Search

The article discusses the NICVD annual research day, which celebrated the hard work and innovation of the faculty members. The event showcased over 30 research projects, with awards given to the top three presenters. Prof. Abdul Hakeem Samad presented a landmark study on anticoagulants, while Dr. Masood Jawaid discussed the role of AI in medical research. The event demonstrated the commitment of NICVD to advancing knowledge and fostering collaboration in the field of medicine. [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates gender bias (if any) when teams are formed. We use data from the European Science Foundation to estimate if female scientists have the same opportunities as their male colleagues to join a team when applying for funds. To assess gender bias, we construct a control group of scientists with the competencies for being invited to join the team but who do not join. By comparing the proportion of female scientists in the control group with the one in the observed teams, we find a gender bias against female scientists. Exploring heterogeneity across teams, we find that gender bias is less pronounced in teams led by women, junior scientists, and in more recently formed teams. We also observe differences across disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swedish universities and colleges have received a substantial funding increase since the turn of the millennium, as part of continued policies of expanding the admission of students to higher education to broader layers of the population and strengthen Swedish public research and development to increase the competitiveness of the Swedish knowledge-based economy. In this article, publicly available statistics are used to trace how this increase in funding has been used by the sector. Comparing figures on income (base grant for research, third-party funding and base grant for education) with statistics on personnel and student enrolment as well as data on actual expenditure, the article draws some conclusions that are used to discuss some common misunderstandings and erroneous beliefs, including claims of a 'depletion' of the base grant for research and an uninhibited growth of the number of administrative staff, which are common themes in the Swedish and international debate over higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide women have increased their participation in STEM, but we are still far from reaching gender parity. Although progress can be seen at the bachelor's and master's level, career advancement of women in research still faces substantial challenges leading to a 'leaky pipeline' phenomenon (i.e., the continuous decrease of women's participation at advanced career stages). Latin America exhibits encouraging rates of women participation in research, but the panorama varies across countries and stages in the academic ladder. This study focuses on women's participation in research in natural sciences in Colombia and investigates career progression, leadership roles, and funding rates by analyzing data on scholarships, grants, rankings, and academic positions. Overall, we found persistent gender imbalances throughout the research ecosystem that were significant using classical statistical analyses. First, although women constitute >50% graduates from bachelors in natural sciences, <40% of researchers in this field are female. Second, women win <30% of research grants, and in turn, their scientific productivity is 2X lower than that of men. Third, because of the less research funding and output women have, their promotion to senior positions in academic and research rankings is slower. In consequence, only ~25% of senior researchers and full professors are women. Fourth, the proportion of women leading research groups and mentoring young scientist in Colombia is <30%. Our study deepens our understanding of gender gaps in STEM research in Colombia, and provides information to design initiatives that effectively target gender disparities by focusing on key areas of intervention, and then gradually building up, rather than tackling structural inequities all at once. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific research is often supported by public funds for the public good, and there is a trend toward using public funds to support actionable science that can be integrated into policy or practice. Funding agencies can set research priorities through the focus and timing of their research calls and funding decisions. There is a need to study funding models to better understand the relationship between agency priorities and scientific discourse. We present a case study of the National Sea Grant College Program's research funding. Sea Grant is a federally funded network of 34 stateor territory-based programs that fund research and perform education and outreach work on coastal environmental and natural resource issues. Individual Sea Grant programs set research priorities based on local needs, often focusing on actionable science. To assess the contributions of Sea Grant-funded research, we analyzed available citations and abstracts from Web of Science and examined patterns in article authors, journals, citations, keywords, and abstracts. The study shows that Sea Grant has significantly contributed to the scientific literature while being effective on costper-publication and cost-per-citation bases. The results illustrated how targeted funding can address important local issues while substantially contributing to the broader scientific literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing reliance on competitive grants to fund research, we see a review system under pressure. While peer review has long been perceived as the cornerstone of self-governance in science, researchers have expressed distrust in the peer review procedures of funding agencies. This paper draws on literature pointing out ability, benevolence, and integrity as important for trustworthiness and explores the conditions under which researchers have confidence in grant review. Based on rich survey material, we find that researchers trust grant reviewers far less than they trust journal peer reviewers or their colleagues' ability to assess their research. Yet, scholars who have success with grant proposals or serve on grant review panels appear to have more trust in grant reviewers. We conclude that transparency and reviewers with field competencies are crucial for trust in grant review and discuss how this can be ensured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special issue, we highlight recent advances in chemical research by scientists in Ukraine, as well as by their compatriots and collaborators outside the country. Besides spotlighting their contributions, we see our task in fostering global partnerships and multi‐, inter‐, and trans‐disciplinary collaborations, including much‐needed co‐funded projects and initiatives. The three decades of the renewed Ukraine independence have seen rather limited integration of Ukrainian (chemical) science into global research communities.