NSF Director France Cordova on Women in STEM

"Despite advances in overall STEM degrees, women are still vastly underrepresented in fields like physics and engineering; the number of women receiving a bachelor's degree in computer science has actually declined since 2002. This spills over into disparities in employment and even salary: In 2013, median salaries were highest for those with doctorates in computer and information sciences and engineering, fields in which men outnumber women substantially. To close these gaps, we must promote gender diversity in STEM education, and support women every step along their path to a science or engineering career. And we must get more girls excited about STEM. Every child has a moment when their imagination is sparked by science and engineering. Watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step onto the Moon was that moment for me -- it was a reminder of my early, innate interest in science and space.

Imagine if we could keep that spark alive and nurture it. We would have a new generation of scientists and engineers, a new STEM-savvy generation."

Read the full post, and more, in Dr. Cordova's blog, NSF Director Field Notes.

NIH Seminars on Program Funding & Grants Administration

Registration for the NIH's Spring and Fall 2016 Regional Seminars is now open. Spring (May 12-13) is offered in Baltimore at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel; Fall (October 27-28) will be in Chicago, at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel. The NIH Regional Seminars offer a comprehensive program for the NIH extramural community about the NIH grants process and related policies, including such topics as Fundamentals of the NIH, compliance, peer review, grant writing for success, pre-award and post-award issues for administrators and investigators, animal and human subject research, and how to interact electronically with NIH.

Please see Notice NOT-OD-16-065 for more information on the program and how to register.

Reminder: Changes in NIH and NSF procedures in effect 1/25/16

On the NSF side of things: The new 2016 Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) is now in effect. You can find it here.

Any unsolicited proposals sent in response to the GPG need to reflect this change on the cover sheet -- in the "Program Announcement/Solicitation/Program Description Number" box, make sure to use NSF 16-1. Solicited proposals should of course continue to use the number provided in the program announcement or description.

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On the NIH side of things: Many changes! All are listed in NIH notice number NOT-OD-16-058, here is a summary:
• information about rigor and transparency in research must be included in applications;
• the vertebrate animals section has been simplified;
• the definition of "child" has been changed from a threshold of 21 to 18 years of age;
• Forms Version C application packages have been updated and the new versions should now be used;
• Instructions for Version C packages have been updated and should be followed.

These changes are just phase I for the time period January 25 through May 24. Notices regarding phase II, starting May 25, will be released shortly.

Fashion for women in STEM

Etsy store Shenova specializes in fashion inspired by the STEM disciplines, including chemistry, medicine, astrophysics, neuroscience, math and computer science.

I think my favorite is the Space Time Warp dress.

via Neatorama

NIH salary cap raised for 2016

The maximum salary on an NIH award has increased to $185,100 effective 1/10/16. This figure represents a base salary over a 12-month calendar, so to figure out whether your 9-month academic year base salary is at or above the cap, use a 9-month figure of $138,825. If your academic year salary is at or above this amount, you must use this figure when calculating salary costs on an NIH grant proposal.

More information on this calculation may be found in the Fordham Research Manual.
More information on the NIH salary cap may be found at this notice: NOT-OD-16-145.

Chemist-trees!

Don't let being stuck in the lab over the holidays get you down, you can still be festive!

See more trees at the Chemistry World Blog.

Rejection of rejection

Cath Chapman and Tim Slade from the University of South Wales, Sydney, Australia, provide the template of a "rejection of rejection letter" in a recent BMJ feature, which begins:

Rejection of rejection letter

[insert university emblem here]

Dear Professor [insert name of editor]

[Re: MS 2015_XXXX Insert title of ground-breaking study here]

Thank you for your rejection of the above manuscript.

Unfortunately we are not able to accept it at this time. As you are probably aware we receive many rejections each year and are simply not able to accept them all. In fact, with increasing pressure on citation rates and fiercely competitive funding structures we typically accept fewer than 30% of the rejections we receive. Please don’t take this as a reflection of your work. The standard of some of the rejections we receive is very high...

Read the rest at BMJ:
Rejection of rejection: a novel approach to overcoming barriers to publication

thanks to Dean McKay for finding this!