Countries, companies and farming communities are increasingly involved in issues of sharing and protecting plant genetic resources, (traditional) knowledge and technologies. Intellectual Property Rights and Access and Benefit-Sharing policies currently regulate the transfer and usage of much of this genetic material, information and related production, which is employed in multiple research pro...

What happens within the university-based research enterprise when a federal funding agency abruptly changes research grant funding levels, up or down? We use simple difference equation models to show that an apparently modest increase or decrease in funding levels can have dramatic effects on researchers, graduate students, postdocs, and the overall research enterprise. The amplified effect is ...

We offer empirical information on the correlates of commercialization activity for research projects funded through the US National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award program. Based on this analysis we suggest possible recommendations for improving this aspect of the performance of NIH's SBIR program. Specifically, we estimate a model of the probabili...

Research is an integral part of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) College of Dentistry's mission and strategic plan. The College of Dentistry (COD) has experienced substantial growth in its research enterprise since the opening of the Cruzan Center for Dental Research (CCDR) as evidenced by a 16-fold growth in extramural funding from 1998 to 2006. Through major investments from t...

BACKGROUND Research in patient safety is an important area of health services research and is a national priority. It is challenging to investigate rare occurrences, explore potential causes, and account for the complex, dynamic context of healthcare - yet all are required in patient safety research. Simulation technologies have become widely accepted as education and clinical tools, but have y...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest source of funding for biomedical research in the world. Funding decisions are made largely based on the outcome of a peer review process that is intended to provide a fair, equitable, timely, and unbiased review of the quality, scientific merit, and potential impact of the research. There have been concerns about the criteria reviewers are ...

BACKGROUND The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is among the world's largest investors in biomedical research, with a mandate to: "…lengthen life, and reduce the burdens of illness and disability." Its funding decisions have been criticized as insufficiently focused on disease burden. We hypothesize that modern portfolio theory can create a closer link between basic research and outcome, and...

Genetics and Molecular Biology Branch, Genetic Diseases Research Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD; Department of Biochemistry, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH; Division of Veterinary Resources, Office of Research Services, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. M.K. is a recipient of a Damon-Runyon Cancer Research Fund Fel...

1 Pediatric Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute, Center for Cancer Research, National Institutes of Health, Building 10, Room 1-5750, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA 2 In Vivo NMR Center, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of the Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA 3 Program on Pediatric Imaging and Tissue Sciences, National Institute of...