OFFICE OF RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION NEWSLETTER | June 2007
(Volume VI, No. 12)
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OFFICE OF RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION NEWSLETTER | June 2007 |
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Electronic Grant Application Submission: NIH eSubmission Transition 80 Percent Complete From NIH Extramural Nexus May 2007 Since December 2005, NIH has systematically transitioned grant programs from paper PHS 398 application forms to electronic SF424 (R&R) application packages submitted through Grants.gov. Approximately 80 percent of all NIH competing grant applications now use the electronic process. Among the remaining grant programs to transition are Career Development (K), Fellowships (F), Training (T) and complex programs (primarily P and U). The transition of these grant programs to electronic applications was delayed in January (see NIH Guide notice NOT-OD-07-038) as Grants.gov focused all of its efforts on transitioning to Adobe®-based forms and system processing improvements. NIH is working closely with Grants.gov while they continue to refine forms and systems. We expect to make an announcement soon about the transition of K, F, T and complex grant mechanisms to electronic application submission. l
The NIH Electronic Application Validation Process — Why We Do What We Do From NIH Extramural Nexus May 2007 Did you submit your electronic application, check the status in the Electronic Research Administration (eRA) Commons and let out a sigh as you read your errors and / or warnings? Did you think, “Sure, the system flagged an error, but why can’t I just take care of it later, after I get rave reviews and NIH is ready to fund my research?” If you did, you were not alone. In fact, some of you took it one step further and provided specific feedback on the process. We have reviewed your feedback, analyzed the submission results to date, and offer the following response. l Read More
Designating Roles in Electron Applications — PIs, Multiple PIs and Co-Investigators From NIH Extramural Nexus May 2007 Here is a quick explanation on NIH’s approach for designating the roles of Principal Investigator, Multiple Principal Investigator, and Co-Investigator on electronic applications. Principal Investigator The SF424 (R&R) cover component includes a section for the Project Director / Principal Investigator (PD / PI). The information from this section is used to auto-fill other sections of the application including the Senior / Key Person Profile and the R&R Budget forms. The role of PD / PI is automatically set as the default. Multiple PIs NIH has chosen the approach recommended by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (published in the Federal Register) that considers all PD / PIs on a multiple PI application to be equal in terms of responsibility, authority and accountability. Therefore, they should have the same role designation on the application. It was determined that designating one individual as the PD / PI and all others as Co-PD / PIs implied some hierarchy that does necessarily not exist. For this reason, PD / PI is the only role that NIH recognizes for PI status and each of the multiple PIs should use this role. Realizing that some other federal agencies may use Co-PD / PI for their multiple PI implementations (e.g., National Science Foundation), NIH provides a warning message when the Co-PD / PI role is used to let you know that if you meant to designate multiple PIs, you have not used the appropriate role for NIH applications. NIH guidance is to avoid the use of Co-PD / PI entirely for NIH applications to avoid confusion. If you choose to ignore the warning, the Co-PD / PI role is stored but no PI status is provided. Co-Investigators NIH views the roles of Co-Investigator and PD / PI as distinct. Although NIH does not give PI status to anyone designated as a Co-Investigator, it is an acceptable project role for NIH while the role of Co-PD / PI is not. Co-Investigator is not a value listed in the role picklist of the Senior / Key Person Profile form. To assign the role of Co-Investigator you must select “Other” for the Project Role field and then insert the appropriate role descriptor of “Co-Investigator” in the Other Project Role Category field. In the R&R detailed budget component the Project Role field is free-form text so you can insert any appropriate role. l