[1] At the same time, the recent surge of collaborative science initiatives between European Union (EU) and Ukraine echoes the unfolding steps towards Ukraine's full research participation to the Horizon Europe Program. This recently implemented step opens enormous possibilities for Ukrainian researchers to apply for diverse EU research grants. Moreover, a number of journal special issues and collections were launched to highlight Ukrainian chemistry (i. e., by Chemistry of Heterocyclic Compounds[2] and ChemistrySelect[3]). Other scientific initiatives include 'European Chemistry School for Ukrainians'[4] and 'Kharkiv Chemical Seminar'[5] as voluntary projects aimed at engaging Ukrainian scientists into European and international chemical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the commercial catalogues of businesses that produce teaching aids – which, prompted by the spread of a pedagogical vision linked to activism, first appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century in parallel with the first production of school objects – have acquired increasing importance as a research source in the field of historical pedagogy. Their versatile nature makes them a rich, varied and precious research tool that can make a considerable contribution to the field of studies related to school materials. The aim of this article is to define the characteristics of this source to subsequently show how recent research grants have been able to offer a first instance of comparative reflection on the issue. From a review of the data that has emerged, a methodological framework for studying commercial catalogues of teaching aids as a research source is being traced out, with plans for future steps on an international level to reinforce its study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite three decades of policy initiatives to improve integration of health care, delivery of health care in New Zealand remains fragmented, and health inequities persist for Māori and other high priority populations. An evidence base is needed to increase the chances of success with implementation of large-system transformation (LST) initiatives in a complex adaptive system. Methods: This research aimed to identify key elements that support implementation of LST initiatives, and to investigate contextual factors that influence these initiatives. The realist logic of enquiry, nested within the macro framing of complex adaptive systems, formed the overall methodology for this research and involved five phases: theory gleaning from a local LST initiative, literature review, interviews, workshop, and online survey. NVivo software programme was used for thematic analysis of the interview, workshop, and the survey data. We identified key elements and explained variations in success (outcomes) by identifying mechanisms triggered by various contexts in which LST initiatives are implemented. Results: The research found that a set of 10 key elements need to be present in the New Zealand health system to increase chances of success with implementation of LST initiatives. These are: (i) an alliancing way of working; (ii) a commitment to te Tiriti o Waitangi; (iii) an understanding of equity; (iv) clinical leadership and involvement; (v) involved people, whānau, and community; (vi) intelligent commissioning; (vii) continuous improvement; (viii) integrated health information; (ix) analytic capability; and (x) dedicated resources and time. The research identified five contextual factors that influenced implementation of LST initiatives: a history of working together, distributed leadership from funders, the maturity of Alliances, capacity and capability for improvement, and a continuous improvement culture. The research found that the key mechanism of trust is built and nurtured over time through sharing of power by senior health leaders by practising distributed leadership, which then creates a positive history of working together and increases the maturity of Alliances. Discussion: Two authors (KMS and PBJ) led the development and implementation of the local LST initiative. This prior knowledge and experience provided a unique perspective to the research but also created a conflict of interest and introduced potential bias, these were managed through a wide range of data collection methods and informed consent from participants. The evidence-base for successful implementation of LST initiatives produced in this research contains knowledge and experience of senior system leaders who are often in charge of leading these initiatives. This evidence base enables decision makers to make sense of complex processes involved in the successful implementation of LST initiatives. Conclusions: Use of informal trust-based networks provided a critical platform for successful implementation of LST initiatives in the New Zealand health system. Maturity of these networks relies on building and sustaining high-trust relationships among the network members. The role of local and central agencies and the government is to provide the policy settings and conditions in which trust-based networks can flourish. Other: This study was approved by the Victoria University of Wellington Human Ethics Committee (Ethics Approval Number 27,356). The research was supported by the Victoria University of Wellington research grant (222,809) and from the University of Auckland Department of Medicine research fund (H10779). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution presents the results of a technical investigation on the pigments of William Burges' Great Bookcase (1859–62), preserved at the Ashmolean Museum. It is the first thorough material investigation of a remarkable piece of Gothic Revival painted furniture, notably an artwork by Burges, whose work has so far received little attention from a technical point of view. This study was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, which significantly affected the planned research activities since the investigation relied extensively on collaborations with institutions within and beyond the University of Oxford. The disruption caused by the lockdown and other restrictions went far beyond any prediction and led us to redefine the project's outcome and methodology 'on the fly' while maintaining its overall vision. However, thanks to the timeliness of a substantial research grant received from the Capability for Collection Fund (CapCo, Art and Humanities Research Council), we could ultimately turn this research into a unique opportunity to test the potential of recently acquired instruments, namely the Opus Apollo infrared camera and the Bruker CRONO XRF mapping spectrometer. Therefore, besides reporting on the findings, this contribution outlines the strategy adopted and assesses the new equipment's capability for the non-invasive analysis of complex polychromies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Receiving research grants is among the highlights of an academic career, affirming previous accomplishments and enabling new research endeavours. Much of the process of acquiring research funding, however, belongs to the less favourite duties of many researchers: It is time consuming, often stressful and, in the majority of cases, unsuccessful. This resentment towards funding acquisition is backed up by empirical research: The current system to distribute research funding, via competitive calls for extensive research applications that undergo peer review, has repeatedly been shown to fail in its task to reliably rank proposals according to their merit, while at the same time being highly inefficient. The simplest, fairest and broadly supported alternative would be to distribute funding more equally across researchers, for example, by an increase of universities' base funding, thereby saving considerable time that can be spent on research instead. Here, I propose how to combine such a 'funding flat rate' model—or other efficient distribution strategies—with quality control through postponed, non‐competitive peer review using open science practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We determined weights for a multi-criteria tool for assessing the relative merits of clinical-trial research proposals, and investigated whether the weights vary across relevant stakeholder groups. A cross-sectional, adaptive discrete choice experiment using 1000minds