My Hobby and Interest - Research

Science Magazine  Odds of winning NIH grants plummet as new funding policy and spending delays bite Funding multiyear grants up front will sharply cut number of investigators receiving awards by Jocelyn Kaiser Concerns are rising among researchers that President Donald Trump’s administration is finding new ways to shrink the U.S. biomedical research enterprise even as the White House’s request to cut the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) budget by 40% in 2026 meets resistance in Congress. One worry is a new policy requiring that NIH fund multiyear grants with a single, upfront lump sum, rather than year by year. The shift is already sharply lowering the odds a scientist’s proposal will succeed; at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), for example, it has fallen from one in 10 grant applicants to one in 25. The policy could force the closure of many university labs, NIH staff and agency onlookers predict. The second worry was fueled on Sunday when White House budget chief Russe...

 Join us on zoom or the Scarborough main conference room: Tuesday July 28 and Thursday July 30  8:00-8:30am https://maine.zoom.us/j/4625543963 Join me for classes at  Greener Postures Yoga Sundays - 75 min yin yoga, 5:00pm-6:15pm at our West Falmouth studio Mondays - 60 min Fundamentals Flow, 7-8pm at our South Portland studio

 Science A New Cause of Atherosclerosis by Derek Lowe Now here’s something that could rework the way that we think about atherosclerosis. A large multinational team  has reported  in  Nature  that a simple molecule produced by human-associated bacteria seems to be a driver for cardiovascular risk. The molecule is  imidazole propionate  (ImP), which is a metabolite of histidine. This molecule had already been identified as  affecting insulin signaling  pathways and as an  outright marker  of the the diabetic state. It has  increasingly seemed  to be tied in with the entire “metabolic syndrome”, the constellation of diabetes, dyslipedemia, and associated cardiovascular risk. This new paper shows the same behavior: ImP directly correlated with fasting glucose and an adverse cardiometabolic profile, including increased high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), body mass index (BMI), visceral fat, dyslipidaemia and hyperten...

 ScienceInsider Congressional panels resist White House proposals for sharp cuts in indirect cost rates Three spending panels say a 15% cap isn’t the right answer to nagging concerns about how universities are reimbursed by Jeffrey Mervis The U.S. Congress is pushing back on attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to make drastic cuts in what the government pays universities to support research on their campus. The response could bolster efforts by a coalition of higher education associations to revise how federal agencies calculate these so-called indirect costs to ensure universities are reimbursed for what they say are the full costs of research. Three bills moving forward that would set U.S. spending levels for the 2026 fiscal year starting on 1 October express a range of views on the payments, which amount to tens of billions of dollars annually. But even though Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, none endorses the low flat rate that four feder...

 Science News Columbia’s $221 million deal with Trump officials draws mixed reactions from researchers Relief that NIH funding will be restored mingles with fears that academic independence will suffer—and that other universities will make similar concessions by Jocelyn Kaiser The deal Columbia University reached with the White House over alleged antisemitism on campus will free up hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants to the university. Yet yesterday’s settlement, under which Columbia will pay more than $200 million to the government and subject itself to an independent monitor, is drawing mixed reactions at Columbia and beyond. “People are hopeful that this means we will be able to focus on our work, and that support for their research will resume,” says Columbia neuroscientist Joshua Gordon, a former NIH institute director. Columbia stem cell scientist Dieter Egli, who learned last week that his NIH grant had been extended for a yea...

 From Piestar - to to site here to browse data. Use  Federal  Research Funding Insights to Plan Ahead Introduction The timing of Notice of Award (NOA) releases has become a critical issue for NIH-funded research programs in 2025. Many institutions are using university risk accounts to bridge funding gaps, while those who have received their funds face the challenge of obligating funds quickly before the end of the fiscal year. This uncertainty affects everything from personnel decisions to research timeliness. Mission We believe that supporting America's research enterprise is essential to maintain our nation's competitiveness, public health, and economy. The research teams who move our country forward deserve the powerful tools and intelligence they need to succeed—including advocacy for bridge funding, strategic planning, and navigate an increasingly complex funding landscape Methods Our tracking system aggregates information from multiple authoritative federal database...

 Nature News How to tackle research misconduct: survey finds stark disagreement Data sleuths and research-integrity officers have different views on how to handle allegations of wrongdoing in science. By Miryam Naddaf A survey of  scientific sleuths  and  integrity officers  at research institutions shows that the two groups disagree about how to deal with serious cases of research misconduct, such as data fabrication,  image manipulation  and  plagiarism . The results, reported in a preprint posted on Zenodo last month 1 , reflect ongoing tensions between sleuths, who detect and report potential breaches of research integrity in the scientific literature — often anonymously, on public forums such as  PubPeer  — and integrity officers, who are responsible for investigating and responding to allegations of misconduct at their institutions. The two groups had differing views on whether universities can investigate their own researchers fai...

 Report from the Union of Concerned Scientists      Science and Democracy Under Siege Documenting Six Months of the Trump Administration’s Destructive Actions Darya Minovi ,  Kristie Ellickson  ,  Jules Barbati-Dajches ,  Rachel Cleetus Published Jul 21, 2025 READ ONLINE The first six months of President Donald J. Trump's second term have been characterized by destruction of democratic processes, divisive and vindictive  actions , and chaos in federal government agencies. Within  days  of his inauguration, President Trump handed illegal authority to  Elon Musk —an unelected billionaire—and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to  take over  government agencies, access US people's  private ,  protected  data, and  lock  federal employees out of computer systems and  lawmakers  out of federal buildings. Within weeks, the administration shut down  entire agencie...