or select your discipline:
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- The Department of Defense Minerva Research Initiative aims to promote research in specific areas of social science and to promote a candid and constructive relationship between DoD and the social science academic community.
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ORD Opportunities: Visiting Funding Agencies in Washington, D.C.
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Twenty-two early career tenure-track faculty members from the colleges of agriculture, architecture, planning & design, arts and sciences, engineering, and K-State Polytechnic traveled to Washington, D.C. April 23-25 for the purpose of visiting Federal funding agencies to learn more about the types of research funding available from each agency. The faculty members also had individual meetings with one or more funding program officers at the agencies to discuss and get specific feedback on their own research ideas.
Accompanying the group were members of the planning committee, including agriculture associate dean Draper and research administrators from arts and sciences and engineering. The trip was organized by the Office of Research Development, with four staff members in attendance.
Individuals and small groups visited a wide range of funding agencies, including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of State, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, and the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture. We were joined in D.C. and on agency visits by consultants from McAllister & Quinn to allow them to better understand faculty research interests and fine-tune their assistance.
Pre-trip activities included two group orientation sessions to better prepare faculty to take advantage of this opportunity and maximize the benefits of meeting with funding agency officials. A post-trip debriefing survey will gather feedback and suggestions for improving the experience for possible future visits.
OVPR has tracked the outcomes regarding proposal submission and outcomes for previous cohorts of travelers 2013-2018 and preliminary analysis indicates benefits such as funding success for faculty in disciplines historically underrepresented in research award data and increased success with award programs aimed specifically at early career faculty. In addition, multiple previous D.C. travelers report being invited to serve on grant review panels as a direct outcome of the experience.
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- Today, the Kansas Science Communication Initiative will host an end-of-the-year mixer from 4:00-5:30 p.m. at Arrow Coffee Co. Find the event page here.
- Join the next EPA Office for Water Watershed Academy Webcast seminar on May 9 from 2-4 p.m. CDT on "The Water Data Collborative: Citizen Science Monitoring Data and Data Sharing." Participants can receive a certificate for their involvement. Register here.
- Learn about the NSF's CAREER program and PECASE in the Faculty Early Career Development Program Webinar on May 9. All 1,000 participant slots have been filled, but a recording will be accessible online after it concludes. Learn more.
- Take advantage of an opportunity to hear directly from federal agency representatives and meet one-on-one with agency decision makers at the Small Business Innovation Research Road Tour stop in Kansas City, Kansas on May 21. Find more information and register.
- The Midwest Regional 3D Symposium will explore how 3D the field of direct manufacturing, digital imaging, and 3D processing is changing dramatically. The symposium will take place on June 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas. Read more and register.
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Chapman Center for Rural Studies announces NEH Scholars
NEH-funded grant "Making the Leap" launches
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The Chapman Center for Rural Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences is happy to announce the selection of four Kansas State student consultants for its “Making the Leap: The Future of Small Historical Societies and Museums” project. These students will be working with eight selected pilot communities across the state of Kansas to guide them in planning for the future. Led by Center Director Bonnie Lynn-Sherow, who was awarded a $100,000 NEH Public Access grant in 2017, the four selected students will work in two teams over the summer of 2019 and complete their fellowships in January of 2020.
Jacob Allen is a graduate student pursuing his masters degree in military history. Allen will be working with Jessie Carmichael, a senior in K-State’s five-year master’s program in landscape architecture with a minor in biology. Carmichael and Allen will be working with historical societies in Wilson, Junction City, Dickinson and Ellsworth.
The second team of NEH scholars will be graduate studets Hailey Quick and Bradley Galka. Quick is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where she studied printmaking and fine art. Hailey’s work reflects her upbringing in the tight knit communities of rural Louisiana. She is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in printmaking.
Galka is a PhD student in the history department at Kansas State University and assistant editor of the Online Journal of Rural Research and Policy. He recently completed transcription of a Flint Hills oral history book by Patrick Sauble and Lynn-Sherow that is now in press. Galka and Quick will serve as museum consultants to four communities: Clay Center, Council Grove, Matfield Green and Cherryvale.
