Latest news with #NSF-funded
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Basic research advances science, and can also have broader impacts on modern society
It might seem surprising, but federal research funding isn't just for scientists. A component of many federal grants that support basic research requires that discoveries be shared with nonscientists. This component, referred to as 'broader impacts' by the National Science Foundation, can make a big difference for K-12 students and teachers, museumgoers, citizen scientists and other people interested in science, while also helping the scientists themselves give back to the taxpayers that fund their work. Basic research, often done because of a curious scientist's interest, may not initially have a direct application, like developing the smartphone or curing a disease. But these discoveries build important knowledge in the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics and related disciplines. The U.S. is a world leader in scientific and technological innovation. On the federal level, the National Science Foundation, or NSF, is one of the primary funders of this kind of basic research. In 2022, the federal government funded 40% of all basic research done in the U.S., with the remainder coming from other sources, including the business sector. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to position the U.S. for strategic and economic leadership worldwide. He commissioned physicist Vannevar Bush to develop a vision for the future of U.S. science and technology. His 1945 report, 'Science: the Endless Frontier,' became the blueprint for government-funded basic research. In 1950, Congress created the National Science Foundation to promote the progress of science, advance national prosperity and welfare and secure the national defense. During the early decades of NSF, the 1950s until the late 1990s, proposals were mostly evaluated based on the quality of the science and the scientists doing the work. But then, the foundation created a new system, still in place today. Thus, each NSF research proposal is now peer-reviewed based on two criteria: intellectual merit, or the quality and novelty of the science and track record of the research team, and 'broader impacts' – related activities that disseminate the discoveries to general audiences. Intellectual merit is about advancing science knowledge and innovation, while broader impacts describe why people who aren't scientists should care, and how society could benefit from this research. Another pragmatic aspect to broader impacts is that taxpayers pay for these activities, so it's important for them, and Congress, to understand their return on investment. These broader impacts activities communicate about, and engage the public in, research in a variety of ways. While researchers usually understand the intellectual merit of their NSF-funded projects, these broader impacts can be challenging to characterize. Since childhood, I've had an interest in paleontology — the study of fossils and what we can learn from them about prehistoric life. This field is primarily basic research — adding to knowledge about ancient life. As a scientist conducting basic research, I've felt the responsibility to give back to society through broader impacts activities, and I've seen many of the benefits that these activities can have. My primary area of interest has been extinct mammals of the Americas, particularly the 55-million-year-old record of fossil horses on this continent. For years, NSF supported my discoveries about this interesting group of animals. Fossil horses are a classic example of evolution — in books and museum exhibits. Many people are generally interested in horses, so it's easy to attract their attention with this charismatic group. They also are often surprised to learn that prehistoric horses were native to North America for millions of years. Then, during historical times, they were first introduced by humans onto the continent about 500 years ago. Over the years, my research team has used grant-funded broader impact activities to teach people about these fossil horses and our research. One example included working with K-12 science teachers to develop lesson plans. The students measured fossil horse teeth and explored how their teeth adapted to feeding on grasses. We've also developed exhibits on fossil horses and studied how they communicate science to museum visitors. Science teachers have joined our fieldwork to collect fossils along the Panama Canal during its recent expansion. I've given many talks and collaborated with fossil clubs and their members throughout the U.S. We've also promoted projects like Fossils4Teachers where fossil collectors donated their fossils and worked alongside K-12 teachers to develop lesson plans that were implemented back in the teachers' classrooms. We've also been able to activate peoples' interest in other animal groups — such as fossil sharks. Through our Scientist in Every Florida School program, we gave middle school teachers study kits with real fossil shark teeth. Their students learned to identify the shark teeth and then trained computers to identify the teeth using machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence. Broader impacts activities like these can have a variety of short- and long-term outcomes. More than 50 million people visit natural history museums in the U.S. annually. Activities that promote museums can reach large numbers of people in their pursuit of lifelong learning. More broadly, participatory