NIH Fiscal Policy — FY 2008: WTF!?

From http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-036.html

The following NIH fiscal policies are instituted in FY2008:
Non-Competing Research Awards: The FY 2008 appropriation as specified in P.L. 110-161 provides NIH a 1 percent inflation allowance to NIH investments in research supported by research grants. Implementation requires a reduction to previously established commitments, based on a 3 percent inflation allowance. Accordingly, each Institute and Center (IC) will use its own discretion to allocate the adjustment among its non-competing research grants (modular and non-modular) to ensure compliance with the 1 percent inflation allowance provided in its FY 2008 committed level. Future year commitments will be adjusted accordingly, as consistent with the FY 2007 fiscal policy. This policy does not apply to Career Awards, SBIR/STTRs, and Ruth L. Kirschstein-National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Fellowships & Institutional Training Grants.

This is the section on non-competing awards, which have been taking severe cuts since the doubling of the NIH budget ended in 2003. Don’t try to figure out what it means, yet. How did this work in past fiscal years?

Nature Survey on Cognitive Enhancers

We had a prior discussion on cognitive performance doping led by the BM on the old site. This was sparked by a Nature commentary which followed a prior editorial.
Nature now has a web poll going asking you to opine on cognitive enhancers. From Retrospectacle:

Brenden Maher at Nature emailed me this morning to clue me in on an anonymous survey that their editors are doing on the topic of cognitive enhancers (a spawn of the commentary piece on the same subject a few weeks back.)
If you’d like to take the survey, check it out here.

Nature Survey on Cognitive Enhancers

We had a prior discussion on cognitive performance doping led by the BM on the old site. This was sparked by a Nature commentary which followed a prior editorial.
Nature now has a web poll going asking you to opine on cognitive enhancers. From Retrospectacle:

Brenden Maher at Nature emailed me this morning to clue me in on an anonymous survey that their editors are doing on the topic of cognitive enhancers (a spawn of the commentary piece on the same subject a few weeks back.)
If you’d like to take the survey, check it out here.

Would you vaccinate against drug abuse?

Recruiting the body’s immune system in the fight against drug abuse is a hot topic. A recent piece highlights progress on cocaine vaccines:

The vaccine works by getting the body’s immune system to recognize the drug as foreign and attack it in the blood stream.
It does so by injecting an altered version of the drug into the body which has been attached to a protein that the body will recognize as a threat.

Doesn’t this sound great? Inoculation against drug abuse? Wouldn’t any parent of a pre-teen ask “Where do I sign my kid up?”

Hey! New PI! Don't Be An Asshole!

Hey! New PI! Yeah, you! PhysioProf is talkin’ to YOU!
If you act like an asshole to the trainees in your new lab, you dramatically decrease the likelihood that you will achieve a sustained upward trajectory for your research program. And without that, guess what? You got no more job.

Hey! New PI! Don’t Be An Asshole!

Hey! New PI! Yeah, you! PhysioProf is talkin’ to YOU!
If you act like an asshole to the trainees in your new lab, you dramatically decrease the likelihood that you will achieve a sustained upward trajectory for your research program. And without that, guess what? You got no more job.

Technical Note: The RSS feed is working

For those of you asking, the RSS feed is now up.

R01s Versus R21s For New Investigators

You’re a new investigator and you are trying to decide how best to get money to support your new lab. You may be weighing the relative risks and rewards of submitting as your first NIH research project grant application an R21 versus an R01. This is actually one of the easist decisions you will ever make as a new PI.

Father, Scientist…Mentor

It is not news to observe that child issues cause women scientists some considerable career anxiety. When to tell the lab or the PI that you are pregnant? Should you wait to start “trying” until after the job interviews? Until after tenure so as to be taken as a “serious” scientist? How many children are “allowable”? How many pictures of the little darlin’s can go over the bench? Should the “balance” of lab and child rearing be kept as opaque as possible from one’s lab?
In contrast men have a much greater ability to conceal their “dad”-ness from their labs. They should not do so.
The father/PI who is seriously concerned about gender equity in science will go out of his way to exhibit his status. If you agree, there is no need to read below the fold.

Save Heroin OD's? "Heck No" says the Office of the Drug Czar

I missed this story at National Public Radio initially but luckily multiple sources have been all over it, see below. The nutshell from the NPR piece on a Cambridge, MA heroin-addict treatment center is as follows:

Elissa has been on methadone for six years, but she confesses that she used heroin a couple of days in the previous month because she was under a lot of stress.
Like most long-term heroin users, Elissa has had scary experiences with overdoses – her own and others’. Once, her partner became unresponsive after taking a mixture of heroin, benzodiazepine pills and alcohol, she says.