online software was administered to consumers, researchers and funders affiliated with the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance (ACTA). We identified weights for four criteria—Appropriateness, Significance, Relevance, Feasibility—and their levels, representing their relative importance, so that research proposals can be scored between 0% (nil or very low merit) and 100% (very high merit). From 220 complete survey responses, the most important criterion was Appropriateness (adjusted for differences between stakeholder groups, mean weight 28.9%) and the least important was Feasibility (adjusted mean weight 19.5%). Consumers tended to weight Relevance more highly (2.7% points difference) and Feasibility less highly (3.1% points difference) than researchers. The research or grant writing experience of researchers or consumers was not associated with the weights. A multi-criteria tool for evaluating research proposals that reflects stakeholders' preferences was created. The tool can be used to assess the relative merits of clinical trial research proposals and rank them, to help identify the best proposals for funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conditions of mainstream research funding constrain risky, novel research. However, alternative grants are emerging. We study grantees of a double-blinded funding scheme targeting risky, novel research: The Villum Experiment (VE). Without prompting, scientists juxtaposed the experience of performing research under these conditions with that of performing research funded by mainstream grants: fun and less fun. The conditions of VE felt less intrusive and appealed to their self-perceptions and idealized views of scientific work, which shaped how they conducted the funded research. This paper makes three contributions: (1) it reaffirms that how researchers experience grant conditions affects whether a scheme affords what it intends, (2) it highlights that the affordances of research funding are relative to other concurrent funding options, and (3) it shows that small, more broadly allocatable grants can afford scientists a protected space for autonomous research, usually associated with elusive tenure positions or European Research Council (ERC) grants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lake Taal is one of the most significant lake ecosystems in tropical East Asia. In 2011, a review paper consolidated all known biodiversity and limno-ecological studies conducted in Lake Taal from the beginning of the 20th century all the way to the late 2000s. It highlighted that insufficient funding, inadequate long-term monitoring data, and the publication culture of that time impeded having a comprehensive understanding of the lake. Since then, much research work has been done in Lake Taal, especially during the past decade. This review paper provides an analysis and summary of the research work conducted in Lake Taal over the past 10 years. The recent decade has seen a steady increase in scientific interest in Lake Taal made evident by more scientists and institutions working on topics involving the lake. Research grants, collaborations, and publications have also significantly increased during the past 10 years. This has led to an improved understanding of the lake's biodiversity, ecology, and impacts of intensive aquaculture and the introduction of non-native species. Taken together, this paper presents a better understanding of Lake Taal, which can be utilized for the design and improvement of conservation, preservation, and management programs for this multi-use freshwater system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PharmEvo Research Forum organized a meeting to inform residents of the Dept. of Cardiology at Liaquat National Hospital about research grants available through the forum. Ms. Umaimah Muzzamil, General Manager in Medical Affairs at PharmEvo, explained the steps to apply for these grants and emphasized the importance of promoting a research culture. The grants range from Rs. 50,000 to 300,000 and cover various clinical areas. The evaluation criteria for proposals include originality, feasibility, potential impact, and capacity. The forum also provides facilities for statistical analysis and manuscript preparation. [Extracted from the article]

PharmEvo has announced the launch of the Research Startup Challenge in partnership with the 36th International Pak Orthocon and PharmEvo Research Forum (PRF) in Pakistan. The challenge will take place during an orthopedic conference in Karachi from November 2nd to 4th, 2023. The initiative aims to promote research and innovation in the field of orthopedics by providing young professionals with the opportunity to present their research proposals and compete for research grants. The goal is to encourage and support young researchers in conducting in-depth studies and making significant contributions to the orthopedic community in Pakistan. [Extracted from the article]

The allocation of public funds for research has been predominantly based on peer review where reviewers are asked to rate an application on some form of ordinal scale from poor to excellent. Poor reliability and bias of peer review rating has led funding agencies to experiment with different approaches to assess applications. In this study, we compared the reliability and potential sources of bias associated with application rating with those of application ranking in 3,156 applications to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Ranking was more reliable than rating and less susceptible to the characteristics of the review panel, such as level of expertise and experience, for both reliability and potential sources of bias. However, both rating and ranking penalized early career investigators and favoured older applicants. Sex bias was only evident for rating and only when the applicant's H-index was at the lower end of the H-index distribution. We conclude that when compared to rating, ranking provides a more reliable assessment of the quality of research applications, is not as influenced by reviewer expertise or experience, and is associated with fewer sources of bias. Research funding agencies should consider adopting ranking methods to improve the quality of funding decisions in health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a project proposal titled "Diversity and body condition of birds inhabiting native and exotic forests in the Pampas of Argentina." The proposal aims to continue a long-term monitoring program of bird species in forested areas of the Pampas region in Argentina. The project will evaluate the influence of the landscape matrix on bird species composition and the health status of individuals, specifically focusing on the type of patch (exotic or native) and the landscape matrix (urban, rural, grassland). The study will be conducted at three banding stations representing urban, rural, and natural forest patches. The researchers plan to capture passerine birds using mist nets, band them with colored bands, and take various morphological measurements to assess body condition, age, and sex. Blood samples will be taken for further analysis. The project also aims to raise awareness about bird conservation through education programs and outreach activities. The research team consists of researchers from CONICET and the University of Mar del Plata, and they plan to involve biology students, park rangers, and volunteers in the fieldwork. [Extracted from the article]

