National Science Foundation (NSF)

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Atrazine: Syngenta's Herbicide Doesn't Just Poison Frogs - It Could Give You Cancer

F William Engdahl | Ecologist | June 2, 2014

Tyrone Hayes has fought a 15-year battle with Syngenta following his discovery that its herbicide Atrazine scrambles sex in frogs, writes F William Engdahl. Now he wants to know - is Atrazine the cause of the US's 2-fold reproductive cancer excess among Blacks and Hispanics?...

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Clinical histories reveal surprising evidence of multiple, distinct 'autisms'

Jake Miller | Harvard Medical School | December 19, 2013

Electronic medical records shared in a flexible, open-source database like SHRINE [Shared Health Research Information Network] provide a bird's-eye view of the medical system that offers researchers unique insights into disease and treatment. Read More »

Confusions In The OSTP OA Policy Memo — Three Monsters And A Gorilla

David Wojick | The Scholarly Kitchen | February 25, 2013

The US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), part of the Executive Office of the President, has issued a sweeping policy memo entitled, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.” It directs all federal research agencies to develop and implement open access (OA) plans over the next 2-3 years. Read More »

Could Opening Up The Doors To The World’s Medical Research Save Healthcare?

John Willinsky | The Health Care Blog | May 3, 2013

What if you had access to all of the medical research in the world? Or better yet, what if the physician treating your particularly complex or rare condition had access to the latest research? Or what if a public health organization in your community could access that research to inform policymakers of measures to advance public health? Read More »

Democratizing Deep Learning With An iPhone App And Open Source SDK

Derrick Harris | GIGAOM | April 24, 2014

Most people will never have the computer science knowledge to become deep-learning researchers, but now they can test out the results of that work with a simple computer vision iPhone app called Deep Belief. iOS developers can take Deep Belief a step further by downloading an open source software development kit and working its object-recognition capabilities into their own apps.

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From Antarctica To America, US Turns Out The Lights On Science Research

Jeremy A. Kaplan | FoxNews.com | October 13, 2013

Two weeks of sliced budgets and suspensions following Congressional gridlock have been a disastrous setback to a variety of American science programs, wasting millions of dollars and months if not years of research. Read More »

From Crowdfunding To Open Access, Startups Are Experimenting With Academic Research

Danny Crichton | TechCrunch | March 3, 2014

These days may well be the next golden age for universities, and startups are leading the way. For institutions that can feel much like their counterparts from a thousand years ago, universities have witnessed breathtaking change in just a handful of years. Read More »

GenoCAD, and Open Source Synthetic Biology Tool Is Transioned to the Private Sector by the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute

Press Release | Virginia Bioinformatics Institute | August 24, 2015
GenoCAD, a computer-assisted design environment for synthetic biology developed at Virginia Tech, has transitioned to GenoFAB LLC to engage new users and create new opportunities for innovation. The web-based GenoCAD application enables users to design DNA and create expression vectors for biologics manufacturing for new medical treatments, gene therapy, plant biotechnology, and synthetic biology.

High-Tech Tattoos Redefine Health Care Solutions

Elena Watts | University of Texas (UT) | June 7, 2013

In the not-so-distant future, patients with heart disease won’t have to strap brick-size Holter monitors to their arms or waists, with webs of electrodes connected to their chests to monitor their hearts. [...] The technology enabling these advances is called bio-integrated electronics, and it is expected to revolutionize health care. Read More »

Ken Banks Receives ACM Award for FrontlineSMS Work

Press Release | Association for Computing Machinery | May 10, 2017

Ken Banks, recipient of the Eugene L. Lawier Award for developing Frontline SMS, using mobile technology and text messaging to empower people to share information, organize aid, and reconnect communities during crises. A self-descrived "moble anthropologist," Banks has a gift for building technology that benefits humanity. As someone who was writing code and tinkering with computers since he was 13, Banks instinctively saw an opportunity to harness the world's most-used communications platform--mobile messaging--to help people in the developing world. In 2005, he designed, coded and launched FrontlineSMS, a mobile messaging platform that allows people to subscribe to groups, receive alerts, and establish communication hubs.

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Letter: Open Access Would Cut Costs At Colorado University

Rachel Powers | Colorado Daily | October 17, 2012

[...] As a flagship university often at the center of local and national debate, [Colorado University] is a world-class institution that aims to prepare its students and support its faculty in relevant, cutting-edge research. However, under the strain of exorbitant academic journal subscription costs, our university is at times unable to provide students and faculty with access to the research articles they need. Read More »

NASA Launches Next Space Apps Challenge

Elena Malykhena | InformationWeek | April 15, 2013

International competition brings together developers from around the world to create software, hardware and visualization tools for space exploration missions. Read More »

National Science Foundation Creates $3M CONVERGE Center to Augment Natural Hazards Research

Press Release | Converge, NHERI, NSF | November 14, 2018

To enhance the diversity of research underway in natural hazards, the National Science Foundation recently created CONVERGE, a $3 million research center at the University of Colorado Boulder. The center is a resource for the 11-member, NSF-funded Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure, known as NHERI. One of the NSF 10 Big Ideas, "convergence" describes the merging of scientific disciplines in a coordinated, reciprocal way that fosters the robust collaborations needed for successful inquiry. For NSF, convergence research is driven by a compelling problem that can be solved by deep integration between disciplines.

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New Bill Helps Expand Public Access To Scientific Knowledge

Adi Kamdar and Corynne McSherry | Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) | February 15, 2013

Internet users around the world got a Valentine's Day present yesterday in the form of new legislation that requires U.S. government agencies to improve public access to federally funded research. Read More »

New Study Is an Advance Toward Preventing a ‘Post-Antibiotic Era’

Press Release | UCLA | February 7, 2017
UCLA’s Elif Tekin, Casey Beppler, Pamela Yeh and Van Savage are gaining insights into why certain groups of three antibiotics interact well together and others don’t. A landmark report by the World Health Organization in 2014 observed that antibiotic resistance — long thought to be a health threat of the future — had finally become a serious threat to public health around the world. A top WHO official called for an immediate and aggressive response to prevent what he called a “post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill”...