Kat Robison, PhD

@katrobison.bsky.social

662 Followers 122 Following

Poet, Political Scientist, Lecturer USSC/USYD, #FirstGen, Research Aficionado, Occasional Podcaster, Human (she/her). I study space, women in STEM, politics, and #scicomm. Views my own. Fields: Space Policy, Political Communication/Behaviour, US Politics

LC-34 memorial plaque honouring the crew of Apollo 1.
Screenshot of following text, with the quote about the Middle East highlighted in red. Further, by inviting the R.S.F. delegation to attend the talks in D.C., the Administration conferred legitimacy on the group. “You don’t invite Hamas or the Taliban to Washington to negotiate things. You do that in Doha, right?” Hudson said. “That’s why God invented the Middle East, so that we didn’t have to have these war criminals sipping champagne in Washington, D.C.” Hudson believes that further horrors can be avoided, but only if the U.S. commits to focussing on the issue, and to putting real pressure on the R.S.F. and its allies.
Photo of text: In the Feuchtwanger household, Hitler was spoken of as a "ridiculous figure" because of this failed coup, Feuchtwanger remembers. "People believed that Hitler was a temporary phenomenon," he says. In particular, his uncle Lion wavered between feeling alarmed and remaining calm. In his satirical novel Success, which he published in 1930, Lion portrays Hitler as a hysterical man named Kutzner who tries to seduce the people with nationalist ideas but ultimately fails. "Although he regarded Hitler as very dangerous, he saw him as someone to be made fun of. Hitler was supposed to continue as a ridiculous figure and then he would somehow disappear from the scene," Feuchtwanger says.
Whitening toothpaste ad that says: Sydneysiders, make the WHITE choice today!
Image description (credit NASA socials team): Earth is a small pale blue circle in the sky in this image taken from the Moon by a camera on Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander. The Moon's gray surface sharply contrasts with the blackness of space. The lander's shadow can be seen on the ground. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
A corpse flower with its stamen (I’m assuming) bent down.
Photo of a numbat on leaf detritus - numbats have striped butts and are super cute.
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., a black man, speaking in front of several microphones with an American flag in the background. Black and white Image from Library of Congress.
Fireworks over water. From 2023 because there’s no way I’ll be up for this year’s since I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since having a baby.
An AtlasV launches the Juno mission - image from SpaceNews
Woman smiling, baby asleep in carrier, not very visible.
View of terminal out of plane window with baby feet in the lower part of the pic.
Photo of a tiny cactus held on on finger outstretched that says: i am a tiny cactus and i believe in you you can do the thing
White male peacock displaying his plumage in a courtyard
Baby silhouetted in front of a plane window.
Photo of a plane window looking out over the tarmac
A photo of a dish in the background with street signs with space names in the foreground
Photo of a panel on stage over an audience. The panel do two women and three men are sitting in front of USSC banners.
A group picture taken at the the MSL #MARStini party - a rare space party dominated by women. It’s a group shot of about 30 people next to a pool with a blow up alligator, smiling and happy, ready for MSL to launch.
Photo of Abstract that reads: Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation* Aidan Toner-Rodgers MIT November 6, 2024 This paper studies the impact of artificial intelligence on innovation, exploiting the randomized introduction of a new materials discovery technology to 1,018 scientists in the R&D lab of a large U.S. firm. Al-assisted researchers discover 44% more materials, resulting in a 39% increase in patent filings and a 17% rise in downstream product in-novation. These compounds possess more novel chemical structures and lead to more radical inventions. However, the technology has strikingly disparate effects across the productivity distribution: while the bottom third of scientists see little benefit, the output of top researchers nearly doubles. Investigating the mechanisms behind these results, I show that Al automates 57% of "idea-generation" tasks, reallocating researchers to the new task of evaluating model-produced candidate materials. Top scientists leverage their domain knowledge to prioritize promising Al suggestions, while others waste significant resources testing false positives. Together, these findings demonstrate the potential of Al-augmented research and highlight the complemen-tarity between algorithms and expertise in the innovative process. Survey evidence reveals that these gains come at a cost, however, as 82% of scientists report reduced satisfaction with their work due to decreased creativity and skill underutilization.
Black and white picture of the stars from Jupiter, looking out over a ring. Photo from NASA Juno.