The diamond ring effect as well as the Bailey pearls are considered the moon eclipses the sun on April 8, 2024 in Fort Worth, in Texas.
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Ron Jenkins / Getty Images
There is nothing like being on the way to the whole during a total solar eclipse.
“For a few minutes, it feels like the whole world is motionless and yet everything changes,” said Corinne Brevik, a physicist at the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The sky darkens, the stars come out while the fire of the crown of the sun becomes visible. “It reminds me that we are all part of something much bigger than us.”
But only a ribbon in the country obtains this first -hand view. For the Eclipse 2024, Brevik used the money of a subsidy of the National Science Foundation to help the middle school students to organize an interactive live program which gathered the children on the way to the whole with those of the country outside the path. This meant that thousands of students could share the experience.
“You can literally watch the children watch the eclipse and hear this moment of” whoa! “” She said. “He had a lot of children who would not necessarily have had the chance to see him to observe.”
Tuesday, Brevik was surprised to learn that his subsidy was one of the 3,400 NSF subsidies labeled by Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, like “Woke Dei” research which can advance “Propaganda of the class -Marxist”.
A database published by Cruz this week has been the basis of a October report He claimed that more than $ 2 billion in the NSF $ 9 billion budget went to “the left -wing ideological crusades as masked as an” academic research “. The report also includes an annex containing hundreds of words related to Dei. The parts of this appendix are currently used By NSF staff to detect thousands of their active subsidies for the respect of President Trump’s decrees targeting the measures of diversity, equity and inclusion through the government.
“It’s frustrating,” explains Brevik. “The only objective was to share what is happening with everyone. It is not propaganda; there is no substantive agenda. Our goal is to help educate our young people.”
Brevik was one of the many scientists expressing consternation of how their fundamental research was labeled.
THE database Includes research subsidies from all corners of the country, large research institutions and small colleges. The list included projects to find better ways to synthesize new drugs; Study how to make autonomous vehicles safer; Investigating how military service could help more women pursue scientific careers; Determine why certain proteins start to dysque a dysfunction in a way that can lead to cancer.
“It’s ridiculous”, explains Joshua Weitz, biologist at the University of Maryland whose research has not been reported but who received NSF subsidies. “(Cruz) uses its position as a senator to make a great noise on basic research and an erroneous categorization of what is happening in the research and technology sector in this country. If we look at this list, you Find things that we should absolutely be proud of funding.
Many research proposals that seem entirely unrelated to Dei have probably been reported because they understood a language to expand the participation of women and groups underrepresented in science, says Weitz, something that Congress forced the NSF to consider in his subsidies since the 1990s.
Cruz’s office did not respond to several requests for comments. A press release Supporting the database indicates that “Dei’s initiatives have poisoned research efforts, eroded confidence in the scientific community and fueled the division among the Americans … Congress must end the politicization of the financing of the NSF and to restore the integrity of scientific research ”.
Broader impacts
Tammie Visintainer, professor of scientific education at the State University of San Jose, was one of the three researchers Explicitly called By Cruz for his work to initiate under-represented students in the Community Sciences.
“I discovered via a text from my dean, who said” let me know if you receive threats “,” she said. “It was frightening and alarming … I actually removed my name from the door of my office. I felt like I didn’t need people to know where I am.”
All NSF subsidies must explain how research will have an impact on society, including how they will expand participation in science. “This is one of the two main criteria that the National Science Foundation uses to examine subsidies,” explains Visintainer. “To be competitive, you must take care of these things – and you must attend these things – because there are massive iniquity problems, and claim that these are not real is not based on evidence . “
Its NSF subsidy supports a project aimed at helping teachers and students develop research in community sciences on the causes and effects of extreme heat and urban heat islands in racial and ethnically diverse communities, which are tap stronger that suburban communities, which tend to be white and richer.
“The radical work that is attacked is the students who walk in their community, collecting temperature data or examining the cards and identifying a local heat problem,” she said. The primordial objective of his work is to try to understand “How can we bring students to see themselves as scientists or scientific type?”
Kylea Gruces, an environmentalist at the University of Miami, has a similar objective. His grant is also on the list of Cruz.
Braces was a first generation student. “I come from a family of blue passes, my parents are farmers and construction workers,” she said. Sometimes she had trouble seeing a place for herself in science.
Later, she won an NSF postdoctoral scholarship to study how fungi interact with plants in a way that can stimulate resilience under stress. This subsidy also supports its efforts to develop means to assess students from college sciences that expand participation.
In a class of environmental studies for non-major, for example, his students could choose the subject for their final project. A student decided to make a visual presentation on the climate change she projected behind her punk group while he was playing.
“I think there is a lot of crumble at the moment with the fact of launching” Dei “or social justice”, she says. “There is nothing political to want students to learn. It is not social justice. It simply gives all students the opportunity to obtain a good note and to be able to succeed in their future career. “”
The publication of the Cruz database is only the last of a wave of actions of the Republicans at the Congress and Trump administration targeting the very foundations of American science. Those who are behind these movements, including the freezing of subsidies, reduction of financing and websitesmaintains that they are reining in science that becomes ideologically extreme.
While NSF says they Impossible to stop payments On existing subsidies due to non-compliance with these orders, the freeze on subsidies At the end of January, many scientists fear that funding can still be drawn.
Many within the scientific community argue that it is a direct attack on science that will ultimately harm Americans. “What worries me is that the intention is to dismantle American scientific leadership,” said Weitz. “If you stop this type of work, how are you going to get the next advanced materials or quantum IT or the next cancer drug or treatment for heart disease?”