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Funds from the European union are not the only source available to the continent's reproductive research community. Each country independently sponsors the work of these scientists, but, as illustrated by [...]

Reproductive biology and the breakfast delicacy scrapple have much in common, including the difficulty in easily defining what's in it and the certainty that many items have contributed to the [...]

The research, development and innovation (RDI) system existing in Romania is not capable of ensuring the promotion of industrial development due to some of its vulnerabilities. On the other hand, in Romania there is still a technical and material RDI basis created previously to the anticommunist revolution, which is continuously degrading, but also an infant industry of innovation. However, the innovative process was much hampered by the gradual disappearance of human and institutional actors, as well as by the reduction of RDI investment and expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on funds provided by U.S. government organizations like U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research institutions towards infrastructure and administrative support better known as Indirect costs. Topics include indirect cost rates negotiations and caps set on the amount, direct costs to fund research, effect of inflation on research grants, administrative regulations, and competition for NIH grants. A graph representing NIH grants to research universities.

There have been four major innovation organization policy moments for the US federal government driven by the demands of politics and technology since World War II: first, the immediate post-war period where the Cold War helped drive a basic research model for new and expanded science agencies; second, the Sputnik aftermath with the formation of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and scaled up funding for science; third, the competitiveness era ‘valley of death’ programs of the 1980s, and finally, a recent energy technology shift driven by energy and climate demands. Some are advocating a fifth: advanced manufacturing. In that lengthy evolution, what lessons have we learned about the design of federal innovation organizations? What are the institutional elements in the ‘new generation’ innovation policy programs now developing or under consideration? The focus is on the evolving federal agency role: what innovation stages is it organized around within the innovation pipeline and how does it link to other innovation actors?. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Experimental Technology Incentives Program (ETIP) was conceived by the White House in the early 1970s as an innovative response to the perception that the productivity of federally funded R&D needed to be improved. The program conducted studies and ‘policy experiments’ with US government agencies during the period 1972–80 to develop and demonstrate the use of experiments as a tool for managing innovation policy development. The objective was to provide government agencies with a low-risk and effective policy tool, specifically to provide substantial information on the expected performance of a proposed change before making a full-implementation decision. However, such a sophisticated approach was ahead of both a broad recognition of the need for more efficient policy development tools and the internal government capabilities to effectively use this policy development instrument. Thus, ETIP was terminated after 10 years of operation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article argues the rationality of dominance of the Patent and Copyright Clause over the Commerce Clause. Topics discussed include examination and judicial review of the court on the relationship of Commerce Clause with other constitutional provisions, needs of implementing the bankruptcy laws by the U.S. Congress under the Commerce Clause and role of the federal aid in the development of patents for new inventions and technological innovations.

In the study of innovation institutions, it is important to consider how different institutional models can affect a research organization in conducting or funding successful work. As an industry collaborative, Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) provides an example of a privately funded institution that leverages the inputs of several member companies, along with federal funding, to accomplish innovation in its mission area. SRC has several component programs, all attempting to find innovative solutions to semiconductor problems, but on different time scales, and in different technology areas. But how does SRC use its resources to ensure these goals? Through data gathered from semi-structured qualitative interviews and SRC documentation, this paper addresses that question. SRC has found a way to leverage industry money to motivate and develop a robust field of university research for over 30 years. SRC uses several mechanisms for maintaining an application focused, member-centered decision process, institutional flexibility, and strong ties between industry contributors and university researchers. SRC has continued to keep its members satisfied by training thousands of graduate students for employment in their member companies, by focusing on precompetitive research that addresses industry requirements, and doing so in a manner that operates leanly, with low overhead to its funders. Given these successes, we identify aspects of SRC operations, such as a focus on its member company needs, frequent interactions between funders and researchers, flexible funding mechanisms, and focus on workforce development, that may be diffusible to innovation institutions, including federal research efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fred Sanger developed technologies that won him two Nobel Prizes and revolutionized biological research. Yet, in spite of this record, the question has been raised as to whether, in the current scientific climate, he might be unsuccessful in obtaining a grant because of a productivity that would be viewed as too limited. In imagining how a National Institutes of Health study section today might treat a proposal from Sanger to sequence DNA, we can ask whether there are lessons from his career that suggest changes to the grant review process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CHORUS (Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States) offers an open technology platform in response to the public access requirements of US federal funding agencies, researchers, institutions and the public. It is focused on five principal sets of functions: identification , preservation , discovery , access , and compliance . CHORUS facilitates public access to peer-reviewed publications, after a determined embargo period (where applicable), for each discipline and agency. By leveraging existing tools such as CrossRef, FundRef and ORCID, CHORUS allows a greater proportion of funding to remain focused on research. CHORUS identifies articles that report on federally funded research and enables a reader to access the 'best available version' free of charge, via the publisher. It is a scalable solution that offers maximum efficiency for all parties by automating as much of the process as is possible. CHORUS launched in pilot phase in September 2013, and the production phase will begin in early 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an efficiency evaluation for teaching and research in Polish institutions of higher education. Thirty one public universities in Poland were studied using the nonparametric DEA method from 2001 to 2008. Teaching outcomes were evaluated by the numbers of full-time and part-time graduates, while research activities were assessed by number of publications, citations and value of research grants. The scores for teaching and research efficiency were negatively correlated, which could indicate a trade-off between teaching and research activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first British national birth cohort study was initially concerned principally with health at the birth of its sample in 1946. Throughout its first fifteen years it received only short-term financial support, but still managed to undertake ten follow-up data collections and broaden its focus to include educational and cognitive outcomes. Then in 1962, when cohort members were aged 16 years, the Medical Research Council (MRC) agreed to be the principal funder. Over the next twenty years, during the cohort's adolescence and early adulthood, discussion about the study's focus was influenced by the funding source, the cohort's age, the data, current policy concerns, and current thought and innovations in measurement in epidemiology. That period began with pessimism about the study's future. However, towards the end of the twenty years, the MRC review of options for continuation revealed new epidemiological questions on mental health and ageing that required life course data. Consequently the study was continued, and extensively revised health outcome indicators and methods of data collection were first used at age 36 years. They provided new baselines against which to measure future health change with age, and new outcomes with which to test life course effects of hypothesised earlier life exposures, experiences and health. This paper shows how the focus of the study was changed and developed by internal and external pressures and influences between 1962 and 1982, when the cohort was aged 16 to 36 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article acknowledges the fact that developing nations such as India may have challenges in allocating public funds for academic research, given that there are many primary requirements that need to be met for its citizens. However, it emphasizes that the problem may just not be centred on the lack of adequate funding. The paper points to some historic reasons for poor productivity in research including, a) unproductive competition among institutions due to a false sense of self sufficiency, b) lack of adequate research infrastructure at the individual institution level together with the, c) long standing thinking in India that has considered teaching to be the core activity in our University system. It emphasizes the need for collaborative action across institutions that by themselves do not have the wherewithal to upgrade the quality of research. It also stresses the need to build specialized competence in individual faculty members to strive for excellence in a core academic activity, be it research, teaching or executive training and administration. The traditional view of a faculty being a superior performer in all aspects of academics may not yield the results needed to attain global standards of excellence. Like teaching, research requires a separate and detailed agenda in the Higher Education Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physician-investigators experienced failures in obtaining research funds from National Institutes of Health than physicians proposing non clinical research.