Peer review has developed over time to become the established procedure for assessing and assuring the scientific quality of research. Nevertheless, the procedure has also been variously criticized as conservative, biased, and unfair, among other things. Do scientists regard all these flaws as equally problematic? Do they have the same opinions on which problems are so serious that other selection procedures ought to be considered? The answers to these questions hints at what should be modified in peer review processes as a priority objective. The authors of this paper use survey data to examine how members of the scientific community weight different shortcomings of peer review processes. Which of those processes' problems do they consider less relevant? Which problems, on the other hand, do they judge to be beyond remedy? Our investigation shows that certain defects of peer review processes are indeed deemed irreparable: (1) legitimate quandaries in the process of fine-tuning the choice between equally eligible research proposals and in the selection of daring ideas; and (2) illegitimate problems due to networks. Science-policy measures to improve peer review processes should therefore clarify the distinction between field-specific remediable and irremediable flaws than is currently the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on quasi-van der Waals epitaxy of high-quality AlN film guided by transfer-free graphene (Gr) with low wrinkle density (LWD-Gr) on sapphire. The surface wrinkle density of LWD-Gr is greatly reduced by 94% compared to conventional Gr with high wrinkle density (HWD-Gr). Also noteworthy is that AlN nucleation islands grown on LWD-Gr exhibit better crystalline orientation consistency and more feasibility to coalesce with each other, thus forming AlN film with lower stress and dislocation density. Finally, 285 nm deep ultraviolet (DUV) light-emitting diodes are fabricated on the high-quality AlN template with LWD-Gr, which shows stronger electroluminescence intensity than its counterpart without and with HWD-Gr. The insights granted by this research pave a new pathway for improving the performance of nitride-based DUV optoelectronic devices through Gr engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, I traveled to Havana with the support of an ASTR Targeted Areas Research Grant to work on processing the physical materials of the Photographic Archive of Tablas-Alarcos Press (hereinafter the Tablas-Alarcos archive or collection). The Tablas-Alarcos archive is a unique collection because it exists not in a traditional research institution, but in the offices of a state-run press dedicated to the performing arts. Also, it consists of materials that have been saved after critics, researchers, and editors have completed the process of publishing their work. Much more than photographs, this collection also contains programs, unpublished manuscripts, and various theatre ephemera from all over the globe and in multiple languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research universities and the federal government partner to foster societal, scientific, and technological advancements, but the federal research grant process is criticized for its procedural inefficiencies. Principal investigators and research administrators lament losing time to bureaucratic regulations, unwieldy processes, and burgeoning reporting standards. As the cost of higher education is increasingly scrutinized, existing procedures warrant examination to identify areas of undue administrative burden and subsequently restructuring to ameliorate cumbersome inefficiencies. The purpose of this study is to identify areas of administrative burden among post-award research administrators (PARA). Ninety-six PARA were surveyed. Several overlapping themes emerged, such as frequently changing regulations and excessive reporting requirements. The suggestions to alleviate administrative burden included standardizing federal grant management systems, regulations, forms, and cash management systems and limiting the rate of changes to federal grant management systems and regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open access is a broad term that refers to information and knowledge that are freely available in the public domain for public use or distribution on a massive level, without the need for a subscription or access fee. The open access policies and mandates compel and encourage academics and scientists to publish their scholarly content in open access, considering it a societal duty since they receive research grants from the government. The present study evaluates the funded scholarly communication and availability of their funded research communication in OA platform from four major Indian research funders (i.e., CSIR, DBT, DST, and ICAR) that have mandated open access policies by discussing the policies induced by each organisation in last five years (2017-21) indexed in the Scopus database. The OA-funded or affiliated scientific literature is indexed to a very minimum number in comparison to total publications mainly for each funder which mostly adopted green and gold OA routes of publications. The average citation of OA-funded publications is more than non-OA-funded publications. The funder also initiates awareness campaigns and workshops on open access to encourage and motivate researchers by engraving free publications with worldwide exposure and visibility [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sitting on the Dais from (L to R) are Dr. Masood Jawaid Director Medial Affairs PharmEvo, Syed Jamshed Ahmad Deputy Chief Executive PharmEvo, Mr.Shaukat Ali Jawaid Chairperson PRF, Prof. Bader Fayaz Zuberi and Prof. Jahan Ara Ainuddin Advisors of PRF and Mr. Haroon Qassim Managing Director PharmEvo. PharmEvo Research Forum organized a press briefing at the Karachi Press Club on September 30th 2023 to formally announce the research grants for young researchers for the year 2023. [Extracted from the article]

We extend the notion of globalized robustness to consider distributional information beyond the support of the ambiguous probability distribution. We propose the globalized distributionally robust counterpart that disallows any (respectively, allows limited) constraint violation for distributions residing (respectively, not residing) in the ambiguity set. By varying its inputs, our proposal recovers several existing perceptions of parameter uncertainty. Focusing on the type 1 Wasserstein distance, we show that the globalized distributionally robust counterpart has an insightful interpretation in terms of shadow price of globalized robustness, and it can be seamlessly integrated with many popular optimization models under uncertainty without incurring any extra computational cost. Such computational attractiveness also holds for other ambiguity sets, including the ones based on probability metric, optimal transport, ϕ-divergences, or moment conditions, as well as the event-wise ambiguity set. Numerical studies on an adaptive network lot-sizing problem demonstrate the modeling flexibility of our proposal and its emphases on globalized robustness to constraint violation. History: Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms—Continuous. Funding: Z. Chen was supported by [General Research Fund Grant 9043424, NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme N_CityU105/21] from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. S. Wang was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71922020, 72171221, and 71988101, entitled "Econometric Modeling and Economic Policy Studies"] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant UCAS-E2ET0808X2]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0274) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0274). