Tag: Misc.

Science and the Stimulus 1 NSF Announcement

Posting some notices here I have been getting from various federal agencies …

Important Notice 131, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Available Formats: PDF
Type: Announcements and Notices Subtype: Important Notices
Organization/Group: Office of Budget, Finance, and Award Management

National Science Foundation
Office of the Director
Arlington, VA 22230

March 18, 2009

Notice No. 131

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO
PRESIDENTS OF UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES
AND HEADS OF OTHER NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
AWARDEE ORGANIZATIONS

Subject: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) into law. One of the principal purposes of the law is to “provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science and health”.[1] During the signing ceremony President Obama stated,

“Even beyond energy, from the National Institutes of Health to the National Science Foundation, this recovery act represents the biggest increase in basic research funding in the long history of America’s noble endeavor to better understand our world. Just as President Kennedy sparked an explosion of innovation when he set America’s sights on the moon, I hope this investment will ignite our imagination once more, spurring new discoveries and breakthroughs that will make our economy stronger, our nation more secure, and our planet safer for our children.”[2]

In response to this landmark legislation, NSF has developed policies, procedures, and Frequently Asked Questions for use by the awardee community. These documents provide up-to-date information regarding NSF’s implementation of the Recovery Act, and are available at http://www.nsf.gov/recovery. The key elements of NSF’s implementation of the Recovery Act are highlighted below.

NSF Programs Receiving Recovery Act Funding

The Recovery Act supplements NSF fiscal year 2009 funding by $3.0 billion. NSF currently has many highly rated proposals that it has not been able to fund. For this reason, NSF is planning to use the majority of the $2 billion available in Research and Related Activities for proposals that are already in house and will be reviewed and/or awarded prior to September 30, 2009.

The Foundation also expects to expeditiously award funds as specified in the Recovery Act for: the Math and Science Partnership program (funded at $25 million); the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (funded at $60 million); the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction Account (funded at $400 million); the Academic Research Infrastructure (ARI) program (funded at $200 million); and the Science Masters program, (funded at $15 million). Solicitations for these latter two programs will be posted this spring.

NSF will post a solicitation this spring for the Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) in order to make a sufficient number of awards to utilize the $300 million provided in the legislation. The Foundation currently anticipates that no other solicitations will be posted that are solely in response to the Recovery Act.

Funding Prioritization

NSF will ensure that Recovery Act funds are awarded in a timely manner while maintaining its commitment to its established merit review processes.

In keeping with this, NSF’s overall framework for Recovery Act investments emphasizes the following:

All grants issued with Recovery Act funds will be standard grants with durations of up to 5 years. This approach will allow NSF to structure a sustainable portfolio.

Funding of new Principal Investigators and high-risk, high-return research will be top priorities.

With the exception of the MRI, ARI and Science Masters programs, the majority of proposals eligible for Recovery Act funding include those that are already in house and will be reviewed and/or awarded prior to September 30, 2009.

NSF also will consider proposals declined on or after October 1, 2008. The reversal of the decision to decline must be based on both the high quality of the reviews received on the initial submission and the lack of available funding at the time the original decision was made. The cognizant program officer will contact the institution when a reversal is being considered by NSF. Specific procedural information regarding this new process is available on the NSF Recovery website.

Special Award Conditions

The Recovery Act mandates a significant level of transparency and accountability. The law and implementing guidance identify specific award conditions for awards made with Recovery Act funding. Therefore, award notices will include special award conditions identifying the funding as coming from the Recovery Act, and indicate the specific awardee reporting responsibilities mandated by Section 1512 of the Recovery Act.

Given the goals of the Recovery Act, awardees will be informed that they are expected to expend funds in a timely manner on allowable award costs and that NSF will be monitoring awards for expenditures. If, after 12 months, no allowable expenditures have taken place, NSF may consider reducing or terminating the award and reallocating the funds.

Working in Partnership

NSF is honored by the recognition of the Foundation’s role in stimulating the American economy with its inclusion in the Recovery Act. The law and implementing guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) set clear expectations for accountability and transparency from both Federal agencies and from recipients of Recovery Act funding.

The high expectations embodied in the Recovery Act acknowledge the contributions that NSF and its partners in the research and education community have made to the economy and welfare of the nation over the past six decades. This partnership is one of the nation’s greatest strengths, and we look forward to working with you as we continue to pursue the promise of science and engineering and meet the goals of the Recovery Act for securing the nation’s future.

Arden L. Bement, Jr.
Director

[1] P.L. 111-5, Section 3 (a) (3). The full text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is available electronically at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h1enr.pdf
[2] The full text of President Obama’s remarks at the signing ceremony is available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-and-Vice-President-at-Signing-of-the-American-Recovery-and-Reinvestment-Act/

All NSF official issuances can be found on Inside NSF at http://infoshare.nsf.gov.

If you need a paper copy of this issuance, contact the Supply Unit on P-1 at ext. 8134.

[NSF Official Issuance]

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InfoShare
http://infoshare.nsf.gov/
Please send questions and comments to feedback-int@nsf.gov

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Conyers, Eisen, the Huffington Post and Open Access

In case you are not aware, my brother (Michael Eisen) and Larry Lessig have been engaging in a public “debate” with John Conyers over Conyers’ sponsorship of a bill to revoke the NIH policy on Open Access to publications. First the elder Eisen and Lessig wrote a posting:Is John Conyers Shilling for Special Interests? which they then followed up with John Conyers, It’s Time to Speak Up. Now Conyers has written a reply: A Reply to Larry Lessig (which I note should have been titled A Reply to Eisen and Lessig, but that is for another day). Anyway it is worth reading them all and if I had not been sick for the last like 3-4 weeks I would write more but I have a million things to catch up on now that I have mostly gotten rid of nasty microbe #3.

