Learning the Lingo for Big-Ticket Grants

Courtesy of Moffa Photography Work continues on a method for setting priorities for big research projects at the National Science Foundation, an effort that started in 1991 when Congress asked for help in weighing competing proposals. Lawmakers say they simply cannot understand the big-ticket requests for funding of major research equipment and new facilities that turn up in NSF's budget. Because of the large expense, proposals to build a string of ocean observatories, for one example, or to improve the South Pole station where NSF funds support extensive biological research, for another, must go to Congress as part of the agency's budget request. Budget items queue up for a wait that may last years, with tens to hundreds of millions of dollars hanging in the balance. Projects that already have NSF backing and need more equipment or a new facility generally move to the head of the line, as do research projects tied to international agreements. The rest must sweat it out or jostle for position at the congressional trough. "Problems around the very complicated questions were compounded when people started hiring lobbyists," says NSF spokesman Curt Suplee, director of the NSF Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. "That makes it not a scientific decision but one based on who has the best lobbyist." A panel appointed by the National Academies of Science began meeting in May and must produce a report on NSF priority-setting early next year. In the meantime, scientists seeking NSF funds may want to learn two phrases: "work breakdown structure" and "resource loading schedule." To physicist Mark W. Coles, those concepts were key in making the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) Livingston Observatory in Louisiana a project NSF could point to with pride. Work breakdown structure helped LIGO explain the basis for cost estimates underlying its proposals, while resource loading schedules told NSF what LIGO was going to do and when it was going to do it, Coles explains. His expertise with these concepts also may have been instrumental in making Coles the first deputy director for large-facility projects at NSF, a post Congress asked NSF to create. Coles has run LIGO, a joint project of the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, since 1998, and NSF has put $292 million into the project since inception. The terms might sound odd to researchers, but the principle behind them is old: "Make it clear where the buck stops," Coles says. GMO LEGALESE The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month put researchers who work with transgenic livestock on notice that it has an interest in their projects. Letters to 70 universities warned that the FDA would invoke its right to regulate nonfood items that alter an animal's structure or function; that means any change in DNA, says John Matheson, the FDA toxicologist in charge of explaining the rules to scientists. Past the legalese, the agency is concerned that genetically engineered livestock could find their way into food. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, FDA inspections revealed that researchers had sent 386 pigs from a bioengineering study to a livestock dealer. The university insisted the animals were not genetically engineered, but the agency criticized the record-keeping. Peg Brickley (pegbrickley@hotmail.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Learning the Lingo for Big-Ticket Grants

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