Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics in DIAS, member and former president of the Royal Irish Academy, former VP of ALLEA. Interested in open science and the future of scholarly communication. All views expressed here are personal. Languages are English, German and some French.
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2026-09-07T12:24:41Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury In addition to the economic and health costs, car ownership is contributing to the atomisation of society - if you are in a car you're not talking to the neighbours at the bus stop, or on public transport. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury When I was young I used to think that the chemists lost their innocence in WW1 and the physicists in WW2 - logically the biologists would be next. But now I think that it is computer science. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury @nprofile…h94j Interesting. In Ireland, because all major road building and other construction activity in archaeologically sensitive area required a professional survey, many archaeology graduates were hired by commercial archaeology survey firms. Not sure if this is still the case. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury According to the Guardian the Israeli mass surveillance of essentially all cell phone calls by Palestinians is partly enabled by Microsoft's Irish data centres and Azure cloud services. Perhaps one reason why the government is so keen to keep "services" out of the occupied territories bill? I npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury This is an essential, but depressing, read if you are concerned about trends in scientific publishing and research fraud. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The people who glibly talk about direct air capture of CO2 don't seem to understand entropy of mixing. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Boosting this account of the #OpenScience and #FutureOfScientificPublishing discussions at the European Astronomical Society meeting in Cork #EAS2025 npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury A diplomatically phrased but clear warning from the International Science Council. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The International Space Science Institute in Bern is looking for a director. Can recommend as a really nice institute hosting good meetings in a beautiful city. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Sadly easy to see that this emphasis on "gold-standard science" by the US administration is just the latest and more plausible-sounding version of "Do your own research" - a blatant attempt to use the inherent scepticism of genuine science as a weapon against science itself. No good can come from anti-science ideologues cherry-picking ideas from research integrity and taking them out of context. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Clear words from an Taoiseach, the head of the Irish government on the Israeli government's policy in Gaza: npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Ireland commemorating its catastrophic famine today. But this was caused by a fungal infection and not deliberate human action, and while the British authorities were too slow to respond and ineffective they did at least try to provide some relief. Gaza is shockingly different. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Very pleased to read that the German TIB is building a back-up copy of the arXiv "just in case". This is a vital research infrastructure for many of us. HT @nprofile…g2zk npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury This is what happens when for profit corporations get to buy up what should be public good serving journals. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury @nprofile…67c6 @nprofile…kwdd @nprofile…hfyq @nprofile…ac58 @nprofile…guze An under-appreciated factor in the early adoption of preprints by the physical and mathematical sciences was I believe the introduction of TeX for typesetting the mathematics in preprints. Once scientists realised that they could do their own typesetting the journals lost one of their main selling points. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Some good news - Irish people buy more books than anyone else in Europe! npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The Digital Repository of Ireland @nprofile…0xx7 shows what it means for an academic body to have a socially responsible policy on the use of social media platforms. Kudos! npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The German Leopoldina academy has a discussion paper on the financing of diamond publishing where they propose to fund it in the same way as research, through competitive grants to academic bodies. The idea has merit. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury This is from an article on Parkinson's disease and a probable link to herbicides, but applies to so many policy areas. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury So much for all the negative messaging - the German equivalent of the AA or RAC finds that electric cars break down less often than internal combustion vehicles. #ecars #bev npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The Irish Writers Union will be handing in a petition to the Minister for Trade on Thursday 17th in Kildare Street, Dublin protesting at the use by Meta of copyright protected works to train its AI models without authorisation. I have signed (my late father's books are affected). npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury @nprofile…y4wg Lovely city - and one with a nice bronze statue of Maxwell and his equations! npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The European Astronomical Society has awarded its Jocelyn Bell Burnell inspiration medal to the arXiv! Well deserved recognition of its contribution to open science and the normalisation of preprints in astronomy. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Obviously there is a selection bias here, but of US scientists who answered a Poll in the magazine Nature 75% said they were considering emigrating... npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury I took part in the march through Dublin today against the ongoing breaches of international law in Gaza and the occupied territories. Good to see a large turnout including one Jewish group. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury The techbros of silicon valley seem to have forgotten that their power and money depends ultimately on the rule of law and the ability to enforce contracts and intellectual property rights. Exchanging these social constructs for the whims of a dictator may bring short-term gains, but in the long run it will end badly. HT to @nprofile…yzcp who says this more eloquently. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury It is really very simple. Putin does not fear NATO (he has lived with it in Turkey for decades and knows that it is a purely defensive alliance), he hates the EU for spreading the idea of democracy and the rule of law (even if imperfectly) Silicon valley hates the EU for attempting to regulate it (even if with little success so far). American "Republicans" hate Europe for showing that social democracy works (publicly funded health etc). Europe's core values are anathema to these people. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury We now see the wisdom of Europe having its own satellite positioning system as well as an independent launch capability. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury This is a useful guide to creative commons and the associated copyright law issues from the German UNESCO commission. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Arising from some recent correspondence I think it is important to point out that the "page charges" that were common for American scholarly journals in the 1970s were very different from the modern APCs that publishers try to charge. The former were explicitly "per page" and subsidised the high costs of typesetting and printing on paper; APCs are "per article" and are supposed to cover administrative costs of the journal. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury @npub1g0t…tvm4 It is very scary for science in Argentina. One of his proposals was to completely shut down research funding. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury Quite taken by this painting entitled “Meteor Collectors”. Reminded me of a certain Harvard professor. npub1q542s9phdkdsq5tk0qh3vs56v868wj7urhslrfsjqy0vgm0m2cts8gm7jv Luke Drury @npub1g0t…tvm4 Academics writing grant proposals perhaps? Except then only 10% would be carried through to the next round....