“Where to start, where to start?”, muses Your Humble Narrator. Where indeed. From the start we have the concepts of agonist therapy for drug abuse, the generally poor performance of interventions for drug abuse at present, relapse, overdose in users, whether in treatment or not, and drug combinations resulting in medical emergency. Are you getting the impression this stuff is complicated? Good. Because people in the Office of National Drug Control Policy (aka “Drug Czar”) seem to think this is duck soup. Even when they should know better.

Save Heroin OD’s? “Heck No” says the Office of the Drug Czar

I missed this story at National Public Radio initially but luckily multiple sources have been all over it, see below. The nutshell from the NPR piece on a Cambridge, MA heroin-addict treatment center is as follows:

Elissa has been on methadone for six years, but she confesses that she used heroin a couple of days in the previous month because she was under a lot of stress.
Like most long-term heroin users, Elissa has had scary experiences with overdoses – her own and others’. Once, her partner became unresponsive after taking a mixture of heroin, benzodiazepine pills and alcohol, she says.

“Where to start, where to start?”, muses Your Humble Narrator. Where indeed. From the start we have the concepts of agonist therapy for drug abuse, the generally poor performance of interventions for drug abuse at present, relapse, overdose in users, whether in treatment or not, and drug combinations resulting in medical emergency. Are you getting the impression this stuff is complicated? Good. Because people in the Office of National Drug Control Policy (aka “Drug Czar”) seem to think this is duck soup. Even when they should know better.

Fellowship, Mentored Career Development & Transition Award Applications

New “K” Research Career Development award applications are due on February 12 and resubmissions of applications already reviewed that didn’t get high enough scores for funding on March 12. All new and resubmission “F” individual fellowship applications are due on April 8. These applications for funds to support primarily mentored training of one kind or another have to be approached quite differently from your garden-variety R01 Research Project grant application.
In particular, they all have a separate section in addition to the research plan for describing the specifics of the plan for mentored training. This is a really important section of a mentored training application, and merits as much, if not more, attention by the applicant and the mentor as the research plan.

Science Pays

A biology teacher in Wisconsin is soliciting guest bloggers for an Advanced Placement class effort [h/t coturnix].

The instructor (Elissa Hoffman) wants her students to become fluent in online learning and discussion.

This brings today’s discussion around to the topic of diversity in science, careers in science and a much under appreciated goal of “outreach” efforts. That’s right people, we scientists are out there to get hold of your impressionable children and sway them into our “lifestyle”!

Question for Economics Experts (or Blowhards) (UPDATED 1/26/08!)

Here’s the final industry breakdown for today’s Dow at the close:

Sector Change
Basic Materials +0.48%
Capital Goods +0.16%
Conglomerates -0.56%
Cons. Cyclical +0.37%
Cons. Non-Cyclical -0.47%
Energy -0.30%
Financial -1.31%
Healthcare -1.36%
Services -1.20%
Technology -1.15%
Transportation -0.09%
Utilities -0.71%

This was the aftermath of a substantial sell-off with heavy volume. Now I know this is just one day, and I’m certainly no economist, but if you take today’s changes seriously, doesn’t this look like the beginning of a hard-asset bubble?
Let’s hear from people who know (or think they know) about this kind of thing.
UPDATED BELOW THE FOLD ON 1/26/08!!

Clinical Use of MDMA, Part 2

As a follow to the prior post on MDMA clinical trials, I wanted to delve down into the MDMA dosing specifics. One major problem I have with the MAPS efforts to pursue clinical trials is the expansion of dosing as the trials continue. As mentioned in the prior post, the director of the longest running clinical trial Dr. Michael Mithoefer seems to be under the impression that MDMA has been proven to be safe in the clinical setting and refers to other risky “settings” as if environmental conditions were the sole source of an interactive risk. MAPS honcho Rick Doblin has rather consistently argued that the likely threshold for lasting serotonergic dysregulation is considerably above “recreational” doses. I don’t know whether they have read the single study showing (limited) lasting brain disruption associated with a single oral 5 mg/kg dose of MDMA, the human PK studies showing MDMA autoinhibits it’s own metabolism or the paper suggesting intermittent low dosing can sensitize seizure threshold, but it would appear not.