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study adjustable distributionally robust optimization problems, where their ambiguity sets can potentially encompass an infinite number of expectation constraints. Although such ambiguity sets have great modeling flexibility in characterizing uncertain probability distributions, the corresponding adjustable problems remain computationally intractable and challenging. To overcome this issue, we propose a greedy improvement procedure that consists of solving, via the (extended) linear decision rule approximation, a sequence of tractable subproblems—each of which considers a relaxed and finitely constrained ambiguity set that can be iteratively tightened to the infinitely constrained one. Through three numerical studies of adjustable distributionally robust optimization models, we show that our approach can yield improved solutions in a systematic way for both two-stage and multistage problems. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Funding: Financial support by the Early Career Scheme from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Project No. CityU 21502820], the CityU Start-Up Grant [Project No. 9610481], the CityU Strategic Research Grant [Project No. 7005688], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Project No. 72032005], and Chow Sang Sang Group Research Fund sponsored by Chow Sang Sang Holdings International Limited [Project No. 9229076] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0181), as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0181). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gonzalo Pimentel, PhD, is an anthropologist and archaeologist researcher at the University of Tarapacá, Chile. He is the founder and current president of the Atacama Desert Heritage Foundation (FDA)* and has a long history of working with and supporting Indigenous communities in their environmental and heritage disputes against mining companies. Pimentel has been a beneficiary of three national research grants (FONDECYT) to investigate ancient pathways and geoglyphs in the Atacama Desert. He has developed academic links with Indigenous communities and several universities worldwide. He has participated in NSF (US) research and has led several projects to register and protect archaeological sites. Together with the FDA team, they were awarded the 2017 Conservation Award granted by the Council of National Monuments of Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health policy and systems research (HPSR) has influenced Philippine policies, including tobacco control, mental health, and COVID-19. The Department of Health (DOH) Philippines and Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) launched the Advancing Health through Evidence-Assisted Decisions (AHEAD) with HPSR program in 2017, aiming to build a community of researchers and decision-makers committed to evidence production and utilization. Research systems employ grant management processes for transparency and accountability in research funding, preventing waste, fraud, and misuse of funds. Methods: This study evaluated AHEAD-HPSR's grant management using surveys, interviews, and focus groups to document (1) grant administration processes implemented by DOH and PCHRD, and (2) experiences of grantees, program managers, staff, and policymakers. Data were initially analyzed through the USA Grant Accountability Office's Federal Grant Life Cycle, with new themes created as they emerged. The study identified processes and gaps in the research grant life cycle stages: design/redesign, pre-award, award, implementation, closeout, and research dissemination and utilization. Results: Identification of research areas for the grant are identified using national and departmental research priorities. While Calls for Proposals are posted publicly, researchers that have previously worked with policymakers are contacted directly to submit proposals. The evaluation found that research is delayed by bureaucracies in grant administration, particularly in financial reporting and ethics review processes. Complying with the terminal financial report was identified as the most challenging part of the grant process due to immense auditing requirements. Grantees recommend the simplification of bureaucracy for fund release to enable them to focus on research work. Conclusion: This study contributes to the limited literature on health research grant management in developing countries. Valuable information and recommendations were contributed by stakeholders in this evaluation. These are manifestations of a continuing interest and desire to make health policy and systems research in the Philippines more robust and relevant. It is imperative for the program to continually evolve and build systems most applicable to its multidisciplinary context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of research funding and research collaboration in the potential for publication in predatory journals among Indonesian social science academia. A total of 2953 articles published by at least one Indonesian author in the social science field between 2010 and 2020 in Scopus‐indexed journals were collected. The SCImago quartiles of 2019 for the Scopus database and Beall's list of potential predatory journals 2021 were used to evaluate the quality and credibility of the publication outlets. Descriptive statistics and decision tree analysis were performed to classify and predict the quality and credibility of the publications. A contrast in the quality and credibility of publications was identified between research funded by Indonesian and foreign institutions. Research publications that were financially supported by Indonesian ministries and authored by a single author and/or via local and national collaboration were more likely to appear in lower‐ranked journals and predatory journals than publications funded by international sponsors and/or that involved foreign author(s)/international collaboration. This study therefore highlights the need for significant changes in monitoring and evaluation systems, timelines, and output targets of Indonesian government research grant schemes, alongside the enhanced involvement of foreign researchers and reviewers in the research funding schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Developing research capacity and supporting research engagement among health professionals are essential parts of bridging the evidence-to-practice gap. The objective of this study was to describe and assess the impact of research seed funding in promoting the engagement of nursing and allied health professionals in leading practice-based research studies within a health care organization. Methods: An impact assessment survey was administered to health professional grant recipients (n = 30) to collect self-reported observations of changes related to clinical practice, patient care, and organizational priorities as a result of the funded research projects. The electronic survey was developed in collaboration with an interprofessional advisory committee and contained 23 closed- and open-ended questions. Survey data were analyzed descriptively, and responses to open-ended survey questions were used to characterize the funded research activities and the perceived successes and challenges experienced by the research teams. Results: A large proportion of health professional grant recipients reported observing impact from their research studies on clinical practice, organizational priorities, and external networks. The grant funds were used to carry out knowledge dissemination activities such as conference presentations, publications, and sharing findings at professional meetings and networks. The majority of grant expenditures were used for research personnel, and the most common challenge to conducting research was related