This project is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities together with a $100,000 match provided to the Center through charitable gifts made to Kansas State University via the Kansas State University Foundation.
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Agency news and trending topics
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On a freezing November morning, Ashraf Islam is 3,000 kilometers from his family in balmy Bangladesh, but the weather is far from his mind as he gushes about the science opportunities he has encountered in Beijing. “We have good facilities at home, but the facilities here are nothing like what I’ve used before,” says Islam, who is working towards a PhD in China researching techniques to remove organic matter from wastewater, an acute problem in Bangladesh. Htet Aung Phyo, a PhD student from Myanmar, is using his Chinese-funded fellowship in Beijing to develop ways to use bacteria to extract copper from low-grade ore. If his project succeeds, it could help to extend the lives of copper mines in Myanmar, some of which are operated by a Chinese company. A breakthrough would also mean more jobs in his own country. “This is why I am here,” he says proudly. Phyo and Islam are two of 1,300 graduate students from dozens of countries who are spending up to four years in Beijing carrying out research to help solve scientific problems back home.
Another big publisher in higher ed is making a strategic move. John Wiley & Sons
announced on Monday
that it was buying the assets of Knewton, an 11-year-old company that has at times been held up as the
poster child for ed-tech overhype.
Knewton was initially known for its adaptive-learning tools designed to work with content from commercial publishers, but more recently it has shifted focus toward its platform that incorporates open educational resources, or OER. The move came on the heels of last week’s
merger announcement
from Cengage and McGraw-Hill.
Grant reviewers award lower scores to proposals from women than to those from men, even when they don’t know the gender of the applicant, an analysis of thousands of submissions to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has found. That’s because male and female scientists use different types of word on grant applications, according to the study, published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research. The study finds that women are more likely to choose words specific to their field to describe their science, whereas men tend to use less precise terms. These broader terms seem to be preferred by the reviewers who decide how to distribute the cash, says the analysis — even though proposals containing those words don’t lead to better research outcomes.
The pockets of oil trapped between Earth’s strata are finite, at least on a human time scale. It takes millennia of immense pressure and heat to transform ancient remains into fossil fuels. Economists and geologists are still debating when, whether, and how we’ll run out — the answer is a moving target. In the meantime, here’s our best guess as to how much of Earth’s milkshake we’ve got left to drink.
India has been undergoing the long process to elect its next Central government since April 11. The final counting is scheduled for 23 May.The results will have a lasting impact on the country’s higher education and research priorities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is making a strong political pitch for a second term. He has been India’s Prime Minister since 2014. While his government had launched various flagship programs such as
Global Initiative of Academic Networks
,
National Institutional Ranking Framework
,
Atal Innovation Mission
,
Institutions of Eminence
, etc., for improving the competitiveness of the system, the sector has had also been the locus of many controversies.
Chauvinistic claims
about ancient India’s scientific and technological contributions made by a few ministers along with politically-motivated government interference in prominent academic institutions such as
Jawaharlal Nehru University
in Delhi,
Film and Television Institute of India
in Pune,
University of Hyderabad
, etc., have drawn criticism from many quarters, both nationally and internationally.
Testing the blood for free fatty acids could help doctors verify if children fasted before undergoing tests for diabetes or other medical conditions, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Their study appears in
Pediatrics
. An overnight fast is required for the blood glucose test used to diagnose
type 2 diabetes
. However, earlier studies suggest that at least 6% of patients don’t fast sufficiently, potentially raising blood glucose and leading to an incorrect diagnosis and additional testing. Researchers from NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and other institutions paired the blood glucose test with a blood test for free fatty acids. Unlike blood glucose, which declines after a fast and increases after a meal, the blood level of free fatty acids increases after a fast and drops after a meal.
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k-state.edu/research
researchweekly@k-state.edu
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