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Finally, PDFs of my papers from my home page starting to show up in Google Scholar.

Well, it has finally happened.  And not sure how.  But PDFs of all my papers, which I have posted on my MAC.COM (or now known as ME.COM) homepage are finally showing  up on Google Scholar.  If you go to Google Scholar and type Eisen JA into the window and then look for PDFs for each of the papers some of the files on my .MAC site show up.

When I originally discovered a few months ago that none of my PDFs from this site where showing up on Google Scholar I dug around and discovered in Google’s Faqs that it helps to have links to the PDFs of papers.  This seemed strange since I had links from my blog and that is run by Google now so it was weird that those did not help.  But I added some more links here and there and presto, now the links to the PDFs are showing up inside Google Scholar results.
Mind you, not all of the PDFs have shown up yet and I have no clue why some did and some did not, but this is part of my continuing effort to free up my past publications.  Good start.  Not done yet, but getting there.
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Open Access Notes: Harold Varmus on the Daily Show tonight (3/2/09)

Just a quick note here.  For anyone interested in Open Access and science policy in general, Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate and CoFounder of PLoS, will be on the Daily Show tonight to promote his new book The Art and Politics of Science.  Now when are they going to have my brother on the show?  He was a CoFounder of PLoS.  So what if he does not have a Nobel and never ran NIH.  He has won some cool awards here and there, is an HHMI Investigator, and more importantly, he has a blog and Varmus does not.  Doesn’t that count for something?  

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Darwin Celebration in Davis

Well, this has been a good week for me in Davis in terms of things in which I am interested. First, the Tour of California started in Davis and then tonight we had a Darwin celebration (with cake and talks) in a movie theater in downtown. The three talks were by Rick Grosberg, who gave a good background on Darwin the person, Mau Stanton who talked about Evolution and Society and me, who talked about Uses of Evolution. The shindig was sponsored by the Center for Population Biology and funded by the Storer Endowment. And it was organized by Angus Chandler and Dena Grossenbacher and possibly some others. And the theater was packed to the gills. Food. Folks. And Fun. And I owe some thanks to folks who responded to my FriendFeed posting asking about other examples of Uses of Evolution.

Here are some pics …

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Also see

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Bad evolution puns award #1: Cod in the act of evolution

Sure – we are celebrating Darwin this month and through the year. But one negative of evolution in general is that it seems particularly ripe for puns, and bad ones at that. So I am starting a new award here – the Bad Evolution Puns Award. And the first winner is the Boston Globe for their new article “Cod in the act of evolution” by Murray Carpenter.

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

My favorite evolution stuff 1. 1900 Darwin Post Card

Just starting a new thread here — my favorite evolution stuff.  And here is one.  It is a post card that I found inside a 1880s version of Origin of Species that I bought at a used book store.  The book was part of a collection from Ellison A. Smith which was being sold at a used book store in Georgetown many years ago.  I bought a bunch of old evolution books and inside many of them were post cards advertising portraits of some of the authors.  Here is one — advertising a portrait of Darwin.  Wish I had the portrait …

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Boston University adopts Open Access policy

Just saw a nice story about BU adopting an Open Access policy.

See the BU Today article

Some detail with some nice quotes in support of OA:

Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to support an open access system that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit.
…
“Open access will really highlight the tremendous productivity of our faculty,” says Millen. “Among the more important things needed to make it work is a collaboration between the libraries and our faculty to get their research onto the Web. It’s not an inconsequential task.”

….
“This vote sends a very strong message of support for open and free exchange of scholarly work,” says Hudson. “Open access means that the results of research and scholarship can be made open and freely accessible to anyone. It really has increased the potential to showcase the research and scholarship of the University in ways that have
not been evident to people.”

Hat tip to Tom Tullius …

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Google LOVES Darwin


Love that image on Google in honor of Darwin’s 200th.  You go google. 

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

10 simple ways to honor Charlie D (aka Darwin)

If you do not know, Thursday is a big day – Darwin Day 2009. A global celebration in honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Today I am making a suggestion of 10 simple things you can do to honor Darwin:

  1. Read one of his books OTHER than Origin of Species (see Darwin online for some there). My favorite is the Voyage of the Beagle but there are many others.
  2. Stop using the terms Darwinism and Darwinian evolution (see Safina for more on this – I thought this article was a bit of overkill but still has some important points).
  3. Vote against anyone who says Intelligent Design should be taught in science class or that you should “teach the controversy.” Or at least endorse right thinking candidates.
  4. Contribute to evolution education in some way – teaching, writing a book, releasing teaching materials, donate to a museum (e.g., California Academy) or other organization (e.g., NCSE) or even the cool HMS Beagle Project. Just help educate the world about the science of evolution.
  5. Attend some Darwin Day celebration(s).
  6. Get a cool evolution tattoo (see Zimmer for more) or display your support in some outward way.
  7. Support the National Science Foundation (if you are in the US) as they are the strongest supporters of Evolution related research.
  8. Name your kid or pet or boat or city after him.
  9. Visit the Galapagos or at least check out the Darwin Station online.(see pics below …)
  10. Insert your own here …..

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–