science interest groups can allow people to learn about science while informing basic research projects. Within the field of natural history, a few popular examples include the Merlin app and the iNaturalist app, both of which have millions of active observers. Merlin encourages people to submit their observations of birds, and iNaturalist accepts sightings of plants, animals and fossils, which researchers can carefully vet and use as data. Many of the K-12 teachers my team has worked with report that they feel more confident teaching the new science content that they learned from our collaborations. Interestingly, although much of the research on science professional development focuses on the teachers, scientists also report a high level of satisfaction and improved communication skills after working with these teachers, both in the field and back in the classroom. Generations of U.S. scientists have greatly benefited from federal investments in basic research. In the 75 years since NSF's founding, the organization has funded hundreds of thousand projects to advance science and technology. These have supported basic research discoveries and also the training and career development of the tens of thousands of scientists working on these projects annually. Many prominent scientists have gone on to be productive leaders and innovators in the U.S. and internationally. NSF has funded more than 268 Nobel laureates. While NSF invests in the discovery of foundational knowledge about the natural world, funded projects have not traditionally had direct applications for societal benefits. To be sure, however, many of NSF's projects – for example, on lasers and nanotechnology – started out as curiosity-driven basic research and ended up with immense applications for technological innovation and economic prosperity. For example, mapping the Earth's ocean floor's magnetic properties during World War II helped scientists understand how the crust moves and mountains form. This led to the plate tectonic revolution in the earth sciences. This line of basic research then led to an important application: predicting the probable location of high-risk earthquake zones worldwide. None of these downstream applications and benefits to society would have been realized without basic research discoveries supported by federal agencies such as NSF, and the further value added through broader impacts activities. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Bruce J. MacFadden, University of Florida Read more: Philanthropy provides B annually for science and health research − funding that tends to stay local NIH funding cuts will hit red states, rural areas and underserved communities the hardest Medical research depends on government money – even a day's delay in the intricate funding process throws science off-kilter Bruce J. MacFadden has received funding from the U. S. National Science Foundation.
Technical.ly
01-05-2025
- Science
- Technical.ly
U.S. National Science Foundation Commemoration of its 75th anniversary
Event Description Join us for NSF STEM Day at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Saturday, May 10, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. This free, public event is a celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the National Science Foundation and highlights the impact of NSF-funded work in Baltimore and beyond. The day will feature an interactive STEM Maker Faire with hands-on activity tables and demonstrations, panel discussions led by researchers, educators, and community partners, and a showcase of art-science installations developed through NSF grants. Free transportation will be available from select Baltimore recreation centers, and all event attendees will receive free admission to the Baltimore Museum of Industry during the event.
Mint
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Trump science cuts target bird feeder research, AI literacy work and more
Ashley Dayer's dream of winning a National Science Foundation grant to pursue discoveries in bird conservation started when she was an early-career professor with an infant in her arms and a shoestring laboratory budget. Competition is intense for NSF grants, a key source of funding for science research at U.S. universities. It took three failed applications and years of preliminary research before the agency awarded her one. Then came a Monday email informing Dayer that President Donald Trump's administration was cutting off funding, apparently because the project investigating the role of bird feeders touched on themes of diversity, equity and inclusion. 'I was shocked and saddened,' said Dayer, a professor at Virginia Tech's department of fish and wildlife conservation. 