U.S. Ethnic Scientists and Entrepreneurs .April 01, 2007 By WILLIAM R. KERR Published online by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Immigrants are critical to the formation of U.S. technology. While they account for around 10 percent of the U.S. working population, immigrants represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and almost 50 percent of those with doctorates. In addition to the number of scientists immigrants add to the U.S. workforce, star immigrant researchers make an exceptional contribution in quality to the nation’s science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citations, and so on. The contributions of immigrants extend well beyond the laboratory, too. Ethnic entrepreneurs are also prominent in commercializing new technologies, especially in areas where high-technology firms are clustered, such as Silicon Valley. The magnitudes of these ethnic entrepreneurial and scientific contributions raise many research and policy questions on both short-term and long-term horizons. This Economic Commentary highlights a new methodology for studying such contributions. The methodology makes use of patent records for the information they contain about ethnic scientific and engineering inventors. The data confirm the growing scientific contributions that ethnic inventors have been making in the United States, especially in high-technology fields. In addition, related research using the same dataset finds that the benefits of immigration run in more than one direction: U.S. ethnic researchers make important contributions to the international diffusion of technology as well. Ethnic Patenting DataEmpirical studies of immigrant scientists and engineers face substantial data constraints. One source of potentially useful information that has not been exploited in such studies is the patent records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Each patent filed with the USPTO contains the name of at least one inventor, and multiple inventors are allowed. In total, 4.3 million inventor names are associated with the 2.9 million patents that have been granted from 1975 to 1999. I was able to map these inventor names into an ethnic-name database that is typically used for commercial marketing campaigns. This approach exploits the idea that inventors with the surnames Ming or Yu are likely of Chinese ethnicity, Agrawal or Banerjee have a greater probability of being Indian, and Rodriguez or Martinez are likely of Hispanic descent. In cases of overlapping surnames (such as Lee), Census records are used to apportion ties. The match rate is 98 percent for inventors residing in the United States, and nine ethnicities can be distinguished: Chinese, English, European, Hispanic/Filipino, Indian/Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese. The USPTO grants patents to inventors living within and outside of the United States, with the latter accounting for just under half of all patents issued. Quality assurance exercises using the inventor records for those filing USPTO patents from abroad confirm the approach works well. For example, 99 percent of the inventors filing from Japan are found to be Japanese. The primary limitation of the ethnic-name approach is that first-generation cannot be distinguished from later-generation immigrants. But the approach yields quantifiable data in previously unavailable detail on the ethnic composition of U.S. inventors. Because the ethnic assignment is done at the microlevel, greater detail on the ethnic composition of inventors is available annually on multiple dimensions. Each patent contains very detailed technology categories, so that differences in ethnic contributions across sectors can be analyzed (for example, semiconductors and biotechnology). Likewise, ethnic populations can be described annually for each city or state. Finally, most patents are assigned to a corporation, university, or government body (for example, IBM, MIT, or the U.S. Army). The ethnic composition of each institution’s inventors, by city and line of business, can be similarly described. U.S. Ethnic Inventors Figure 1 illustrates the evolving ethnic composition of U.S. inventors from 1980 to 1997. This graph includes only inventors who resided within the United States at the time of their patent filing. The USPTO issues many more patents today than in previous years, and it is difficult to interpret changes in the levels of patents granted.
The trends are presented as annual shares of ethnic inventors to abstract from these issues. The English share, omitted from the graph, declines from 82 percent in 1980 to 75 percent in 1997. The European ethnicity represents the largest foreign contributor to U.S. technology development. Like the English ethnicity, however, the European share of U.S. domestic inventors declines steadily over the period. These declining English and European shares are partly due to the exceptional growth of the Chinese and Indian ethnicities, which increase from 3 percent to 6 percent and 2 percent to 4 percent, respectively, over the 17-year period. Recent data suggest that these upward trends have continued through at least 2002, and work on collecting data that continue through 2006 is ongoing. Growth in Chinese and Indian patenting activity is particularly concentrated in high-technology sectors, where Chinese inventors have supplanted European researchers as the largest ethnic contributor to U.S. technology formation beside the English. Figure 2 explores the technology dimension of the contributions made by ethnic inventors. Patents are separated into six broad technology areas: chemicals, computers and communications, drugs and medical, electrical and electronic, mechanical, and miscellaneous (labeled “other” on the graph). The miscellaneous group includes patents for agriculture, textiles, furniture, and the like. Growth in ethnic patenting is clearly stronger in high-technology sectors than in more traditional industries.
