclude that a history of co-presentation is sufficient to relax an aversive response in Physarum but cannot, within the present study, attribute that change to associative learning. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

NDT provide 1) Neurohistological service of the brain and spinal cord), 2) Neural staining kits (Apoptosis, Timms, Golgi-Cox, Timms stains & GolgiChrome), 3) Digital microscopic imaging and morphometric analysis, and 4) GLP and non-GLP studies.

The long read: Scientists are battling over whether supposedly simple organisms should be considered ‘intelligent’. The outcome could reshape our understanding of the natural world – and our own place within it

This is my review of Stephen Hawking’s last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018). I’m posting it here now because I mention it in my review of the new biography of Hawking by…