'We were just at the peak of being able to get our findings together and do all of our analysis. There's a lot of feelings of grief.' Hundreds of other university researchers had their National Science Foundation funding abruptly canceled Friday to comply with Trump's directives to end support of research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the study of misinformation. It's the latest front in Trump's anti-DEI campaign that has also gone after university administrations, medical research and the private sector. The NSF's director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, defended the agency's priorities but then quit on Thursday, saying he had 'done all I can to advance the critical mission of the agency.' More than 380 grant projects have been cut so far, including work to combat internet censorship in China and Iran and a project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska's Arctic region. One computer scientist was studying how artificial intelligence tools could mitigate bias in medical information, and others were trying to help people detect AI-generated deepfakes. A number of terminated grants sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering. NSF, founded in 1950, has a $9 billion budget that can be a lifeline for resource-strapped professors and the younger researchers they recruit to their teams. It has shifted priorities over time but it is highly unusual to terminate so many midstream grants. Some scientists saw the cuts coming, after Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz last year flagged thousands of NSF-funded projects he says reflected a 'woke DEI' or Marxist agenda, including some but not all of the projects cut Friday. Still, Dayer said she was 'incredibly surprised' that her bird project was axed. A collaboration with other institutions, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it tapped into Project Feederwatch, a website and app for sharing bird observations. Dayer's team had collected data from more 20,000 Americans on their birdwatching habits, fielding insights on how outdoor feeders were affecting wildlife, but also people's mental well-being. The only mention of the word 'diversity' in the grant abstract is about bird populations, not people. But the project explicitly sought to engage more disabled people and people of color. That fit with NSF's longtime requirement that funded projects must have a broad impact. 'We thought, if anything, maybe we'd be told not to do that broader impacts work and to remove that from our project,' Dayer said. 'We had no expectation that the entire grant would be unfunded.' On the day the grants were terminated, Panchanathan, the NSF's director since 2020, said on the agency's website that it still supported 'research on broadening participation' but those efforts 'should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.' Less than a week later, Panchanathan had announced his resignation. The NSF declined to share the total number of canceled grants, but Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, posted on X that NSF had canceled "402 wasteful DEI grants' amounting to $233 million. It didn't say how much of that had already been spent. Grants typically last for several years. Caren Cooper, a North Carolina State University professor of forestry and natural resources, said she expected her work would be targeted after it made Cruz's list. Her grant project also sought to include people of color and people with disabilities in participatory science projects, in collaboration with the Audubon Society and with the aim of engaging those who have historically been excluded from natural spaces and birdwatching groups. One doctoral student had left her job and moved her family to North Carolina to work with Cooper on a stipend the grant helped to fund. 'We've been trying to make contingency plans," Cooper said. "Nonetheless, it's an illegal thing. It's violating the terms and conditions of the award. And it really harms our students.' Along with eliminating DEI research, NSF said it will no longer 'support research with the goal of combating 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation' that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.' Several researchers said they weren't sure why their funding was terminated, other than that their abstracts included terms like 'censorship' or 'misinformation.' 'The lack of transparency around this process is deeply concerning,' said Eric Wustrow, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder whose grant aims to study and combat internet censorship in countries like China and Iran. 'Did they just Ctrl f for certain words, ignoring context?' NSF said on its website that 'there is not a list of words' to avoid, but that misinformation research is no longer aligned with NSF's priorities. Wustrow said his research supports free speech and access to information around the world, and he plans to appeal the decision to terminate the funding. Meanwhile, he's looking at potentially working for free this summer without a grant to fund his salary. Even for those who did intend to address misinformation, the cuts seemed to miss the point. Casey Fiesler, of the University of Colorado Boulder, had a project focused on dispelling AI misconceptions and improving AI literacy — also a priority of Trump's education department. Cornell University's Drew Margolin said his work set out to help people find ways to combat social media harassment, hate speech and misinformation without the help of content moderators or government regulators. 'The irony is it's like a free speech way of addressing speech,' Margolin said. The NSF declined to say if more cuts are coming. The terminated funding mirrors earlier cuts to medical research funding from the National Institutes of Health. A group of scientists and health groups sued the NIH earlier this month, arguing that those cuts were illegal and threatened medical cures. The cuts at NSF so far are a tiny portion of all of the agency's grants, amounting to 387 projects, said Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard University's school of public health who is helping to track the cuts to help researchers advocate for themselves. Some received termination letters even though their projects had already ended. 