International Technology Diffusion Ethnic scientists and engineers are an important and growing contributor to U.S. technology development. Chinese and Indian ethnicities, in particular, are now an integral part of the country’s invention and commercialization activities in high-technology sectors. The dataset developed through patent records is useful for studying several important policy questions. Examples include the appropriate immigration quotas for high-skilled workers and the impact of foreign-born workers on native workers and students. But the contributions of immigrants do not run in just one direction; there is a special relationship that exists between U.S. ethnic scientific communities and their home countries. Immigrants in the United States often retain a special interest in their native lands, which they still influence in ways ranging from financial transfers to political inputs. Quantifying these flows is important for evaluating whether the emigration of top talent to the United States is a gain or loss to the sending nation (sometimes referred to as the “brain drain” versus “brain circulation” debate). The extent to which technologies diffuse faster to countries through ethnic scientific channels is very important for achieving the positive gains from these expatriates. Empirical work finds that U.S. ethnic scientific communities do aid the transfer of technologies developed in the United States to their native countries. This work moves beyond case studies by examining more than 40 countries and 20 manufacturing industries over the 1980–1997 period. This technology transfer boosts the economic development of the home countries as measured by output and productivity growth. Moreover, countries are found to increase exports—to countries other than the United States—in the industries in which they receive technology stimulants, signifying the development of comparative trade advantages. Current research is also evaluating the channels through which this technology transfer operates. Scientific collaboration certainly plays a role, with ethnic inventors outside of the United States being found to cite ethnic inventors within the United States at a higher rate, even after controlling for specific technological fields. This effect is most prominent immediately after new inventions are developed, with the special ethnic collaborations promoting both greater awareness of new technologies and greater tacit understanding of how they work. More recent projects with Fritz Foley of Harvard Business School are looking within the firm. We have gathered data on firm-level foreign direct investment (FDI) and trading patterns. On the FDI front, we have found evidence that a stronger U.S. ethnic research presence with multinationals facilitates greater FDI into the scientists’ home countries. We are further exploring how the organizational forms of FDI change—for example, entry through fully owned facilities versus joint ventures—and how within-firm trade is shaped. Immigrants have a disproportionate influence on U.S. technology formation and diffusion. Understanding these ethnic contributions and the scientific networks through which they operate is essential for crafting appropriate U.S. immigration and innovation policies. With increasing globalization of research and development and innovative efforts, and the rapid development of China and India, these topics will continue to grow in importance. l William R. Kerr was a participant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Conference on Universities, Innovation and Economic Growth, held in November 2006. Dr. Kerr is an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School and a research associate at the Center for Economic Studies. The views expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or its staff.
Ethanol is rapidly transforming life in Iowa and the rest of the corn belt Excerpted from The Economist May 10, 2007 YOU might think that the opening of a new ethanol facility in Nevada, Iowa—a town of 6,700 in the centre of the state—would be of interest mainly to the local farmers who supply the corn that the factory turns to car fuel. You would be wrong. Investors in the refinery include the person who delivers fuel to it, a couple of local parts-suppliers for John Deere (a big farm-equipment company) and the local school-bus driver, among 900 or so other small investors. Like many others in the corn belt, the Nevada refinery is seen as a way for the whole rural community to thrive by exploiting America's new craving for ethanol and the corn (maize) that is being used to make it. Corn-based ethanol is neither cheap nor especially green: it requires a lot of energy to produce. Production has been boosted by economically-questionable help from state and federal governments, including subsidies, the promotion of mixing petrol with renewable fuels and a high tariff that keeps out foreign ethanol. The federal government offers ethanol producers a subsidy of 51 cents per gallon (13.5 cents per litre); and a growing number of states are pushing for wider use of E85, a fuel blend that is 85% ethanol and only 15% petrol. Since oil prices rose above $30 a barrel in 2004 (they are more than double that now), ethanol capacity has grown especially rapidly. And although the country is experimenting with other renewable plant-based fuels of varying feasibility, from biodiesel to (much greener) ethanol derived from trees, the biggest boom has been in corn-based ethanol. California has helped to lead the way. When the state banned the use of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) as a fuel additive after 2003, everyone had to use ethanol instead to meet clean-air standards; and local refineries for the product began popping up to cash in on a state subsidy of 40 cents per gallon at the time. Outside the Golden State, however, the states most eager to subsidise ethanol were those with golden fields of corn. Wallace Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University, points out that states that had introduced subsidies early, such as Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, were already building lots of ethanol factories before 2004, whereas corn-belt states without subsidies, such as Indiana and Ohio, did not do much until oil prices rose. Since then, rural areas across the region have been swept up in the ethanol craze, with new facilities sprouting all over corn country. Iowa, in the heart of the region, already has 28 ethanol refineries, producing 1.9 billion gallons of the stuff a year, nearly a third of America's total capacity. Many new facilities and expansions of existing ones are in the works. l READ MORE (access available for limited time)