to the need for protected research time. Most grant recipients were interested in participating in another grant-funded research project in the future. Conclusion: Organizational funding and support for research led by health professionals have potential impact on clinical practice, patient care, and organizational priorities. This study provides evidence to support the value of investing in continued and expanded research funding programs for health professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a Python package called RSOME for modeling a wide spectrum of robust and distributionally robust optimization problems. RSOME serves as an open-source framework for modeling various optimization problems subject to distributional ambiguity in a highly readable and mathematically intuitive manner. It is versatile and fits well in the open-source software community in the sense that (i) it is consistent with NumPy arrays in indexing and slicing and; (ii) together with the rich Python libraries for machine learning, data analysis, and visualization, it is easy to implement data-driven models; and (iii) it provides convenient interfaces for users to switch and tune parameters among different solvers. History: Ted Ralphs, Area Editor for Software Tools. Funding: The research of Z. Chen is funded by the Strategic Research Grant [Project 7005792] from the City University of Hong Kong. The research of P. Xiong is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its 2019 Academic Research Fund Tier 3 grant call [Grant MOE-2019-T3-1-010]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2023.1291) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0146) at (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7463845). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value at risk (VaR) and the conditional value at risk (CVaR) are two popular risk measures to hedge against the uncertainty of data. In this paper, we provide a computational toolbox for solving high-dimensional sparse linear regression problems under either VaR or CVaR measures, the former being nonconvex and the latter convex. Unlike the empirical risk (neutral) minimization models in which the overall losses are decomposable across data, the aforementioned risk-sensitive models have nonseparable objective functions so that typical first order algorithms are not easy to scale. We address this scaling issue by adopting a semismooth Newton-based proximal augmented Lagrangian method of the convex CVaR linear regression problem. The matrix structures of the Newton systems are carefully explored to reduce the computational cost per iteration. The method is further embedded in a majorization–minimization algorithm as a subroutine to tackle the nonconvex VaR-based regression problem. We also discuss an adaptive sieving strategy to iteratively guess and adjust the effective problem dimension, which is particularly useful when a solution path associated with a sequence of tuning parameters is needed. Extensive numerical experiments on both synthetic and real data demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods. In particular, they are about 53 times faster than the commercial package Gurobi for the CVaR-based sparse linear regression with 4,265,669 features and 16,087 observations. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms–Continuous. Funding: This work was supported in part by the NSF, the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations [Grant 2153352], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 12271187], and the Hong Kong Research Grant Council [Grant 15304019]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2023.1282) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0012) at (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7483279). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, we investigated the extent of gender disparity among dermatologists awarded Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grants. Https://doi.org/10.1093/bjd/ljad192 DearEditor, Grant-awarding organizations are uniquely positioned to confer funding that is associated with improved research quality and career advancement of the recipient.[1] Unfortunately, evidence suggests that disproportionate amounts of research funding are awarded to males compared with females, furthering gender disparities in academic research.[2] Between 2015 and 2019, although American females comprised 51% of full-time dermatology faculty, they accounted for only 39.1% of total funding, receiving $121.3 million less than male colleagues.[2] Whether a similar trend occurs in the Canadian context remains unknown. [Extracted from the article]

In an ageing population, efficiency improvements are required to assure future accessibility of cataract care. We aim to address remaining knowledge gaps by evaluating the safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of immediate sequential bilateral cataract surgery (ISBCS) versus delayed sequential bilateral cataract surgery (DSBCS). We hypothesised that ISBCS is non-inferior to DSBCS, regarding safety and effectiveness, and being superior in cost-effectiveness. We did a multicentre, non-inferiority, randomised controlled trial, which included participants from ten Dutch hospitals. Eligible participants were 18 years or older, underwent expected uncomplicated surgery, and had no increased risk of endophthalmitis or refractive surprise. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to either the ISBCS (intervention) group or DSBCS (conventional procedure) group, using a web-based system stratified by centre and axial length. Participants and outcome assessors were not masked to the treatment groups because of the nature of the intervention. The primary outcome was the proportion of second eyes with a target refractive outcome of 1·0 dioptre (D) or less 4 weeks postoperatively, with a non-inferiority margin of –5% for ISBCS versus DSBCS. For the trial-based economic evaluation, the primary endpoint was the incremental societal costs per quality-adjusted life-year. All analyses were done by a modified intention-to-treat principle. Costs were calculated by multiplying volumes of resource use with unit cost prices and converted to 2020 Euros (€) and US$. This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT03400124 , and is now closed for recruitment. Between Sept 4, 2018, and July 10, 2020, a total of 865 patients were randomly assigned to either the ISBCS group (427 [49%] patients; 854 eyes) or DSBCS group (438 [51%] patients; 876 eyes). In the modified intention-to-treat analysis, the proportion of second eyes with a target refraction of 1·0 D or less was 97% (404 of 417 patients) in the ISBCS group versus 98% (407 of 417) in the DSBCS group. The percentage difference was –1% (90% CI –3 to 1; p=0·526), thereby establishing non-inferiority for ISBCS compared with DSBCS. Endophthalmitis was not observed or reported in either group. Adverse events were comparable between groups, with only a significant difference in disturbing anisometropia (p=0·0001). Societal costs were €403 (US$507) lower with ISBCS than with DSBCS. The cost-effectiveness probability of ISBCS versus DSBCS was 100% across the willingness-to-pay range of €2500–80 000 (US$3145–100 629) per quality-adjusted life-year. Our results showed non-inferiority of ISBCS versus DSBCS regarding effectiveness outcomes, comparable safety, and superior cost-effectiveness of ISBCS. National cost savings could amount to €27·4 million (US$34·5 million) annually, advocating for ISBCS if strict inclusion criteria are applied. Research grant from The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) and Dutch