'It is very chaotic, which is very consistent with what is happening at NIH," Delaney said. "And it's really unclear if this is everything that's going to get terminated or if it's just the opening salvo.' Dayer is still figuring out what to do about the loss of funding for the bird feeder project, which cuts off part of summer funding for four professors at three universities and their respective student teams. She's particularly worried about what it means for the next generation of American scientists, including those still deciding their career path. 'It's just this outright attack on science right now,' Dayer said. 'It's going to have lasting impacts for American people and for science and knowledge in our country. I'm also just afraid that people aren't going to go into the field of science.' Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text. First Published: 25 Apr 2025, 02:17 AM IST
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump science cuts roil university labs, targeting bird feeder research, AI literacy work and more
Ashley Dayer's dream of winning a National Science Foundation grant to pursue discoveries in bird conservation started when she was an early-career professor with an infant in her arms and a shoestring laboratory budget. Competition is intense for NSF grants, a key source of funding for science research at U.S. universities. It took three failed applications and years of preliminary research before the agency awarded her one. Then came a Monday email informing Dayer that President Donald Trump's administration was cutting off funding, apparently because the project investigating the role of bird feeders touched on themes of diversity, equity and inclusion. 'I was shocked and saddened,' said Dayer, a professor at Virginia Tech's department of fish and wildlife conservation. 'We were just at the peak of being able to get our findings together and do all of our analysis. There's a lot of feelings of grief.' Hundreds of other university researchers had their National Science Foundation funding abruptly canceled Friday to comply with Trump's directives to end support of research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the study of misinformation. It's the latest front in Trump's anti-DEI campaign that has also gone after university administrations, medical research and the private sector. More than 380 grant projects have been cut so far, including work to combat internet censorship in China and Iran and a project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska's Arctic region. One computer scientist was studying how artificial intelligence tools could mitigate bias in medical information, and others were trying to help people detect AI-generated deepfakes. A number of terminated grants sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering. NSF, founded in 1950, has a $9 billion budget that can be a lifeline for resource-strapped professors and the younger researchers they recruit to their teams. It has shifted priorities over time but it is highly unusual to terminate so many midstream grants. Some scientists saw the cuts coming, after Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz last year flagged thousands of NSF-funded projects he says reflected a 'woke DEI' or Marxist agenda, including some but not all of the projects cut Friday. Still, Dayer said she was 'incredibly surprised' that her bird project was axed. A collaboration with other institutions, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it tapped into Project Feedwatch, a website and app for sharing bird observations. Dayer's team had collected data from more 20,000 Americans on their birdwatching habits, fielding insights on how outdoor feeders were affecting wildlife, but also people's mental well-being. The only mention of the word 'diversity' in the grant award is about bird populations, not people. But the project explicitly sought to engage more disabled people and people of color. That fit with NSF's longtime requirement that funded projects must have a broad impact. 'We thought, if anything, maybe we'd be told not to do that broader impacts work and to remove that from our project,' Dayer said. 'We had no expectation that the entire grant would be unfunded.' NSF and DOGE say they were 'wasteful DEI grants' On the day the grants were terminated, Sethuraman Panchanathan, the NSF's director since 2020, said on the agency's website that it still supported 'research on broadening participation' but those efforts 'should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.' The NSF declined to share the total number of canceled grants, but Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, posted on X that NSF had canceled "402 wasteful DEI grants' amounting to $233 million. It didn't say how much of that had already been spent. Grants typically last for several years. Caren Cooper, a North Carolina State University professor of forestry and natural resources, said she expected her work would be targeted after it made Cruz's list. Her grant project also sought to include people of color and people with disabilities in participatory science projects, in collaboration with the Audubon Society and with the aim of engaging those who have historically been excluded from natural spaces and birdwatching groups. One doctoral student had left her job and moved her family to North Carolina to work with Cooper on a stipend the grant helped to fund. 