Missouri and Illinois Join National Tech Revival April 24, 2007 Missouri and Illinois are adding information technology jobs for the first time since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 — but industry leaders warn that without significant changes in education and immigration policy, the trend could reverse. Nationwide, companies that sell IT products and services added 146,600 jobs in 2006, building on growth that began in 2005 after four years of dramatic decline, according to a study set for release today by the nonprofit technology trade group AeA. With nearly 5.8 million jobs last year, the industry remains shy of its peak employment of 6.6 million in 2000, but AeA said it is encouraged. Missouri ranked 19th among states in IT employment, with 88,300 workers at
5,500 firms who earned a total of $5.8 billion in 2005, the most recent year
for which state-level data is available, the study said. In Illinois, the
7th-ranked state, 205,700 IT workers at 15,400 companies earned a total of And those numbers leave out what local business leaders say is equally significant for the local economy: people who create and manage information technology used within a non-IT corporation. For example, Monsanto Co., which sells genetically modified and hybrid seeds,
is building a $19 million data center at its Creve Coeur headquarters. The
company has more than 600 IT workers in the St. Louis area among 1,000 it
employs globally, which represents nearly 6 percent of its total work force, Yet Missouri mirrors the nation in its need to improve education and training programs, beginning at the grade-school level. It needs to do more to retain highly skilled graduates of local universities. l The TECHNOLOGY industry in Missouri • Employs 39 of every 1,000 private sector workers. • Pays an average wage of $65,400, 81 percent more than the state's private sector average. • Is focused on telecommunications services, computer system design and Internet services. SOURCE: AeA. Figures are for 2005, the most recent data available.
America's health-care industry has been slow to adopt information technology Excerpted from The Economist May 17, 2007 “PAPER kills,” Newt Gingrich likes to say these days. America's former House speaker points to Hurricane Katrina, after which many survivors suffered needlessly or died because their paper records had washed away. But the lucky few whose doctors had been wired up could retrieve electronic medical records (EMRs) nationwide. An official in New Orleans puts it bluntly: “Katrina taught us that America has to change its health-information systems immediately.” The health-care sector in North America spends surprisingly little on information technology (IT). The financial-services industry spends about $200 billion a year on high-tech kit; health providers spend just over a tenth of that amount (see chart). But John-David Lovelock of Gartner, a market-research firm, predicts that IT spending in health care will increase by an average of 4.7% per year between 2005 and 2010, the fastest growth-rate of any industry and well above the average of 3.7%. Technology firms sense the coming bonanza, judging by the mood at a gathering of health-care experts held in New York on May 15th and hosted by Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of GE. Joseph Hogan, the head of GE's health-care division, declared that “technology will be at the heart of fixing the health-care crisis.” A spokesman for Siemens, a German rival, argued that the “explosion of medical knowledge” from the field of genomics means that information systems are no longer optional. But there have been many previous false dawns. Steven Van Kuiken of McKinsey, a consultancy, argues that the main obstacle to EMRs is the misalignment of costs and benefits among different groups. Although large hospitals, insurers and vendors would reap big gains from computerisation with quite small investments, he notes, small surgeries with just a few doctors face enormous headaches in converting from clipboards to keyboards. So they tend to be wary: a recent study by Accenture, another consultancy, estimated that barely 10% of American doctors use modern EMR systems. In addition, many hospitals and insurers have not embraced open, interconnected EMR systems, choosing instead to keep patient data locked away from competitors' eyes in proprietary systems. Historically, IT spending has tended to focus on payment systems and other internal processes rather than better customer service or improved outcomes. But that may be changing as a result of pressure from government, employers and consumers. l READ MORE (access available for limited time)
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| The Office of Research Administration supports and advocates research and technology transfer by faculty, graduate students and staff. The ORA provides services in conjunction with external and internal sources of funding for research, along with services related to commercializing discoveries through technology transfer. The goal of this newsletter is to inform the campus community of grants received, to highlight the accomplishments of our faculty, graduate students and staff, and to share with you a calendar of important events and deadlines. Please direct any comments or questions regarding the newsletter to Tamara Wilgers (wilgerst@umsl.edu). | University of Missouri- Fax: 314-516-6759 |
