or select your discipline:
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Understanding economic development
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Economic development is an important part of our land-grant mission, but how it can advance our research and teaching activities isn’t widely understood.
At K-State, economic development includes collaboration and partnership formation that ultimately leads to economic prosperity in our host communities. Regional and state economic growth can be enabled through many activities:
- Attracting new industry partners to the region;
- Assisting existing companies or organizations in the region to grow;
- Creating new startup companies; or
- Attracting or growing federal or state governmental agencies in the region.
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- Our Global Food Systems initiative has two events in the next few weeks.
- It's all about water: The hydroeconomy will be presented by Landon Marston, assistant professor of civil engineering, February 21 from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. in 137 Waters Hall. All are welcome!
- Global Food Systems Focus Day is Thursday, March 7 from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. Participants will recognize and promote the array of research educational, and extension activities in the area of food at K-State and plan the next steps for this important all-university research initiative. Hear from past seed grant awardees and successful interdisciplinary teams, participate in a poster session and facilitated discussion, and more. Find more information and register by February 25.
- The Kansas Science Communication Initiative will offer KSCI Works sessions throughout the semester to build science communication skills.
- Nerd Nite and scicomm challenges: February 22, 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m., Ackert 324
- Blogging: February 26, 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m., Union Cottonwood Rm.
- Making videos: March 5, 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m., Waters 137
- Community partnerships: April 11, 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m., Eisenhower 121
- EPA’s Water Quality Modeling Workgroup is hosting a series of webinars to help water quality professionals better understand surface water quality modeling and how models can be used to solve common regulatory problems. The next webinar, “Conestoga River Watershed HSPF and SWAT Modeling,” is March 12 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Register now or find previous webinars.
- The Office of Research Development will offer an info session and panel on the National Science Foundation faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Program March 27 from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. in Union 207. Find more information and register.
- The Midwest BioInformatics Conference is April 11 and 12 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The conference is sponsored by BioNexus KC and will bring more than 30 regional speakers and researchers from academia and industry to discover practical approaches to collecting and preparing data for analyses applied in human and animal health. Find more information and register.
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Final reminder: Pivot website change
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The current URL will be discontinued on March 1, and traffic will not automatically redirect.
Be sure to update your bookmarks and links
. Please note:
- Funding Alerts will come from an @proquest.com address (instead of @cos.com).
- All data and functionality will remain.
- Links from the K-State Research website have been updated.
If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to update your Pivot profile so potential collaborators find relevant information.
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Agency news and trending topics
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“Big science,” of which LIGO is a prime example, is becoming more common. Funding agencies are channeling more money toward ever larger teams working on grand projects such as cataloging the diversity of our cells or sequencing the genomes of all species. There’s even a growing field of meta-research dedicated to studying how teams work—the science of team science. Some projects require these large teams, and three members of the LIGO team eventually won a Nobel Prize. But the comparative neglect of small teams and solo researchers is a problem … because they produce
very
different kinds of work. In every recent decade and in almost every field … small teams are far more likely to introduce fresh, disruptive ideas that take science and technology in radically new directions.
Kelvin Droegemeier, newly minted science adviser to US President Donald Trump, wants industry to take a larger role in funding research, with the ultimate goal of ushering in a “second golden era” of US science. Collaboration between the public and private sectors, as well as reducing regulatory burdens, would be key to maintaining America as a dominant global force in science, the meteorologist said on 15 February, in his first public address since taking office last month.
Requiring students to ante up conference funds up front without the hope of being reimbursed for months makes academia less welcoming for scientists who are financially disadvantaged. Yet universities and funding agencies seem unwilling or unable to do much to change the system. Perhaps changing the status quo requires too much work. Maybe it’s not a priority because many students come from privileged backgrounds that insulate them from the issue. Students for whom this is a real problem may feel ashamed to ask for help and be treated as an exception.
The World Health Organization Thursday announced the formation of an international committee aimed at establishing uniform guidelines for editing human DNA in ways that can be passed down to future generations. The 18-member committee "will examine the scientific, ethical, social and legal challenges associated with human genome editing," according to the WHO
announcement
. "The aim will be to advise and make recommendations on appropriate governance mechanisms for human genome editing," the WHO says.
Present both sides. Disclose conflicts of interest. And make sure you catch them at just the right time. Those are some of the
best tips
to
get members of Congress to listen to scientific advice
, according to a session here Friday at the annual meeting of AAAS, which publishes Science. Talking to a politician is a lot different than talking to an average member of the public, said panelist Elizabeth Suhay, associate professor of government at American University’s School of Public Affairs here. The problem, she said, is that most scientists don’t really know how to tailor their communication specifically to politicians.
Fontenelle introduced the lay public to Cartesian philosophy and the early science of the natural world. The story features two speakers, a man and a woman, discussing the features of our solar system and the use of scientific inquiry to illuminate the laws of nature. The writing proved so popular and accessible that Fontenelle’s work went through
six editions during his life
and was reprinted another six times by 1825. Not only did the book pave the way for other natural philosophers (
the word “scientist” wasn’t coined until 1834
), it inspired an entirely new genre of writing: popular science.
The data on insect declines are too patchy, unrepresentative, and piecemeal to justify some of the more hyperbolic alarms. At the same time, what little information we have tends to point in the same worrying direction. How, then, should we act on that imperfect knowledge? It’s a question that goes beyond the fate of insects: How do we preserve our rapidly changing world when the unknowns are vast and the cost of inaction is potentially high?
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k-state.edu/research
researchweekly@k-state.edu
785.532.5110
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