My Hobby and Interest - Research

Signal is not the place for top secret communications, but it might be the right choice for you – a cybersecurity expert on what to look for in a secure messaging app by Frederick Scholl When top White House defense and national security leaders  discussed plans for an attack  on targets in Yemen over the messaging app Signal, it  raised many questions  about operational security and recordkeeping and national security laws. It also puts  Signal  in the spotlight. Why do so many  government officials ,  activists  and  journalists  use Signal for secure messaging? The short answer is that it uses  end-to-end encryption , meaning no one in position to eavesdrop on the communication – including Signal itself – can read messages they intercept. But Signal isn’t the only messaging app that uses end-to-end encryption, and end-to-end encryption isn’t the only consideration in choosing a secure messaging app. In addition, secure ...

  A Weekly Update of Policy News and Select Funding Opportunities Compiled by  Van Scoyoc Associates View this email in your browser March 28, 2025 Health RFK Jr. set to cut 10K HHS jobs in major restructuring  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is planning to dismiss 10,000 employees as part of a massive restructuring effort, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday, in a push to consolidate more agency functions under Kennedy’s purview. In total, HHS will reduce staff from the current 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000. Kennedy said HHS’s 28 divisions will be consolidated to 15, and 10 regional offices will become five. The agency will also create a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), which Kennedy said will coordinate chronic care and disease prevention programs. Read more:   The Hill   NIH cancels RECOVER grants for long COVID projects  President Trump’s administration this week abruptly terminated fundin...

 Nature Careers Three AI-powered steps to faster, smarter peer review Tired of spending countless hours on peer reviews? An AI-assisted workflow could help. By   Dritjon Gruda Do you ever feel that agreeing to review an academic paper guarantees a wasted workday? You’re not alone. Many researchers spend hours marking up a manuscript, only to realize that they need even more time to let everything sink in before they can write coherent feedback. Not surprisingly, they’ve started turning down review invitations — it’s the only way they can safeguard their time and energy. But science is a community endeavour, and we all know that many editors struggle to find qualified reviewers who can deliver quality feedback to tight deadlines. We also know that when the most knowledgeable people keep declining editors’ requests, science suffers. To find out more, I conducted an informal poll over social media. In posts on Facebook and LinkedIn in January, I asked how much time academic colle...

Nature News AI is transforming peer review — and many scientists are worried Artificial intelligence software is increasingly involved in reviewing papers, provoking interest and unease. By   Miryam Naddaf This February, ecologist Timothée Poisot was surprised when he read through the peer reviews of a manuscript he had submitted for publication. One of the referee reports seemed to have been written with, or perhaps entirely by, artificial intelligence (AI). It contained the telltale sentence, “Here is a revised version of your review with improved clarity and structure”, a strong indication that the text was generated by large language models (LLMs). Poisot hasn’t yet told the journal editor of his suspicions; he asked that the journal involved — which bans the use of LLMs in peer reviews — not be revealed in this article. But in a  blogpost about the incident , he argued strongly against automated peer review. “I submit a manuscript for review in the hope of getting comment...