'We've been trying to make contingency plans," Cooper said. "Nonetheless, it's an illegal thing. It's violating the terms and conditions of the award. And it really harms our students.' Cutting misinformation work Along with eliminating DEI research, NSF said it will no longer 'support research with the goal of combating 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation' that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.' Several researchers said they weren't sure why their funding was terminated, other than that their abstracts included terms like 'censorship' or 'misinformation.' 'The lack of transparency around this process is deeply concerning,' said Eric Wustrow, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder whose grant aims to study and combat internet censorship in countries like China and Iran. 'Did they just Ctrl+f for certain words, ignoring context?' NSF said on its website that 'there is not a list of words' to avoid, but that misinformation research is no longer aligned with NSF's priorities. Wustrow said his research supports free speech and access to information around the world, and he plans to appeal the decision to terminate the funding. Meanwhile, he's looking at potentially working for free this summer without a grant to fund his salary. Even for those who did intend to address misinformation, the cuts seemed to miss the point. Casey Fiesler, of the University of Colorado Boulder, had a project focused on dispelling AI misconceptions and improving AI literacy — also a priority of Trump's education department. Cornell University's Drew Margolin said his work set out to help people find ways to combat social media harassment, hate speech and misinformation without the help of content moderators or government regulators. 'The irony is it's like a free speech way of addressing speech,' Margolin said. Are more cuts coming? The NSF declined to say if more cuts are coming. The terminated funding mirrors earlier cuts to medical research funding from the National Institutes of Health. A group of scientists and health groups sued the NIH earlier this month, arguing that those cuts were illegal and threatened medical cures. The cuts at NSF so far are a tiny portion of all of the agency's grants, amounting to 387 projects, said Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard University's school of public health who is helping to track the cuts to help researchers advocate for themselves. Some received termination letters even though their projects had already ended. 'It is very chaotic, which is very consistent with what is happening at NIH," Delaney said. "And it's really unclear if this is everything that's going to get terminated or if it's just the opening salvo.' Dayer is still figuring out what to do about the loss of funding for the bird feeder project, which cuts off part of summer funding for four professors at three universities and their respective student teams. She's particularly worried about what it means for the next generation of American scientists, including those still deciding their career path. 'It's just this outright attack on science right now,' Dayer said. 'It's going to have lasting impacts for American people and for science and knowledge in our country. I'm also just afraid that people aren't going to go into the field of science.' —— Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
The Hill
24-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump science cuts roil university labs, targeting bird feeder research, AI literacy work and more
Ashley Dayer's dream of winning a National Science Foundation grant to pursue discoveries in bird conservation started when she was an early-career professor with an infant in her arms and a shoestring laboratory budget. Competition is intense for NSF grants, a key source of funding for science research at U.S. universities. It took three failed applications and years of preliminary research before the agency awarded her one. Then came a Monday email informing Dayer that President Donald Trump's administration was cutting off funding, apparently because the project investigating the role of bird feeders touched on themes of diversity, equity and inclusion. 'I was shocked and saddened,' said Dayer, a professor at Virginia Tech's department of fish and wildlife conservation. 'We were just at the peak of being able to get our findings together and do all of our analysis. There's a lot of feelings of grief.' Hundreds of other university researchers had their National Science Foundation funding abruptly canceled Friday to comply with Trump's directives to end support of research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the study of misinformation. It's the latest front in Trump's anti-DEI campaign that has also gone after university administrations, medical research and the private sector. More than 380 grant projects have been cut so far, including work to combat internet censorship in China and Iran and a project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska's Arctic region. One computer scientist was studying how artificial intelligence tools could mitigate bias in medical information, and others were trying to help people detect AI-generated deepfakes. A number of terminated grants sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering. NSF, founded in 1950, has a $9 billion budget that can be a lifeline for resource-strapped professors and the younger researchers they recruit to their teams. It has shifted priorities over time but it is highly unusual to terminate so many midstream grants. Some scientists saw the cuts coming, after Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz last year flagged thousands of NSF-funded projects he says reflected a 'woke DEI' or Marxist agenda, including some but not all of the projects cut Friday. Still, Dayer said she was 'incredibly surprised' that her bird project was axed. A collaboration with other institutions, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it tapped into Project Feedwatch, a website and app for sharing bird observations. Dayer's team had collected data from more 20,000 Americans on their birdwatching habits, fielding insights on how outdoor feeders were affecting wildlife, but also people's mental well-being. The only mention of the word 'diversity' in the grant award is about bird populations, not people. But the project explicitly sought to engage more disabled people and people of color. That fit with NSF's longtime requirement that funded projects must have a broad impact. 