Month: July 2010

07/22/10

PASW 18 (formerly known as SPSS) upgrade

Attention PASW/SPSS Users (faculty and staff):

PASW 18  is now available. All ITS computer labs will be upgraded to PASW 18 by July 31st, 2010.  SPSS 17 will be discontinued on July 31, 2010.  You may install PASW 18 at any time.  To install PASW 18 on your campus computer please follow the steps below:

Double Click My Computer
Double Click L: drive
Double Click the Secure Software folder.
Double Click PASW18 folder.
Double Click Install PASW18.cmd.
When the black box closes on its own PASW 18 is installed.

Please note you do not have to uninstall SPSS 17 to begin using PASW 18.  The SPSS 17 license will expire on July 31st, 2010 and the program will no longer work.

For questions or concerns please contact the ITS Helpdesk by phone at 810-766-6804 or by e-mail at [email protected].

07/22/10

Nominations and Other Opportunities for CUR Members

Members of CUR have been receiving notices of opportunities to share their experiences and views related to undergraduate research on various Advisory Boards, Commissions and other panels in Washington, DC for some time.  Washington Partners monitors and identifies such opportunities, and shares them with CUR leadership, who subsequently passes them on.  Knowing that such one-topic e-mails might get lost in inboxes, going forward, these notices will be supplemented with an aggregate listing in this communication each month.  Please know that some opportunities are particularly time sensitive, and will still be shared individually, but Washington Partners is hopeful an aggregate listing is helpful to CUR members interested in such opportunities. 

In addition, CUR is working with Washington Partners to establish a resource that can be relied upon when opportunities to testify before Congressional, federal or other panels in Washington, DC or elsewhere arise.  Robin Howard of CUR’s staff recently sent an email to members regarding this effort.  If you haven’t already looked at that effort on CUR’s website, please do so at http://cur.networkats.com/members_online/members/viewmember.asp.

07/22/10

Senate Committee to Act on Undergraduate Research Policy

As recently as last week, observers thought it unlikely that the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee would act before the Congressional recess on legislation that would reauthorize the America COMPETES Act.  In May, the House passed legislation (HR 5116) to reauthorize the 2007 law and has been waiting for the Senate to follow suit, and CUR recently joined other groups in writing to Senate lawmakers urging them to act on the bill.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled to mark up a number of bills on Thursday, July 22, including S 3605, the American COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.  This bill, which was introduced by Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV), would maintain funding for programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but is a proposal that differs a bit from the House-approved legislation.  That bill included a National Nanotechnology Initiative and other programs absent from the Senate legislation.

Supporters of the many programs authorized by the America COMPETES Act have long lamented the disappointing lack of federal funding for them.  While this bill does not represent a commitment to funding, there are proposed changes to certain programs that would benefit undergraduate research.  Undergraduate research and courses of study are paid more attention at the NSF and other agencies in the proposed changes, as are primarily undergraduate institutions of higher education.  There is a new provision of the research experiences for undergraduate students (REU) program that directs the Director of NSF to require that every recipient of a research grant from the NSF proposing to include one or more students enrolled in certificate, associate, or baccalaureate degree programs in carrying out the research proposed under the grant shall request support, including stipend support, for those students as part of the research proposal itself versus in a supplement to the proposal (unless participation of the undergraduate student was not foreseeable at the time of the original proposal).  The House-passed bill includes a similar provision.

More broadly, both the House and Senate bills propose changes to programs that recognize the important contributions primarily undergraduate institutions, two-year institutions and undergraduates can and do play in the research enterprise, and there are proposals to diversify collaborative research applications that embrace this notion.

The Council on Undergraduate Research supports this legislation and is hopeful that House and Senate lawmakers will work together to enact the measure before year’s end.  In coming weeks, CUR and Washington Partners, LLC will continue to monitor Congressional action and weigh in with lawmakers on the proposed changes that will benefit undergraduate research.

07/20/10

Data sharing panel/discussion on July 27th

Sharing Research Data: Perspectives from the Campus Community
A panel and discussion on sharing research data will be held next Tuesday from 2:30-4pm in the Library Gallery (100 Hatcher Graduate Library).

Data have been in the spotlight recently, with government open data initiatives spurring interest in data sharing and interoperability. Funding programs such as DataNet aim to build the necessary infrastructure to allow research data to be shared seamlessly and preserved for the long term. At the May 5th meeting of the National Science Board, NSF officials announced that starting in October 2010 all proposals submitted to the NSF must include a data management plan, including provisions for the sharing of research data. In FY 2008-09 University of Michigan researchers received $64.8 million in NSF grants. How will these researchers deal with the new requirements, and how can the campus community best support them in sharing their data?

Please join the University of Michigan’s Art, Architecture, Science and Engineering Libraries and the Librarians’ Forum for an interdisciplinary discussion of data sharing and licensing options available to University of Michigan researchers. Representatives from a number of campus research communities will report on the current state of data sharing in their field. Presentations will be followed by discussion and Q&A.

This event is free and open to the public; no registration is required. Light refreshments will be served.

Speakers:

Dr. Philip Andrews is Professor in the departments of Biological Chemistry, Chemistry, and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan Medical School.  He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Purdue University with Dr. Larry Butler. Recent work in Dr. Andrews’ laboratory has included the molecular architecture of organelles, analysis of phosphoproteins, methods for quantitative proteomics, approaches to improving interaction maps, and computational methods for analysis of proteomics data. Proteome informatics projects include development of new tools for de novo sequence analysis, spectral clustering (Bonanza), the Tranche data dissemination system, the proteomecomons.org data resource, an information management system for proteomics (PRIME), assessment of search results, and specialized tools for viewing and processing proteomics data (MSExpedite, Babel Fish).

Greg Grossmeier is Copyright Specialist at the University of Michigan Library, where his time revolves around giving presentations and answering copyright and publishing questions for faculty, staff, and students. He is also tasked with maintenance of the copyright website and with promoting Open Access publishing at the University. He consults with the Open.Michigan initiative on legal and policy matters around Open Educational Resources and is a Creative Commons Fellow, providing expertise on topics such as Open Educational Resources and the Free/Libre Open Source Software community.  Greg holds an MSI in Information Policy from the University of Michigan School of Information and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota.

Alex Kanous is Operations Manager of the Data Sharing & Intellectual Capital (DSIC) Knowledge Center, part of the National Cancer Institute’s caBIG initiative located at the University of Michigan. There he participates in a collaborative effort to encourage and facilitate data sharing to advance scientific discovery, consistent with applicable legal, regulatory, ethical and contractual requirements. Mr. Kanous has an MSI with a concentration in Information Policy from the University of Michigan School of Information and a JD with a focus on Intellectual Property from the Michigan State University College of Law.

Event Contact: Jacob Glenn [email protected]
Date: Jul 27th, 2010
Time: 2:30pm – 4:00pm
Location: Hatcher Graduate Library, Gallery in Room 100
http://www.lib.umich.edu/gallery/events/sharing-research-data

07/15/10

UM-Flint Dean named to U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Committee

From the desk of Mel Serow, University Relations:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced the appointment of Barbara L. Kornblau, JD, OTR, dean of the University of Michigan-Flint School of Health Professions and Studies to a committee to review and update the criteria used to define medically under served areas and health professional shortage areas.

Read the rest of the article here.

Congratulations on this tremendous accomplishment, Dean Kornblau!