Ophthalmological Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This single center parallel, randomized controlled trial aimed to determine the propensity of microbial adherence on vacuum-formed retainers (VFRs) with different surface roughness imprints. Materials and methods: Thirty-six patients debonded from fixed appliances at a teaching institution were allocated by block randomization stratified for gender to three groups [VFRs fabricated on conventional, fused deposition modeling (FDM) or stereolithography apparatus (SLA) working models]. Participants wore the VFRs for three months full-time followed by three months part-time. VFRs were collected after each follow-up for Streptococcus and yeast counts. Surface roughness was measured indirectly on the working models using a 3D optical surface texture analyzer. Blinding was not feasible due to appliance appearance. The trial was registered [NCT03844425 (ClinicalTrials.gov)] and funded by the Universiti Malaya Dental Postgraduate Research Grant (DPRG/14/19). Results: Thirty participants (eleven conventional, ten FDM, and nine SLA) were analyzed after six dropped out. No harms were reported. Microbial counts between the groups were not significantly different. There were more microbes in the lower VFRs than upper VFRs (total count: p<0.05; effect size, 0.5 during full-time wear and 0.4 during part-time wear). SLA had significantly (p<0.05) smoother surface than FDM (effect size, 0.3) and conventional models (effect size, 0.5). Microbial adherence was not associated with working model surface roughness. Conclusion: Microbial adherence on VFRs was not influenced by degree of surface roughness imprints from working models. Clinical relevance: 3D printed models can be used to make VFRs. Lower VFRs tended to accumulate oral microbes, potentially increasing the oral health risk in the lower arch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African Studies centers are knowledge producers about Africa and its diaspora communities. The disciplines within them provide strategic guidance and coordination for Africa-related education, research, publishing practices and training activities, and promote opportunities for collaboration with African partners. Common areas studied by such centers include but are not limited to the politics, language, history, archaeology and economics of Africa. But who is doing research - academic and otherwise - on Africa and its diaspora? It can be difficult to keep track of who is doing what and where and thus centers may have limited visibility to their potential correspondents. Filling the gap is this work. As a compilation of African Studies centers, it is intended to help those who seek opportunities (scholarships, fellowships, conferences, study positions, research grants and job opportunities) and to promote cooperation. The researcher compiled information primarily from Google searches using keywords including "African Studies", "African Studies Center", "Africology" and "African and Oriental Studies". Almost 150 globally recognised African Studies centers were found at different universities and research institutions. Despite efforts to include all centers, the current list does not claim to be complete and the author (who seeks to undertake a PhD program in a center) welcomes feedback from readers on entities that would have been worth listing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem Statement: Early-career science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty members are often challenged when identifying authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, objectives, and tasks for their research grant proposals. Advancing DEI has not been one person's job but rather the responsibility of a highly organized network within a system. Research development professionals have been and will continue to be critical resources for developing DEI plans and broadening participation. Their value is partly due to relationship-oriented processes that research professionals cultivate and shepherd as well as the inherently cross-disciplinary nature of the day-to-day work. Observation: In FY 19, 53% of the highest growth in R&D was in biological, biomedical, and health sciences followed closely by engineering. While many complexities are involved in advancing DEI within our universities, colleges, and workplaces, this article is focused on early-career STEM faculty and research development professionals' roles to facilitate DEI linkages within research. Analyze: First, descriptions of the recent federal definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion are provided in research development; This is intended to anchor the discussion and propel the ideation for early-career faculty in federal funding solicitations. Next, a few examples of how early-career STEM faculty engaged in authentic DEI activities with a research development professional are provided. Reflect and Recommend: Finally, five potential DEI partners for collaboration and resources for early-career STEM faculty are provided to support brainstorming as faculty begin to develop their own DEI engagement for research. Context drives design, and research development resources are mechanisms for authentic engagement in DEI for faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the high burden of mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), less than 25% of those in need have access to appropriate services, in part due to a scarcity of locally relevant, evidence-based interventions and models of care. To address this gap, researchers from India and the United States and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) collaboratively developed a "Grantathon" model to provide mentored research training to 24 new principal investigators (PIs). This included a week-long didactic training, a customized web-based data entry/analysis system and a National Coordination Unit (NCU) to support PIs and track process objectives. Outcome objectives were assessed via scholarly output including publications, awards received and subsequent grants that were leveraged. Multiple mentorship strategies including collaborative problem-solving approaches were used to foster single-centre and multicentre research. Flexible, approachable and engaged support from mentors helped PIs overcome research barriers, and the NCU addressed local policy and day-to-day challenges through informal monthly review meetings. Bi-annual formal review presentations by all PIs continued through the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling interim results reporting and scientific review, also serving to reinforce accountability. To date, more than 33 publications, 47 scientific presentations, 12 awards, two measurement tools, five intervention manuals and eight research grants have been generated in an open-access environment. The Grantathon is a successful model for building research capacity and improving mental health research in India that could be adopted for use in other LMICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study how scientists respond to interruptions in the flow of their research funding, focusing on research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which awards multi-year, renewable grants. However, there can be delays during the renewal process. Over a period beginning three months before and ending one year after these delays, I find that interrupted labs reduce overall spending by 50% but over 90% in the month with the largest decrease. This change in spending is mostly driven by a decrease in payments to employees that is partially mitigated when scientists have other grants to draw on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of third-party