'We thought, if anything, maybe we'd be told not to do that broader impacts work and to remove that from our project,' Dayer said. 'We had no expectation that the entire grant would be unfunded.' NSF and DOGE say they were 'wasteful DEI grants' On the day the grants were terminated, Sethuraman Panchanathan, the NSF's director since 2020, said on the agency's website that it still supported 'research on broadening participation' but those efforts 'should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.' The NSF declined to share the total number of canceled grants, but Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, posted on X that NSF had canceled '402 wasteful DEI grants' amounting to $233 million. It didn't say how much of that had already been spent. Grants typically last for several years. Caren Cooper, a North Carolina State University professor of forestry and natural resources, said she expected her work would be targeted after it made Cruz's list. Her grant project also sought to include people of color and people with disabilities in participatory science projects, in collaboration with the Audubon Society and with the aim of engaging those who have historically been excluded from natural spaces and birdwatching groups. One doctoral student had left her job and moved her family to North Carolina to work with Cooper on a stipend the grant helped to fund. 'We've been trying to make contingency plans,' Cooper said. 'Nonetheless, it's an illegal thing. It's violating the terms and conditions of the award. And it really harms our students.' Cutting misinformation work Along with eliminating DEI research, NSF said it will no longer 'support research with the goal of combating 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation' that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.' Several researchers said they weren't sure why their funding was terminated, other than that their abstracts included terms like 'censorship' or 'misinformation.' 'The lack of transparency around this process is deeply concerning,' said Eric Wustrow, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder whose grant aims to study and combat internet censorship in countries like China and Iran. 'Did they just Ctrl+f for certain words, ignoring context?' NSF said on its website that 'there is not a list of words' to avoid, but that misinformation research is no longer aligned with NSF's priorities. Wustrow said his research supports free speech and access to information around the world, and he plans to appeal the decision to terminate the funding. Meanwhile, he's looking at potentially working for free this summer without a grant to fund his salary. Even for those who did intend to address misinformation, the cuts seemed to miss the point. Casey Fiesler, of the University of Colorado Boulder, had a project focused on dispelling AI misconceptions and improving AI literacy — also a priority of Trump's education department. Cornell University's Drew Margolin said his work set out to help people find ways to combat social media harassment, hate speech and misinformation without the help of content moderators or government regulators. 'The irony is it's like a free speech way of addressing speech,' Margolin said. Are more cuts coming? The NSF declined to say if more cuts are coming. The terminated funding mirrors earlier cuts to medical research funding from the National Institutes of Health. A group of scientists and health groups sued the NIH earlier this month, arguing that those cuts were illegal and threatened medical cures. The cuts at NSF so far are a tiny portion of all of the agency's grants, amounting to 387 projects, said Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard University's school of public health who is helping to track the cuts to help researchers advocate for themselves. Some received termination letters even though their projects had already ended. 'It is very chaotic, which is very consistent with what is happening at NIH,' Delaney said. 'And it's really unclear if this is everything that's going to get terminated or if it's just the opening salvo.' Dayer is still figuring out what to do about the loss of funding for the bird feeder project, which cuts off part of summer funding for four professors at three universities and their respective student teams. She's particularly worried about what it means for the next generation of American scientists, including those still deciding their career path. 'It's just this outright attack on science right now,' Dayer said. 'It's going to have lasting impacts for American people and for science and knowledge in our country. I'm also just afraid that people aren't going to go into the field of science.'
