Muzzling goes to new extremes on US campuses

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/muzzling-goes-new-extremes-us-campuses

How a Funding Pause Derailed an Artificial Heart for Babies

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/well/federal-cuts-artificial-baby-heart-cornell.html

Uproar at Cornell after its president hits pro-Palestinian protester with his car

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/05/03/uproar-at-cornell-after-its-president-hits-pro-palestinian-protester-with-his-car/

Post for a late / early #SolarPunkSunday... #OwlCams! Check out the baby #Owlets!

"The #GreatHornedOwlCam just got a whole lot cuter this week thanks to two new arrivals. Athena, the female owl, stood watch over the nest as her first egg hatched a down-covered owlet on April 8 after 34 days of incubation. The second owlet arrived two days later, on April 10. Over the next six weeks, viewers will get an intimate look at the nestling period of one of the sky’s most formidable predators."

Read more:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/owlets-hatch-at-the-wildflower-center-great-horned-owl-nest/

Live feed:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/wildflower-great-horned-owls/

#CornellUniversity #MerlinApp #Birdwatching #Birding #Owls

#arXiv has announced that, from July 1, 2026, it will become an independent #nonprofit after many years at #CornellUniversity. The stated goals are greater organizational flexibility, faster technological development, broader partnerships, and long-term financial sustainability, while keeping the same mission:

🌍 https://blog.arxiv.org/2026/04/02/arxiv-is-becoming-an-independent-nonprofit/

Sounds like a reasonable and probably necessary step for a platform that has long become core research infrastructure.

#OpenScience #AcademicPublishing

An independent arXiv

I’m a bit late passing this news on, but a few weeks ago arXiv announced that from 1st July 2026 it will be establishing itself as an “independent nonprofit organization”. It has been hosted for many years by Cornell University. You can read here about the reasons for this and how it will work, and there is a lengthier article in Science magazine, but the quick summary is

This transition allows for faster technological development, greater organizational flexibility, expanded partnerships, and long-term financial sustainability. A platform built by scientists for scientists, the new arXiv will continue to serve researchers worldwide with the same dedication to free and open scientific discovery.

Such a move creates opportunities, but also carries risks. The sustainability of the new-look arXiv will depend on finding appropriate sources of income, for example. I wish arXiv well in this move. There’s an advertisement for the post of Chief Executive, if anyone fancies the job!

One possible future model for the Open Journal of Astrophysics is as a standalone non-profit organization of some sort, funded also by donations. Currently we are funded by the Library at Maynooth University, where I am based. Having made the decision not to charge fees of any kind, we lack any source of income other than the University. I am very grateful for that support, but we are run on a very tight budget. We keep costs to an absolute minimum, but are not free.

I have written before about what I think the future of Diamond Open Access could look like. I would like to see a range of Diamond Open Access journals offering a choice for authors and serving different sub-disciplines. Most universities nowadays have publishing operations so there could be network of federated journals, some based on arXiv and some based on other repositories and others with different models, such as SciPost. Perhaps institutions are worried about the expense but, as we have shown the actual cost, is far less than they are wasting on Article Processing Charges.

Everything is working well right now at OJAp, but it is not reasonable that the expense of running a journal that serves the global astrophysics community should fall entirely on one small University in Ireland. It won’t be sustainable in the long run, either, if we continue to grow at the present rate. Compare us with the Diamond Open Access publisher SCIPOST, which has a long list of sponsors covering its costs; we have none. My only hope at the moment of turning OJAp into an independent organization is to win the lottery!

Another thing makes me nervous. Many modern universities, which are nominally non-profit institutions, are managed by people who care far more about revenue generation than about academic scholarship and research. I worry that someone upstairs might pressurize us to introduce charges to generate income by threatening to close us down.

I know that money is very tight in astrophysics these days but if you have access to any potential sources of funding – then please consider supporting OJAp!

Glad to have been part of this initiative and to have met so many talented students.

https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2026/03/students-design-ai-powered-health-solutions-at-cornell-health-hackathon

#WeillCornellMedicine #AI #Hackathon #CornellUniversity