funding in Austria for energy research, including an analysis of the costs and benefits of writing proposals and of the trust proposal applicants place in the application process. For this purpose, applicants from research and industry applying for government-funded energy research grants in Austria were surveyed. Preparing a new proposal takes about 50 working days; at the current success rate, about 300 person-days are spent preparing proposals for a single proposal to be funded.More than 90% of researchers perceive that they currently spend too much time preparing proposals and only 10% of researchers believe that the current competitive third-party funding system has a positive effect on the quality of research. Furthermore, researchers have limited trust in the objectivity of proposal review processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review considers research into the treatment of Usher syndrome, a deaf-blindness syndrome inherited in an autosomal recessive manner. Usher syndrome mutations are markedly heterogeneous, involving many different genes, and research grants are limited due to minimal patient populations. Furthermore, gene augmentation therapies are impossible in all but three Usher syndromes as the cDNA sequence exceeds the 4.7 kb AAV packaging limit. It is, therefore, vital to focus research efforts on alternative tools with the broadest applicability. The CRISPR field took off in recent years following the discovery of the DNA editing activity of Cas9 in 2012. New generations of CRISPR tools have succeeded the original CRISPR/Cas9 model to enable more sophisticated genomic amendments such as epigenetic modification and precise sequence alterations. This review will evaluate the most popular CRISPR tools to date: CRISPR/Cas9, base editing, and prime editing. It will consider these tools in terms of applicability (in relation to the ten most prevalent USH2A mutations), safety, efficiency, and in vivo delivery potential with the intention of guiding future research investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an indicator of nations' prosperity and economic competitiveness, research impacts the mounting roles and requirements placed upon academic researchers. Internationally, researchers are expected to effectively operate in the fast‐changing and demanding research environment. Such effectiveness corresponds mainly to their ability to establish international and interdisciplinary collaborations, secure internal and external grants, and most importantly deliver tangible research outputs. As such, this desired research excellence impacts researchers' academic appointments, recognitions and promotions. Driven by research productivity and pursuit of academic excellence, researchers' individual autonomy may become restricted. This work is based on (a) an international study exploring research productivity within higher education institutions across 15 countries and (b) a relevant international literature review. The voices of 32 participants portray competencies required from and requirements placed upon academic researchers at their respective universities. Findings show that the role of academic researchers is changing and the requirements pose challenges to researchers' autonomy. The research productivity quest along with opportunity‐driven decisions may not only restrict researchers' autonomy but also compromise their academic integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at scientists (in the life sciences), we focus on the sense of meaninglessness associated with bureaucratization. We define the sense of meaninglessness as a perception of meaning deficit or meaning conflict in particular situations that can be associated with frustration, irritation, and/or boredom. We show that it can be caused by identity disturbance – particularly the incongruence between the ideal self as a researcher and the imposed self as a bureaucrat. We claim that the sense of meaninglessness is more likely to emerge in those activities that are further from an individual's core identity, and more identity work is needed to make them meaningful. We also claim that processes of rationalization imposed by external agendas, particularly transitions from substantive to formal rationality (predictability, control and calculability, efficiency) contribute to the proliferation of meaninglessness in academia. The sense of meaninglessness is, therefore, ignited by the external forces colonizing academic life and constitutes an instance of the 'irrationality of rationality'. It is an outcome or side effect of the collision between two incompatible logics of practice: bureaucratic and scientific. To show the incongruence of those competing logics, we analyze the data derived from a mixed-method study conducted between 2013 and 2014 among beneficiaries of an international research grant project. As a supplementary source of reference, we use our research on academic boredom and laboratory scientists' work and careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research support services are offered to faculty members in universities for their successful extramural funding. However, there has been little evidence for its effectiveness. Here, we examine the relationship between increase in rewarded grants and the research support activities underlying the successful grant proposal. Research grant data of 31 private universities with medical school from KAKEN database and identified trends of the past 22 years was obtained. Next, we explored disclosed information such as annual reports on the university websites and identified the newly introduced research support activities that could explain the increase in grants awarded. We found that newly implemented research support activities in most of the universities were approximately concurrent to the increase in research grants. Additionally, the amount of research support activities correlated with the successful granting. Taken together, we conclude that institutional support by universities is effective in helping young researchers to succeed in extramural funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed changes in total costs for National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Research Project Grants (RPGs) issued from fiscal years (FYs) 1998 to 2021. Costs are measured in 'nominal' terms, meaning exactly as stated, or in 'real' terms, meaning after adjustment for inflation. The NIH uses a data-driven price index - the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI) - to account for inflation, enabling assessment of changes in real (that is, BRDPI-adjusted) costs over time. The BRDPI was higher than the general inflation rate from FY1998 until FY2012; since then the BRDPI has been similar to the general inflation rate likely due to caps on senior faculty salary support. Despite increases in nominal costs, recent years have seen increases in the absolute numbers of RPG and R01 awards. Real average and median RPG costs increased during the NIH-doubling (FY1998 to FY2003), decreased after the doubling and have remained relatively stable since. Of note, though, the degree of variation of RPG costs has changed over time, with more marked extremes observed on both higher and lower levels of cost. On both ends of the cost spectrum, the agency is funding a greater proportion of solicited projects, with nearly half of RPG money going toward solicited projects. After adjusting for confounders, we find no independent association of time with BRDPI-adjusted costs; in other words, changes in real costs are largely explained by changes in the composition of the NIH-grant portfolio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]